The Boy in the Photograph

I walked into that DNA testing center on a Tuesday morning carrying a manila folder of my mother’s medical records.

She had passed in February, and her doctor had suggested I get tested for the hereditary markers that had made her last years so hard.
I remember thinking it was a simple errand, the kind of thing you do on your lunch break.

The receptionist told me to wait because the counselor was finishing with another client, so I sat in the plastic chair by the window and flipped through the folder without really seeing it.
Then I looked up.

Through the glass partition of the consultation room, I saw my husband Quincy leaning over a woman in a blue cardigan, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth on hers.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t drop anything.

I just stood there with my mother’s records in my arms and watched the man I had been married to for thirty-one years kiss someone else.
The woman pulled back first.

She had dark hair and a face that looked tired, and when she turned toward the door, she saw me.

Her eyes went wide, and she grabbed her purse and pushed past me without a word.

Quincy followed a second later, but he stopped when he saw me.

His face went pale, and he started to say my name, but I was already looking down at the floor.

There was a white envelope lying there, the kind they give you at the front desk, and it had a name printed on it.

Marissa.

I didn’t know who Marissa was then, not really.

I only knew she had been in that room with my husband, and that the envelope had been dropped in her hurry to get away.

I bent down and picked it up before Quincy could stop me.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, and at the top it said Paternity Test Report.

I read the name of the child, Eli, and the name of the mother, Marissa, and then I read the line that made the room go quiet.

Paternity Probability: 99.99%.

Quincy was the father.

He was standing right in front of me, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to find words, but I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own blood in my ears.

I looked at him and asked, ‘Who is Eli?’

He didn’t answer.

He just looked at the envelope in my hand like it was a bomb.

Then Marissa came back.

She must have forgotten something, or maybe she just couldn’t leave without saying something, because she stood in the doorway with her eyes red and her hands shaking.

She looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry.

I didn’t want you to find out like this.’

I asked her how long.

She said, ‘Eleven years.’

I felt my knees go weak, and I had to put my hand on the wall to steady myself.

Quincy finally spoke.

He said, ‘Hester, let’s go home and talk about this.’

But Marissa turned on him and said, ‘You promised me you would tell her.

You promised me a hundred times.’

Quincy didn’t deny it.

He just stood there, and I saw the truth in his face before he ever said a word.

I walked out of that center without my mother’s records, without my purse, without anything but the paternity test in my hand.

Quincy followed me into the parking lot.

He called my name twice, and when I didn’t turn around, he grabbed my arm.

I pulled away and looked at him.

I only had one question.

‘How old is the child?’

He opened his mouth, and then he closed it.

He didn’t answer.

And that silence told me everything I needed to know.

I got in my car and drove home with the envelope on the passenger seat, and I didn’t cry until I was in my own driveway.

Even then, I didn’t cry for long.

There was too much to think about, and too many years to go back over.

I just sat there and stared at the house we had bought together in 1998, and I wondered how many Tuesdays I had spent alone while he was somewhere else.

I didn’t know it yet, but that envelope was only the first of many things I was about to find out.

Chapter 2 – Thirty-One Years of Tuesdays
I met Quincy in 1993 at the billing office of St. Anne’s Hospital, where we both worked.

He was the one who trained me on the computer system, and he had a way of explaining things that made me feel like I wasn’t stupid for asking.

We got married two years later, and for a long time, I thought we had a good life.