Subtly, she angled her laptop’s screen away from him. She typically got lost in her own mind while navigating labyrinths of pure math. This was the first time she’d become lost in the rubble of a genealogical bomb. “Snacks?” She was finding it hard to switch from a life-altering revelation to the mundanity of food.

“Do we have any?” He’d dressed his six-foot-tall, thin, slouch-shouldered body in a Misty River High Football T-shirt and narrow joggers that hugged his calves. He had a mop of artful brown curls, expressive eyebrows, big and dark Bambi eyes, and a pale complexion. He resembled a poet who specialized in morose verse.

“We have whatever snacks are in the pantry,” she said.

“Oh,” he responded, as if this had not occurred to him. “Do we have Cheez-Its?”

“I think so.”

Scintillating conversation concluded, he slunk toward the kitchen.

Almost cautiously, Leah looked around herself. If Mom and Dad weren’t her parents, then could she trust these walls not to melt? The roof not to vanish? Another dimension not to suck her away?

“Father God,” she whispered, those simple words asking for things she couldn’t even name.

She gazed out the expanse of windows on the front side of her rectangular box of a home. The large panes of glass overlooked a steep, wooded valley with a creek at its base. On this seventh day of May, the crisp, vivid green of the trees blanketing the north Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains contrasted with the cheerful orange azaleas blooming in her front planting bed. She’d painted the interior walls of the house a calming off-white and stained the wood floor ashy beige. No clutter marred her simple mid-century modern furniture.

Her Friday afternoon had been following an entirely predictable routine. She worked as a math teacher at Misty River High, where Dylan was finishing up his junior year. They’d both returned home from school less than thirty minutes ago. She’d cracked open her computer and spotted an email from YourHeritage.com with a subject line proclaiming Your DNA results are in! Discover your heritage!

A balloon of interest inflating within her, she’d logged onto the YourHeritage site and clicked the button to reveal the results of the saliva sample she’d mailed in six weeks before.

Then she’d been walloped with the information that she was not biologically related to her mom or her dad. And her ordinary Friday had jumped its track and careened into a gorge.

“Where are the Cheez-Its?” Dylan called.

Leah joined him in front of the pantry. “I never fail to marvel over your assumption that my two X chromosomes function as GPS locational devices for household items.” She plucked out the Cheez-Its and handed them to him.

“But they do.” He held up the box. “See?” Popping the top, he made for his room.

“Nope,” she said. “That box can’t migrate to your room.”