Chapter 2
"Tell her who her mother is."
The words settled on the table like a dropped plate.
Nobody moved.
The woodstove ticked.
A log shifted and threw a stripe of light across the cloth.
Diane's hand was still half-raised, where Josie's wrist had been.
Then she laughed.
One short, flat sound.
"That test is a scam," she said.
"You ordered it off a website."
"You can buy anything on the internet."
She reached across the table for the envelope.
Ray got there first.
He slid it into his shirt pocket and laid his palm flat over it.
"It's not a scam," he said.
"There's a name on it."
Diane's jaw worked.
Then she found her footing.
She sat back down.
She smoothed the sweater set over her ribs.
She picked up her fork.
"If she isn't Ray's," Diane said, "that's Renee's business."
Every head at the table turned to Renee.
Renee sat with both hands flat on the cloth.
She hadn't said one word all night.
Her mouth opened.
Then closed.
"Ask her," Diane said.
"Go on. Ask where she was twenty-two years ago."
Ruth's voice came out thin.
"Not tonight," she said.
"Not at my table."
She said it to the room.
She didn't say it to Josie.
Cody nodded fast.
"See?" he said.
"It's nothing."
He looked down the table, gathering nods.
The cousins gave them to him.
Somebody reached for the cranberries.
For a moment, the room was Diane's again.
The mill was hers.
The checkbook was hers.
The story was hers.
Then Ray didn't move.
He set his napkin down.
He reached into his flannel and pulled out the wallet.
It was the old one.
Worn soft at the fold.
Dark with twenty years of hands.
He opened it.
He took something out.
It was small and white and yellowed.
A plastic hospital bracelet, the kind they strap on a newborn.
He laid it on the tablecloth, beside the salt.
It looked like nothing.
A scrap.
A keepsake.
Everyone leaned in anyway.
"That comes off a nursery crib," Ray said.
"Baby's first hours."
Josie picked it up.
The plastic was soft with age.
In faded ink: Baby Girl Holland.
Under the name, a signature.
A woman's hand.
D. Holland.
Josie's thumb went still on the loop.
Ruth's spoon rang against her saucer.
"The mother signs the bracelet," Ray said.
"That's the rule in that hospital."
"Read the signature, Diane."
Diane stared at the little band on the cloth.
Her rings clicked once against her glass.
"That's my handwriting because I drove Renee in," she said.
"I signed her at the desk. That's all it is."
But her voice had gone thin at the edges.
Ray slid the bracelet across the cloth.
It stopped at her plate.
"Read it out loud," he said.
"Every letter."