Divorce! Marin hadn’t seen it coming.
Sitting at her desk where she was usually the picture of organization and control, she was unglued by her father’s words—long overdue and a new phase of life. New phase of life? Her father didn’t speak like that. And so she asked him, “Is there someone else?” His response: “Yes.” The second blow.
She stared blankly at her computer screen.
How could this be happening? She’d gone home to Philly two months ago for her mother’s birthday. Her parents had appeared the same as always. There wasn’t a single sign anything was wrong, and now they were divorcing and her father was in a new relationship? Then again, she’d brought Greg with her that weekend. So much for appearances.
She was going to lose it if she didn’t talk to someone, and the someone she most wanted to talk to was just one floor above her.
It was wrong, and she hated herself for her weakness, but she needed him.
She abandoned her desk and headed for the elevators.
Julian’s secretary was not at her desk and his door was closed. Marin knocked once and opened it. All she wanted was to see his face.
When she saw it, he had a deer-in-the-headlights look. Senior partner Hilton Wallace was sitting across from him.
Hilton Wallace had probably once been an attractive man. But in his midfifties, he had the generic appearance of bloated affluence. Golf and tennis on the weekends couldn’t combat the decades of long hours behind a desk. He had steely blue eyes and the deepest crow’s-feet Marin had ever seen, lines that appeared to have been carved into his face rather than slowly worn in over time. And at the moment, they gave his face a particularly stern look.
“Hello, Marin. Surprised to see you in this neck of the woods,” Hilton said, leaning back in his chair, looking at her pointedly.
“Sorry to interrupt! I just…there are a few Genie documents that aren’t in that file box you sent down. Dina isn’t at her desk or I would have asked her—”
“I’ll have her check the document list when she returns,” Julian said curtly.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. She backed out of the office and retreated to her own.
Closing her own door and leaning against it, she decided to do what she should have done in the first place: call her mother. She got her voice mail and left a message saying she was going to come home on Saturday.
Until then, Marin had to put it out of her mind. Yes, her parents were splitting up. Deal with it—you’re a grown woman.
Marin opened her e-mail.
She scrolled through her messages, one in particular catching her eye. It was from a name she didn’t recognize, the subject line: Please Read.
Hi, Marin:
I tried reaching you through Genie, but when I didn’t hear back I figured I might have gotten dumped in your spam folder so I thought I’d e-mail you directly. I hope you don’t mind.
I recently did a DNA test through Genie and I got a notice from them that I have a very close relative in their database. You! So close that you’re either my grandparent or my half sibling. I’m guessing from your profile you’re not my grandmother (LOL). I know this probably comes as a shock to you—it was for me, even though I always knew it was a possibility since I have a single mom and my father was a sperm donor. Maybe you’re in a similar situation? Either way, I’d love to hear from you. Number’s below. Call any time.
Rachel Moscowitz
Marin blinked at the screen.
What. The. Fuck.
She hadn’t heard a thing from Genie since mailing in her test kit. She’d practically forgotten about it.
Holding her breath, she opened a browser and logged in to her personal e-mail account. Sure enough, more than half a dozen e-mails from Genie hovered near the top, sandwiched between the entreaties from Equinox to rejoin and sales alerts from Barneys and Bergdorf’s.
Your Kit Has Been Registered.
Your Sample Has Been Received.
Your Complete Genie Ancestry Reports Are Ready to View.
With shaking hands, she clicked on the third message. Sign in to your account using the user name and password created during the kit-registration process.
User name and password? She struggled to remember them. It took three tries before she got into the site. Stop being emotional. It was important to approach this as she would any new information that required analysis: Methodically. Professionally. Detached.
After a few minutes of clicking around, she felt more relaxed and in control. She focused on the Ancestry Composition section, which had a global map on one side of the page and a list of percentages and regions on the other. At the top, it told her she was 99.2 percent European. She would have guessed 100 percent, considering both of her parents’ families were from the UK, but probably in this day and age, no one was purely 100 percent anything. The 99.2 percent was probably remarkable in itself.
The map was colored in the regions where Marin’s ancestry was located. Not surprisingly, the UK was lit up—her father’s great-great-grandparents came over from England and Scotland, and her mother was Welsh. But oddly, the region of Southern Europe near Spain and Portugal was also highlighted.
She checked the percentages on the right and frowned. According to the site’s breakdown, she was 50 percent Southern European. That didn’t make sense. Even if one of her parents had an ancestor from Spain or somewhere in the region, she wouldn’t be 50 percent Southern European.
Well, that explained the strange e-mail. There had been an error.
She was tempted to ignore the e-mail, but if she just left it out there, the woman might try to contact her again. Better to just terminate the inquiry.
Dear Ms. Moscowitz:
Thank you for getting in touch. Unfortunately, there seems to be some mistake. I wish you the best in your family research.
Marin hit Send and logged off.
She didn’t need the distraction of abstract information about her alleged family tree. Her real family, her here-and-now family, was coming apart at the seams.
And she had no idea what to do about it.