“Tell me everything,” I say as I sink back onto the bar stool and pick up a mug that has grown cold. “All of it. Right now. Or I’m going back to bed.”

“Okay. You have a right to know anyway. I was just waiting for the right time to tell you. In private. Because I didn’t want to upset Penn and Landry.”

She looks like she wants to be holding a wineglass. Instead, she grabs a glass from the top rack of the dishwasher and fills it with water from the tap. Her hands are shaking as she sits on the last bar stool again.

“So, I told you that Penn’s paternity test was negative, but the truth is that it’s not quite that simple. Paternity tests don’t just say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ They give a percentage of DNA shared by the child and the potential father, along with the likelihood that the man tested is the father of the child in question.”

“Okay. And Penn’s test said he can’t be the father, right?”

“Yes. He doesn’t share enough DNA with Lullaby Doe to be her father.”

“Enough? He doesn’t share enough DNA? So he shares some?”

“Around twenty-five percent.” My mother takes a long sip from her glass, and I’m surprised she can get any water into her mouth, with how hard her hand is still shaking.

“What does that mean? The baby is, like, a cousin?” But we don’t have any other relatives in Clifford, other than my paternal grandmother.

“According to the lab tech who sent me the results, it means that Lullaby Doe is almost certainly either Penn’s niece—or his half sister.”

“Oh my god.” I gulp my cooling cider, to give myself time to think. “And I’m guessing you’re not her mother …”

“No.” My mom’s voice breaks on that one syllable.

“I’m not either. Which means Dad—” I pull my phone from the pocket of my pajama pants and open the calendar.

“What are you doing?”

“Counting back thirty weeks from last Friday.”

“I’ve already done that at least fifty times,” my mother says. “The math never changes.”

“But he died thirty-two weeks ago, and you said Lullaby Doe was at thirty weeks’ gestation when she was born a week ago. She’s a week too young. She can’t be his baby.”

“Thirty weeks was just an estimate, Beckett. That baby could have been conceived within a couple of weeks of your father’s death, in either direction, and still be within the margin of error of her gestational development.”

Those are just a bunch of fancy words—of doctor-speak—for “Lullaby Doe could be your sister, Beckett.” She could be my father’s illegitimate child.

“Oh my god. Oh my god!”

“Shhh.”