She’d been telling herself that the physical attraction she’d experienced for him when they’d met at the hospital coffee shop a week and a half ago was an outlier, a data point differing significantly from the rest of her responses to the opposite sex. But now that it had occurred again, she couldn’t classify it as such.

She returned to the house, picked up her laptop, and walked straight through to her miniature back patio. Exterior and interior light spilled illumination onto the pavers that formed a curving shape just large enough for an outdoor chair, footrest, and side table.

After lowering onto the chair, she hooked a toe beneath the footrest, pulled it into position, then settled her computer so that it formed a bridge between her thighs and abdomen.

Due to the waiver that Mom had finally submitted, Magnolia Avenue Hospital had gathered the files about her birth. She’d been born at a time when records were kept only on paper. However, she’d requested them in an electronic format, so the hospital had scanned the pages. Earlier today she’d begun reading them via an online portal.

She’d seen at once that doctors’ reputation for illegible handwriting wasn’t unfounded. For several hours she’d combed through the documents, slowly deciphering words, taking notes. Now she could revisit them and finish researching the oddities she’d found the first time through.

Immediately after birth in the delivery room, her weight had been listed as eight pounds, one ounce. Two days later, when she and her mom left the hospital, the log noted her weight as seven pounds, one ounce.

She surfed the web and discovered that it wasn’t unusual for a formula-fed newborn to lose five percent of her body weight after birth. But according to her chart, she’d lost twelve percent of her body weight.

Her mother’s biological daughter was the one who’d weighed eight pounds, one ounce. Leah had likely weighed close to seven pounds at birth.

Mom’s blood type was recorded here as type O. A Google search informed her that O was common. So was Leah’s blood type, A. Her dad had type B, which was more unusual. A few of the times he’d given blood when she was a kid, he’d taken her along. Those occasions had imprinted on her memory because . . . needles. Blood. “I’ve got to help out my fellow Bs,” he’d told her. Afterward, he’d winked and cajoled the staff into giving Leah a carton of juice and a package of saltines.

She located a chart listing how blood types descended from parents to children. Ah. It wasn’t possible for a type O mother and type B father to have a type A daughter.

She’d already known she wasn’t Erica and Todd Montgomery’s child. The DNA said so. Her improbable weight loss as an infant said so.