The Edge of Doom Read Free Page B

don’t know,” Reed said, “but it seems that the conclusion is clear enough. If this man is your father, that will be readily apparent. If he is your half brother—and after all that’s just a possibility that came to my mind with no basis in fact—then we’ll know that, too. So at least evidence from the DNA will be clear enough.”
    “Well, whatever that man says the report says, I think we had better have it done over. We’ll have to ask him to prick his finger into some Kleenex. After all, fair’s fair.”
    “I’m sure he will see it that way,” Reed said. “Now how about concentrating on the fact that whether he’s your father or not will not alter a single moment of your life up to now. You are still the Kate Fansler who has lived so far. What it may change in your perception of your parents is another matter, I do realize. But that, dear Kate, is in the past. The long ago, over half a century past.”
    “Is it all right if I wonder about what my mother was up to?”
    “Wonder away. But until we know the results of all this DNA business, we can’t be sure she was up to anything.”
    “You realize he must have been much younger than she. Probably he was the age of her oldest son, or very near to it.”
    “Well, good for your mother, but I doubt he was Laurence’s age, which was eleven when you were born. She undoubtedly was a most attractive woman even past the height of youth, as you are.”
    “Nicely put, Reed. I can hardly wait to meet the man.”
    “Do you want to meet him only if he is your father, or do you think he will be interesting in himself?”
    “I guess I want to know why he would play this charade if he isn’t my father; and I need to know all about him if he is.”
    “We do have to remember that Laurence may be undergoing a senior moment, as I believe they are now called. There may be no such man at all.” Reed went to prepare their drinks.
    “The trouble is,” Kate said, “I don’t know what to hope for. As T.S. Eliot put it, ‘wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.’ But it’s a little hard to know what the wrong thing might be in this case.”
    “Or the right thing, either,” Reed muttered, as they settled down in the living room. “I didn’t know you liked T.S. Eliot.”
    Kate smiled her appreciation at his trying to change the subject, enticing her to talk about poetry, which she loved but rarely taught and never wrote about.
    “T.S. Eliot the man seems a frightful creature; he probably always was,” Kate said. “But the poet, alas, that is something else.”
    “I used to feel that way about baseball players,” Reed said. “I know it sounds frivolous, but it was a great shock to me as a boy and even after that to discover what awful men some of my favorite players were. It took me a while to understand that one can love and admire the game, or the poetry, and not care for, in fact ignore, the players and the poets. It’s nice to discover that a great shortstop is a sweet guy, but it’s his elegant moves as a shortstop that one relishes.”
    “That’s right,” Kate said, but Reed could tell her mind was wandering back to her possible paternity. “Shall we eat in tonight?” Kate asked, getting to her feet. Reed nodded, and they both went into the kitchen, bringing their glasses. “I guess even Joe DiMaggio has turned out to be a quite unlovable guy with a good sense of marketing himself,” Kate said, still trying to stick to any other subject, baseball as it had turned out.
    “Well, he was a Yankee,” Reed said, keeping up his end, “so what could you expect? I was a Giants’ fan.”
    “Are you still?” Kate evidently was determined to spin out this discussion so kindly started by Reed; it could hardly last very long, of course, as Reed understood.
    “The Giants moved to the West Coast,” he said. He had never taken very seriously the possibility of interesting Kate in baseball, or any other spectator sport. But he was