Agent Alvarez pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase and slid it across the table. “Do you recognize this, Miss Cooke?”

She leaned forward. It looked like it was from the ancestry company where she’d sent her DNA test. The girls had gotten it for her for Christmas – they thought it would be fun to see if they had any long-lost ancestors.

“It looks like the test I got for Christmas, but I haven’t gotten the results yet.” She frowned. There was a lot of information on there.

“Yes, these are the results of your DNA test. You submitted your saliva for this test, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“Well,” he continued, “we got a match in our database to your results. To your son, who we need to talk to.”

“I don’t have a son,” she insisted. “I’ve never had any children.”

Agent McCoy raised an eyebrow. “You just said you have three daughters. Or do they not exist anymore?”

Claire let out a sigh. “They’re my adopted daughters. I mean I don’t have any biological children. I’ve never had a son, adopted or otherwise.”

It was a point that one of the moms in Lucy’s kindergarten liked to harp on back in the day. “You’ll never understand,” she once told Claire, “until you have a real child, one of your own.”

Claire’s stomach churned at the memory. The girls were her real children, and she was a real mom. Comments like that had haunted her for years, though, and made her question herself more than she wanted to admit.

“Okay.” Agent McCoy sat back, nodding. “So you adopted three girls, but no boys?”

She didn’t like the tone of his voice, but he was clearly wrong and would feel silly when he realized his mistake. “Yes. Three girls, my sister’s daughters. She died in a plane crash twenty-nine years ago this March. It was in Colorado. I’m sure you can find it, in the papers maybe, or –”

“We’ll get right on that,” Agent McCoy said with a smile. “What I want to focus on right now is that your son is in trouble. But you know that, don’t you? Has he tried to contact you?”

Her eyes darted between them. “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong person. The company must have made a mistake with the results.”

“The company assured us that they don’t make mistakes.”

She let out a sigh. “I’m pretty sure I would remember being pregnant and having a son.”

Agent Alvarez smiled before he spoke, his voice soft. “When did he come to see you? Is he staying here?”

It was like talking to a wall! Maybe this was a prank, an especially cruel one. Why hadn’t she asked to see their badges?

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Claire said.