She sat nervously at her kitchen table, reflexively checking the clock on the wall. It was now three minutes until 4 p.m. He said he would be here at 4 p.m. He said he would not be late. Her heart raced at the thought of their meeting.
Her name was Miriam, and she was fifty-four years old. He said he was a doctor, and he had found her through her medical records. He had introduced himself as Mark Kirby and said that he had found the man who was genetically ten percent her son. And he asked her if she’d like to meet him?
She remembered the day she volunteered like it was yesterday. In fact, it was twenty-seven years ago. She had answered an ad. She had needed the money. She convinced herself that she was helping a young couple make their child healthy.
She signed papers and never heard from them again. She had gone on and lived her life, working as a nurse. Gotten married. Had two children. Gotten divorced. Moved to a smaller apartment. Worried about money. Worried about her two teenage boys, now in high school. She figured she was average at best.
Miriam had been surprised when she got the call. Occasionally, over the years, she’d wondered what had become of that couple and their child. She wondered if there would be any part of her visible in the child. There had been confidentiality agreements signed, so she never spoke of it, not even to her now ex-husband, not even to her two children. She hadn’t even known, until her conversation with Mark Kirby, that the child she had given ten percent of her genetic legacy to was a boy.
At first, she turned down the offer of the meeting, but this Mark Kirby character was very persistent. And he offered her money. There was irony to the offer, as she was in need of money. Some things never change, she thought.
She had shared her genetic material so a young couple’s child would not carry a genetic defect. That was all that she’d been told. And now she would meet that child. She hoped he would be nice. She hoped that he had turned out okay. She hoped that he’d had a good life thus far. Miriam was unsure what she would say to him when they met.
Miriam jumped at the sound of the doorbell.
“Would you like some tea?” Miriam asked the young man who sat at her kitchen table. He’s handsome, she thought. He had the same color eyes as her father. She wondered if those eyes came from her.
“No, thank you,” Alex replied.
Alex looked over the kitchen area of Miriam’s two-bedroom apartment. The dining table was worn and used, with Miriam being its third owner. She was frugal but clean, as evidenced by the neatness and order of her home. The paint on the wall, a faded yellow that had last seen a touch up fifteen years ago, showed no signs of peeling or stains. He could tell she took pride in its appearance despite its simplicity.
The evidence of two teenage boys was present—from the faint masculine odor to the backpack in the hallway to the boxes of Pop Tarts on the counter to the athletic sneakers neatly assembled near the entrance. As she sat back down at the table, Alex took several seconds to read every fiber of her being.
Her life oscillated between hope and despair. The lines on her face showed the wear of multiple disappointments, yet the glimmer in her eyes remained resolute. The hope revolved around her two sons and their futures, which were her primary motivation.
Like most mothers who had limited means, she always had an eye toward her children’s prospects, which gave her the emotional resources to see to it that things for her family remained as stable as her strength of mind could create.
Her mannerisms struck a faint familiarity to Alex, something he couldn’t quite place the origin of, which was rare for him. To Alex, the combination of faint familiarity combined with an inability to read the origin could only mean one thing—this person was already connected to him.
For the first time, not knowing the origin of a detail was a comfort to Luthecker. It was the only part of her that didn’t fit a readable pattern to him, the part that was potentially a faint trace connection to him.
This small mystery made him smile. It was a mystery he would covet and keep precious, a feeling he would store in the deeper recesses of his memory to examine any time. He realized this feeling of comfort with the unknown, and the awareness of it, was in part why he was here. But there would be nothing else for him to find.
He knew that the reason he could do what he could do, read the patterns of people’s lives, did not come from Miriam. He realized that whatever block chain of DNA they shared was not different from what would normally pass from generation to generation. It had not proactively formed him, as Kirby suspected.
Correlation is not causation, and there was little more than correlation here. He had suspected this would be the case before he came to visit, but he still felt it would provide closure of sorts to meet her.
Now that he’d met her, he knew for sure there was no connection between Miriam and his abilities. But it was not because of what he saw in Miriam that Alex believed his pattern reading skills were not created in a lab—it was because of his encounters with Maria.
“So, what do you do for a living?” Miriam asked Alex, interrupting his train of thought.
He could tell she was nervous.
Kirby looked back and forth between Luthecker and Miriam. He had promised Luthecker that he would let the conversation be organic between ten percent mother and son, and it took considerable will on his part to refrain from interjecting or trying to steer the dialogue in any particular direction.
“I don’t have a conventional job,” Alex answered.
She found his voice soothing. Something about his way made her feel at ease.
“He’s a therapist,” Kirby interjected.
Alex shot him a look.
“Sort of. I’m sorry. This is between you two. I won’t interrupt again. I promise.”
Alex looked back at Miriam.
“A therapist? How exciting. What kind? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a therapist. Someone you could talk to, someone you could say anything to who could help you change things about yourself that you don’t like. Maybe you could give me some advice?” she asked, surprised at herself for asking, her tone half joking and half hoping Alex would say yes. She really did find his presence disarming.
Alex gave her a Cheshire grin. Little did Miriam know, but with that one question, her life was about to change forever.
“I just might be able to help you,” he said.