The Edge of Doom Read Free

couldn’t possibly be more different in every possible way.”
    “I have been said to bear some physical resemblance to one or the other of them in the past,” Kate pointed out.
    “No one’s saying you didn’t all have the same mother.” Reed got up to refill their glasses. “Kate, I know this is a bit of a shock, and you are wondering why you toddled off to the ladies’ room to prick your finger as though mesmerized. Let’s wait to see what this man says are the results.”
    “We can’t take his word for it.”
    “Of course not. We’ll find ourselves a DNA expert and have it all rechecked.”
    “And if he does turn out to be my father?”
    “I think that’s not only rather exciting, it also explains a good deal. I’m actually eager to meet this man, if he is your father, or even if he wants to be. And remember, he wants to leave you money, not con you out of yours.”
    “That,” Kate said, “may just be the beginning of a con game.”
    “Naturally that occurred to me,” Reed said. “But you, to say nothing of myself, are not a likely victim of a con artist.”
    “Suppose,” Kate said, “he turns out to be my father, and then needs me to support him. Have you thought of that?”
    “Kate. Dear, sweet Kate. You’ve given the man, or anyway your brother, a drop of your blood. I promise you it will lead to nothing terrifying, other than”—he held up an admonishing finger as Kate yelped an interruption—“what ideas may be stirred up by proof that he is in fact your father.”
    “I’ve been doing arithmetic,” Kate said. “Counting on my fingers, mostly. My mother was born in 1914—nearly a century ago. Imagine! She was thirty-six when I was born. Wasn’t that considered rather late to have a child in those days? I don’t seem to have thought about it before. She was only twenty-one when Laurence was born.”
    “Thirty-six may have been late then for a first child,” Reed said. “Perhaps not for a fourth.”
    “I didn’t know you were an expert on human fertility.”
    “I think you’re letting this affect you inordinately, Kate. You usually don’t get carried away and testy.”
    “You’re right; I’m sorry. I can’t imagine why this is causing so forceful a reaction. It’s as though I’ve been told I may be someone other than I thought I was. Do you suppose this is what it’s like to discover you’re adopted?”
    “Probably. I think that’s why adoptive parents today let the child know it’s adopted very early on.”
    “Really, Reed, no testiness is intended. But you do seem to be a fountain of familial information.”
    “Odd bits of information turn up in the D.A.’s office where I spent so many long days, and some of them even take on significance. DNA is hardly unknown in connection with the criminal world. Anyway, everything I’ve mentioned is commonplace in newspapers these days. You know it all too, if you think about it.”
    “I’m not sure I want to think about it. Let’s talk about something else; something very clearly else.”
    And they did, for that evening at least. But as they talked, Kate found herself overwhelmed in a way she would not have thought possible. Why, after all, was this news so stupendous?

    By the next day Reed had unearthed a friend who was a DNA expert, or enough of one to satisfy Reed’s purposes and Kate’s. He had promised to report to Reed on e-mail, and did so. Reed had asked him a specific question: assuming a man (Reed had put his inquiry in general terms) claimed to be the father of a certain woman, could DNA testing, for example, distinguish between the man as the father of the woman and the man as the half brother of the woman? For it had occurred to Reed that this man might actually be a by-blow of Kate’s father; in that case his DNA would certainly establish a connection with her. He had mentioned this possibility to Kate, who had silently rolled her eyes and only demanded to know the results when Reed had got them in