“It has to be a teacher,” I tell her. “I know you thought Lullaby Doe’s mother must have been a student, because an adult wouldn’t have had any reason to hide the pregnancy, but this could be the reason. An affair.”

An affair with a married man.

An affair with a married man who has three children and an addiction to alcohol and pain pills.

The more I think about it, the worse it all sounds.

“Yeah. It could be a teacher.” She lets go of my hand, and slowly the feeling starts to return to my fingers.

And the truth is that even if it is a student, he could have slept with a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old. That feels like a horrible thing to be relieved about, but I’m grasping at straws here, and eighteen-year-olds are technically adults. And seventeen-year-olds are old enough to legally consent. So I will hold on to this straw until it falls apart in my hand, because the alternative would be to lose my mind.

“Beckett, I still, um … I still need you to have that exam. Please.”

“What? Why? It’s not my baby, Mom.”

“I just … I need to exhaust all the other possibilities before I can let myself go down this path, mentally. Please, Beckett. Dr. Baker said she can see you at seven tomorrow morning. Seven this morning, I guess,” my mother corrects herself with a glance at the clock on the microwave.

“She’s open that early?”

“No, this is more of a favor. You need to go anyway. You’re sixteen, and that’s about when a girl should have her first gynecological exam, so we can just call it that. Our insurance will even cover it.”

So, she wants to get me up at the crack of dawn to go for my very first, perfectly normal gyno checkup, on the Monday before Christmas. Before the doctor’s office even truly opens.

It’s ridiculous. It’s insulting. But I can’t say no, because as much as this is obviously going to suck for me, my mother needs this proof, just like I needed proof that the baby wasn’t Amira’s.

“Okay, but why can’t you just run a DNA test on me, like you did with Penn?”

“Because we’re no longer looking for the next of kin. The coroner has released the body for burial. The Clifford PD’s part in this has ended. And if that weren’t true, the results of your DNA test would become part of the official evidence, and I’m not sure I want that, no matter what the outcome is.”

I don’t want that either. Not that it matters anymore. This is no longer a police matter. It’s personal now. “Fine. I’ll go.”