Part 6 (1/2)
”She's still messed up from the birth in that one.”
”Which gives it an immediacy,” Dana coaxed. ”But you can take more now.”
”She's sleeping now.”
Dana thought Lizzie's features were as striking in sleep as when she was awake. ”Oh, Hugh. I don't want to wait. The envelopes are all addressed and stamped. There are so many people we want to tell.”
”Most of them will know anyway,” he said with sudden sharpness. ”In fact, I'm not sure why we're even sending announcements.”
Startled, Dana said, ”But you were after me for weeks to make an appointment with the stationer. You insisted on coming. You chose the photo announcement and insisted you could get a good shot to use.”
He didn't move, stayed close, yet she felt a chill seeping in. A moment later, he rose, put his camera away, and gently set the baby in the crib.
”Hugh?”
When his eyes finally met hers, they were troubled. ”I'm not sure we should include a picture with the announcement.”
Dana sank into her pillow. ”You don't want people to see her. But they will eventually. We can't keep her in the house under wraps.”
”I know. But sending a picture out now is only going to provoke questions.” He took a quick breath. ”Do we need to put ourselves on display? Word'll spread about the baby anyway. People love to talk.”
”So?”
”So do we have to fuel the gossip? It'd be one thing if I could say that my wife's grandfather was black.”
”Why does it matter?” Dana cried. She didn't care if her grandfather was black. She didn't care if her father was black. It wouldn't change who she was.
Unfortunately, Hugh cared. ”We need to locate your father.”
Dana was immediately defensive. ”I suggested doing it before I was ever pregnant, and you said it didn't matter. I said what if there was a medical problem, and you said you didn't want to know and that if something arose we'd deal with it.”
”That's exactly what we're doing. Dealing with it means tracking down your dad now. My man can do that.”
His man was Lakey McElroy. A computer nerd from a family of Irish cops, Lakey was socially inept, but very smart. Where his brothers knew the streets, he knew the hidden alleys. He also knew his way around the Web. On more than one occasion, he had found information that Hugh had given up on. If anyone could find Dana's father, Lakey could.
Dana felt the old ambivalence-wanting to know, not wanting to know. Perhaps Hugh was right to insist. This wasn't only about her anymore. It was about Lizzie, too.
”We don't have much to go on,” she reminded him.
”We have a name, and a picture. We have a place, a month, and a year.”
”Roughly,” she cautioned, because she had thought about this far more than he had. ”My mother never said exactly when they were together, so it's fine to count backward from the day I was born, but if she delivered me early or late, we could be wrong.”
”You never asked?”
”I was five when she died.”
”Ellie Jo must know.”
”She says no.”
”What about your mom's friends? Wouldn't she have confided in them?”
”I've asked before. I could ask again.”
”Sooner rather than later, please.”
It was the please that bothered her-like this was a business matter, and she had let him down. She told herself it was only the Clarke seeping out through a crack in his otherwise human veneer, but tears filled her eyes. ”I can't do it now,” she said. ”I just had a baby.”
”I'm not saying now.” His cell phone vibrated. He looked at the ID panel. ”Let me take this. It may help.”
Genevieve Falk was a geneticist whom Hugh had found years before when he needed a DNA expert for a case. She was intelligent and down-to-earth.
Now, standing at the window with the phone to his ear, he said a grateful, ”Genevieve. Thanks for calling back.”
”We're on Nantucket, but you said it was urgent.”
”I need your help. Here's the scenario. A very white couple gives birth to a baby that has the skin and hair of an African American. Neither parents nor grandparents have remotely brown skin or curly hair. The a.s.sumption is that there's an African-American connection further back-mabe a great-grandparent. Is this possible?”
”Great-grandparent, singular? On only one side of the baby's family? That's not as probable as if there were such a relative on both sides.”
”There isn't. The baby's father's family is thoroughly doc.u.mented.”
”Was the mother adopted?”
”No, but her father is an unknown quant.i.ty. In the one picture we have, he looks very blond.”
”Looks don't count, Hugh. Miscegenation has created generations of people with mixed blood. Some say that only ten percent of all African Americans today are genetically pure. If the other ninety percent have genetic material that is even partly white, and that material is further diluted with each level of procreation, not only would their features be white, but suddenly producing a child with African traits would be improbable.”
”I don't need to know what's probable, only what's possible,” he said. ”Is it possible for racial traits to lie dormant for several generations before reappearing? Can a light-skinned, blond-haired woman produce a child with non-Caucasian features?”
Genevieve sounded doubtful. ”She can, but the odds are slim, especially if those several generations before were filled with blond-haired ancestors.”
Hugh tried again. ”If, say, the baby's grandfather was one-quarter black but pa.s.sing for white, and the baby's mother had no African-American features at all, could the baby inherit dark skin and tight curly hair?”
”It would be rare.”
”What are the odds?”
”I can't tell you, any more than we know the odds of a redhead appearing after several generations without.”
”Okay. Then at what point would it become impossible?”
”'Impossible' is not a word I like to use. Genetic flukes happen. Suffice it to say that the further back you have to look, the less probable your scenario becomes. Does the mom know of no black relatives?”
”None.”