He pulled out his phone. Four minutes to six. Four more minutes, and the question that had been haunting him for five years or more would finally be answered. One phone call, and he’d know with more certainty than any vision could offer what his future would look like. Funny how he’d been only too capable of ignoring this shit for all those years, but now that the truth was about to come out, four minutes felt like fucking forever—
Brrrzzzz. His cell vibrated; then the chime kicked in. It took him three full rings before he brought his shaking thumb down and accepted the call.
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking with Casey?” asked a cheerful female voice.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Casey, good evening. This is Carrie Albini, calling from LifeMap. Does this time still work for you?”
“Yeah. Lay it on me.”
She laughed politely, and there was typing behind her voice. “Great. So I’m one of the analysts here at LifeMap, and it looks like we’re going to be consulting this evening about three different tests—yours and also Deirdre and Vincent. Is that correct?”
“That’s right. That’s me, my mom, and my brother.”
“Great. And I see we’ve got disclosure waivers all signed and ready to go, so let’s dig in. Now, in the mail you’re going to receive very, very detailed reports on all three tests, but when a client requests a personal consultation, it usually means they have some specific concerns they’d like to address. Is this correct, in your case?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Okay, great.” Man, she sure liked the word great. “Where would you like to focus our thirty minutes together, then?”
“Well,” he said, sitting on the edge of his old bed, “my mom’s, um . . . Her mental health is declining. She’s never been diagnosed by a doctor, though.”
“Okay, let’s take a look.” More typing and clicking. “I see here in the APOE allele for her test that, yes, she does carry the gene for non-Alzheimer’s dementia.”
He nodded, no words coming. Luckily, the woman went on.
“Are you curious to know if you also have this gene?” she prodded gently, voice lilting upward.
“Yeah. I am.”
More clicking—easily three hours’ worth of clicking, it felt like.
“I have good news for you, Casey. You and your mother do not share that gene.”
He froze, eyes glued to a dark patch on the carpet. “We don’t?”
“No, you do not.”
“How sure are you?”
She laughed. “Ninety-nine-point-many-nines sure. Genetic testing is extremely accurate.”
“Dude,” he said, and flopped back on his covers. “You have no fucking clue how much of a relief it is to hear that.” Such a relief, he felt tears welling in his eyes, snot building in his sinuses. He sat up and wiped his lashes dry.
“I can only imagine,” she said.
“And my brother—is he cool, too?”
More typing. “Yes, your brother also doesn’t share it. Though of course your chances on that one were a bit less nerve-racking, I’m going to bet.”
Casey frowned, confused. It wasn’t as though she knew about him getting spells and Vince not. “Why do you say that?”
Silence—a pause deep enough to park a car in.
“Hello?”
“Sorry.” Click click click, tap tap tap. “You do know that you and Vincent don’t share a biological mother, correct?”
He stared at the carpet stain, blank. “’Scuse me?”
“Deirdre is not Vincent’s mother. Not genetically speaking.”
“The fuck?”
Another pause. “I take it this is news to you . . . You have the same father of course,” she went on quickly, like that even fucking mattered.
Fucking fuck, but Casey had always known the two of them couldn’t be full-blooded brothers. They didn’t look a thing alike. But all this time he’d hoped it was because he must have a different dad, somebody way better than the asshole who’d left them . . .
“I’ll be goddamned.”
“Would you like to speak with an emotional counselor?” she offered.
“What? Fucking no, I just— Sorry. It’s fine. What else can you tell me? Are there any other weird neurological things in my report?” Anything that might explain the visions, if his mother also shared them.
Apparently not. The woman went through a bunch of results with him, but aside from a predisposition for anxiety and depression, Casey’s brain tested deceptively normal.
“And of course those are very, very common across the board,” the data chick said. “And depression and anxiety are also strongly influenced by environmental factors.”
“Sure.”
A pause. “Are you all right, Casey?”
“Yeah, I’m cool.”
“Well, our thirty minutes are just about up. Have I answered all of your questions?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Great.”
Yeah, fucking great. You just ripped a huge fucking hole through my goddamn family.
“Now, when your reports arrive in the mail, don’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed. A lot of it’s very technical, but if you go to our website, we have tools to help you make sense of . . .” She launched into her closing spiel, and Casey tuned out, peering around his room. Staring at the wall he’d shared with Vince, and trying to conceive how it was that they didn’t share the one fucking thing he’d always trusted they had in common. Their mom. The one thing that had bound them together enough to even lure Casey back here in the first place . . .
He mumbled a half-assed thanks and a good-bye when prompted, and ended the call.
“Fuck me.”
Casey wandered out of his room, numb, and dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs. How in the fuck was he supposed to break this to Vince? Tell the guy that he’d spent the past decade watching the heartbreaking mental decline of a woman who wasn’t even his real goddamn mother?
No matter how Casey tried to word it, all that came echoing back was a big fat tangle of confusion.
He looked up as Nita entered the kitchen. She’d always been like an aunt to him and Vince—their next-door neighbor and childhood babysitter. She’d also been a way sterner taskmaster than their mom, probably because she’d had the energy to be. Dee Grossier, on the other hand, had seemed forever on the verge of a nervous breakdown after their dad took off. To be fair, Casey and Vince hadn’t exactly been the easiest boys to raise. She’d been on a first-name basis with half the nurses in the Elko ER, for Christ’s sake.
But Nita Robles was made of sturdier stuff, physically and mentally. She was a deceptively warm, soft, stocky woman, and the glittery blouses she favored belied the thick skin hiding underneath. She’d been left by her husband a few years before Dee had, and they’d bonded over that. In time Casey had come to learn that if he fucked up anything especially bad, it was best to tell Nita first. She’d come down on you hard, but she wouldn’t fall to pieces crying like his mom had. Plus she was way better at relaying the news that you’d, say, burned down the neighbor’s shed, in a way that wouldn’t throw Dee over the edge.
Casey’s phone was still in his hand, and he couldn’t guess how long he’d been sitting there, shell-shocked. He ought to be over the fucking moon—and he would be, in time. But that shit about his brother . . .
Half brother. Just like you always thought.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Nita said, uncorking a bottle of red wine at the counter.
“I just talked to the DNA people. The company I sent that test off to.”
She froze with a glass in her hand, gaze glued to his face. “Oh?”
He nodded.