Miles nodded slowly, aware that as he did so, his head was moving at an odd angle. Early signs of chorea. He could see the troubled look on Dorian’s face. It was hard to get anything past Dorian.
“You’re right about the DNA. I want you to send that to the lab we’ve worked with before. A rush job. I know they can do that if you throw enough money at them.”
Dorian nodded with some satisfaction. “And what should they be looking for?”
Miles swallowed. “Huntington’s.”
That wiped the smugness from her face. “Jesus,” Dorian said. “Your brother thinks he has Huntington’s? No, wait, if you’re doing this behind his back, you think he has Huntington’s? What the hell makes you think he has Huntington’s?”
Miles looked at her, waiting for her to put it together.
“Oh, fuck,” Dorian said, and dropped into one of the two Eames leather chairs on the other side of Miles’s desk. “How long have you known?”
“A week.”
“Oh, Miles. I’m so sorry. But why... wait, you haven’t told Gilbert yet.”
“No.”
“You’re waiting for his genetic test to come back. To find out if he has it.”
“Yes.”
“Is this ethical?”
“Probably not,” Miles said, “but I think it’s the right thing to do. Given that I’ve been diagnosed with it, there’s a very good chance he has it, as well. When I tell him about my diagnosis, it won’t be long before he thinks about the implications for himself. And for his daughter. I want to be able to tell him, then and there, whether he has anything to worry about.”
Dorian melted into the chair, overwhelmed. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry. It’s so... fucking unfair.” She shook her head slowly. “I’ll get the DNA test done. What else do you need?”
He ignored the question, going quiet for several seconds. “You know that group that came through here day before yesterday? From that new streaming service?”
“Yeah?”
“I got talking to one of them. Oscar, his name was. He was blind.”
“Yeah. Black guy, sunglasses.”
“He went blind, like, overnight. When he was only thirty. Detached retinas in both eyes. Very rare. So we got talking, and he said, if only he’d known it was coming. There were all these things he wanted to see someday. The Taj Mahal. The Great Wall. Victoria Falls.” Miles had to stop for a second. “His son.”
Dorian nodded. “I get it. You’re thinking of the things you want to do... while you can.”
Miles looked at Dorian reproachfully, as though she had missed his point entirely. “No, that’s not what I was thinking at all.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then what?”
“Never mind,” Miles said. “Just get my brother’s DNA tested.”
Four
Providence, RI
Chloe Swanson found her mother, Gillian, hunting for something in her Camry. She had the driver’s door, and the driver’s-side back door, open, and was on her knees, on the driveway, looking under the front seat.
“Mom?” Chloe said.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Gillian said. She pulled up the rear floor mat, ran her hand over the carpeting.
“What are you looking for?” her daughter asked.
“My goddamn Visa card. I used it to get out of that parking garage? You swipe it going in, then coming out, and—” She had her hand so far up beneath the driver’s seat that Chloe could see her fingers wiggling out from under the front.
“And what?”
“So I take the card out, and the gate goes up to let me out, and I want to take a second to put the card back in my wallet, but I’ve got some asshole behind me honking his horn for me to get going, so when I drive out I put the card on the passenger seat, and you know how you have to drive up the ramp out of that garage, like a winding staircase or a corkscrew or something, and when I get home the card’s not on the seat. It slipped. Why can’t they have parking attendants like they used to? Someone in an actual booth?”
Chloe went around to the car and opened the front passenger door. “I’ll look on this side.”
While they were both digging their fingers into crevices and under floor mats, unable to look directly at each other, Chloe said, “I’m going to be gone for a couple days.”
“What?”
“Taking a drive up to Massachusetts. Around Springfield somewhere.”
Gillian was moving the driver’s seat forward and digging into the narrow space between it and the center console. “Well, I’ve found a straw and two quarters. You said a couple days?”
“Yeah.”
“You cleared it at work?”
“My weekend’s Tuesday, Wednesday. So I’m going to drive up Tuesday morning, first thing.”
“So what’s in Springfield?”
“I’m going up there to meet someone.”
Gillian raised her head, peered at Chloe between the two front seats. “To meet someone? Like, for the first time? Or someone you’ve met before?”
“Someone I’ve never met before. Someone I met online.”
Now Gillian extracted herself from the car and stood next to it, peering across the roof as Chloe did the same. She had something in her hand. A credit card.
“I found it,” Chloe said. “It must have slid off the seat and was tucked down by the door.”
She slid it across the roof, her mom slapping her hand on it before it slid down the slope of the rear window. If Chloe was expecting to be thanked, it did not happen.
“Someone you met on the internet?” Chloe’s mother said. “Jesus, do you need your head read? The internet? Home of perverts, sickos, and predators?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Was it some sort of dating site? You don’t have enough guys hitting on you in the diner?”
“Yeah, they’re a prime bunch, Mom. Thanks for thinking that’s the gene pool I need to choose from.”
“So it was a dating site? You know people just lie about themselves online. You think you’re going to meet George Clooney and it turns out to be Danny DeVito.”
“It’s not a dating site.” Chloe bit her lip, looked away briefly. When she turned her eyes back on her mother, she said, “You have to promise not to be mad.”
“Mad about what?”
“Your face. It looks like it’s getting ready to be mad.”
Gillian struggled to compose herself. She placed her hands flat on the roof, then raised all her fingers for a second, a signal to proceed.
“I sent away,” Chloe said slowly, reaching into her pocket for her phone, “for one of those tests.”
Gillian’s face paled. “What... test?”
“I bet you can guess.” She raised the phone, opened the camera, and set it to record video. “Jesus Christ, Chloe, you know—”
“You promised.”
Gillian struggled to calm herself. “You know how I feel about this. And for God’s sake stop recording this!”
“I’m documenting,” Chloe said.
“Stop it!”
Chloe lowered the phone and picked up where she’d left off. “I have a right—”
“What right? Show me where it’s written that—”
Chloe exploded. “I have a right to know who I am!”
Her mother took her hands off the roof and took a step back, as though blown by a gust of wind. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper.
“When did you—”
“I had the test mailed to the nursing home, to Grandpa. I knew if it showed up here you’d freak out. Or if it arrived when I wasn’t here you’d just throw it out and never even tell me.”