The Ones We Choose

by Julie Clark

  By the end of today, I can put to rest the fear that’s been chasing me since Aaron’s revelation, and I can go back to supporting my friend as she worries about her husband and son. But if it’s a match . . . I squash that thought before I can finish it and run cool water over my hands. From beyond the closed door I hear Jackie tell the boys to get in the car and Aaron rummaging around in the kitchen, asking Jackie where their membership card is. I stare at myself in the mirror. There’s no turning back.

  —

  The lab is deserted when I arrive, which is typical for a sunny Saturday morning. I swipe my card key and flip on the lights, letting the cool antiseptic smell calm my nerves. Just another subject, just another sample, I tell myself, snapping on gloves and removing the bloody paper towel from the bag. I break open a set of sterilized scissors from its bag and set to work snipping the towel into tiny pieces I can dissolve and test. My pulse slows, my breathing evens, and I let procedure take over. I swab the plastic spoon Miles used to eat yogurt in the car this morning, and soon both samples are vibrating in a bead beater, suspending the DNA in liquid. Then comes the centrifuge, and all that’s left is pure DNA.

  When I’ve got enough from each sample, I set up plates for comparison. I move through the motions, keeping my mind on the surface. I think about next steps, about how many plates I’ll need, not wanting to dive down into outcomes. I glance back at the paper towel pieces—plenty left to test for the Huntington’s gene if I want to. If I have to. I pull up short, momentarily frozen by the weight of what I’m doing, my integrity as a scientist pushing up against my protective instinct as a mother. This is illegal. If anyone were to discover what I’ve done—even off the clock—it could compromise our study much more significantly than any Scott Sullivan visit authorizations I made. I would lose my job. I’d be unhirable.

  And yet, I can’t seem to care about anything other than answers. I push on. Of course, the mother in me has won.

  —

  I glance at the clock on the wall, relieved to see that two hours have finally passed. I pipette the DNA into a gel for comparison and set up a dozen slides, before positioning the first one under a microscope. Please don’t be a match Please don’t be a match Please don’t be a match. I imagine the DNA lined up next to each other with no matching lanes, the zigzag of genetic strangers, and I can almost feel the weight of fear lifting. I breathe out slowly, centering myself, and count to ten before leaning forward to the microscope.

  The match jumps out at me immediately. Right at the top, two bands lined up together so exact there can be no other interpretation.

  “Oh my god,” I whisper.

  With shaking hands, I secure the next slide, praying for a mismatch. But with each passing slide, the answer pulses through me. Paternity. Paternity. Paternity.

  I roll backward on my stool, dizzy.

  Aaron is Miles’s donor.

  I pull off my gloves and press my fingers against my temples. Images of Miles running around and laughing with Nick and smiling up at Aaron—every cell inside of him responding to this man in a way I’ve never seen before—play in my mind.

  What now?

  The answer looms large in front of me: get a definitive answer about Huntington’s. Most labs that test for the gene have premade tests, but I know I could design one in less than an hour and get the results in two. I’ve already violated Aaron’s privacy once today without consent. What’s one more test?

  A thump down the hall jolts my attention toward the door. Bruno’s distinctive whistling launches me off the stool and into action. I swipe everything—the slides, pipettes, vials, the plastic spoon, and the remains of the bloody paper towel—into the biohazard container at the end of the lab. I flick off the machines, shove the stool back to the workstation, and leap toward Jenna’s desk in the corner, where I flip open a binder with Scott Sullivan’s name on the spine, just as the door beeps and Bruno enters, pocketing his key card.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks, pulling up short. He’s wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt with Bob Marley’s face on it.

  “Miles is at a party, and I thought I’d get caught up on paperwork.” I focus on pushing air in and out of my lungs and tuck my hair behind my ear with a trembling hand. I glance toward the biohazard bin, my chance to test for Huntington’s now lost. I’m relieved, my sanity returning one breath at a time.

  Bruno glances at the logs behind me. “Looking at Scott’s log, I see.”

  I shrug. “Just chasing after ghosts.”

  Bruno perches on the edge of Jenna’s desk. “I know. I did the same thing last week. There isn’t anything out of the ordinary, except that he’s the only subject whose spouse has died.”

  I try to appear thoughtful, as if I’ve spent all morning thinking about Scott. Bruno starts to say something, but I cut him off by closing the file and saying, “I’d better head out. I need to pick up Miles. See you Monday.”

  Bruno looks startled by my abrupt departure, but I’m already out the door, a frozen mask of fear etched across my face.

  —

  When I reach Pacific Coast Highway, I turn right instead of left, toward Jackie’s. I need to drive out some of the adrenaline of nearly being caught before I’m able to face Jackie and Aaron. I pick up my phone and dial Rose.

  “It’s a match,” I say as soon as she picks up.

  “What? Where are you?” I put her on speaker, and her voice fills the car. “What’s a match?”

  “Miles and Aaron. I ran a DNA test this afternoon.” I slam on the brakes at a red light, barely registering the traffic around me.

  “Back up. How did you run a test?”

  I explain as quickly as I can, glossing over the questionable ethics, but Rose knows better. “Is that legal?”

  “No.” I let the word hang there, challenging her to argue with me about it now.

  “Shit,” she says. “So now what?”

  I pull into a deserted beach parking lot and sit, watching a seagull forage in a trash can. My eyes travel down the coast, toward Santa Monica and the Turner House, where Miles unknowingly plays with his father and half brother. “What am I going to do?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” Rose says. “You’re going to do nothing. You’re going to pick up Miles, say Thank you for taking him, and you’re going to drive away. And then you’re going to put some distance between you and them.”

  “I can’t do that to Miles,” I say. “It’ll kill him.”

  “They’re brothers,” Rose says, her voice low and urgent. “Eventually someone’s going to see it and put it together. And then what will you do?”

  “I didn’t have time to test for Huntington’s,” I tell her, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I need to convince Aaron to get tested. Now, more than ever.”

  “Why not just test Miles?”

  I shudder. “Bruno almost caught me,” I tell her. “I can’t risk it again.”

  “Not even for this?”

  “I’d lose my job, Rose. No university would ever hire me. I couldn’t even teach.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. “I know you want Miles to have his friend, but you need to look at the bigger picture. What happens if Jackie finds out? What do you think that will do to her?”

  “You’ve seen the boys together,” I tell her. “This is what he’s been craving. And somehow—miraculously—I found it. There’s no way I’m going to take that away from him now, despite the risk.” I feel heartless for saying it, but it’s the truth. Miles is different because of Nick and Aaron. He deserves to have what I never did.

  “The longer you allow this to continue, the more likely it is they’ll find out, and you’ll lose them anyway.”

  “I won’t do it,” I say. The seagull is pecking at an empty McDonald’s bag, ferreting out stale french fries one at a time.

  “Paige,” Rose says, her voice gentle. “Too many people will get hurt. Including Miles.

  I pinch my eyes closed. When I open them again, the seagull is gone, and all th
at’s left is a bunch of trash strewn across the ground.

  —

  When I arrive at Jackie’s, she’s back on the front porch. I make my way toward her slowly, counting my steps, trying to appear calm.

  “How was it?” I ask, sitting on the chair next to her and tucking my hands under my thighs, hoping they won’t betray my nerves.

  “Wonderful. Perfect weather, great food. Aaron kept the kids busy the entire time, so I was actually able to sit and read a book. I wish you could have come.”

  I offer a wobbly smile. In another universe, under different circumstances, that would have been nice.

  Just then, Miles rounds the corner of the house. “Mom! We won! Our bottle flew the highest, and we won first prize!”

  I try to muster enthusiasm. “Wow! How exciting. What did you win?” My words taste bland; my mouth feels full of sawdust.

  “Free ice cream!”

  He zooms past me into the house, and Nick follows. Aaron sits on the step, brushing sand off his feet with an old beach towel. “It was amazing,” he says, and to Jackie, “I’ll put everything away and pull out a pizza for dinner.”

  “Thanks, babe,” Jackie says, and he tosses the towel aside and heads for the car.

  We sit in silence, the sound of the boys’ voices lingering in the air around us. The truth swells inside of me, pushing against my skin until it’s so tight I feel I might split apart. I sneak a glance at Jackie, her bare feet propped up on a low table, obliviously flipping through her phone, and it hits me. I will never again sit next to her with the ease I once felt. It won’t matter whether Jackie knows or not. I will see it, every time I look at her, every time she calls, every time we chat in the yard. And it will grow. The longer I say nothing, the larger this secret will loom. But if I do what Rose suggests, I won’t even have this. The thought of losing Jackie is agonizing.

  From inside the house, Nick calls, “Mom, can you help me find the Mario Kart disk?”

  “It should be on the shelf with all the other video games,” she yells through the doorway.

  “It’s not there!”

  “Excuse me,” she says. She slips through the front door just as Aaron rounds the corner and joins me on the porch. He sits on the step, resting his arms across his knees, his large hands dangling between them.

  “How are things?” I ask, hoping maybe he’s finally found clarity.

  “They’ve been better,” he says. “But I’m surviving.”

  I glance behind me, to make sure Jackie isn’t near. “Jackie says you still don’t want to get tested.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  Impatience blooms inside of me. “Those families have a right to know,” I say, keeping my voice quiet. “If you refuse to get answers for yourself, you at least owe them the information they need to make their own decisions.”

  “I appreciate your advice, but it’s a lot more complicated than you can imagine.”

  His complete dismissal of my child and countless other children—including Nick—causes me to abandon any sympathy I had left for the position he’s in.

  “Your selfishness will have devastating results.”

  “No offense, Paige, but mind your own business. This doesn’t affect you.”

  “It does,” I say, my voice dangerously low. “It affects Miles too.”

  Confusion flits across his face, and he opens his mouth to speak. But I interrupt him.

  “If you had the decency to notify ACB, in a few days a letter would land in my mailbox, telling me that the donor I used to conceive my son has discovered he’s a potential carrier for Huntington’s.”

  Aaron’s eyes widen with every word I utter and dart between me and the door where Jackie could appear at any moment.

  “Jackie never told you I used a donor?” I ask.

  “You have to be mistaken.” His face pales, but his eyes darken. He looks toward the open door and then back at me.

  “I wish I was. I only realized it might be possible when you said you used ACB. I didn’t want to believe it, but now I think I have to.”

  “So you don’t know anything. Not for sure.”

  The image of the matching DNA bands burns behind my eyes, linking me to this man forever. “Take a closer look at Miles and Nick together, and you’ll see it too,” I say. “I have the donor profile and baby picture if you don’t believe me.”

  “That’s hardly proof,” he says. He leans his head back against the porch rail and pinches his eyes closed, as if he could squeeze the truth away by simply not looking at it. “How do I know you’re not some crazy stalker?”

  I lean closer, fighting to keep my voice quiet. “Why would I want you to be our donor?” I hiss. “What do I stand to get out of it? Believe me. I wish it were anyone but you.”

  I glance at the door again. We don’t have a lot of time before Jackie returns and interrupts us. “Regardless of whether you believe me, these are real people, Aaron. Real families who have a right to know if their children are at risk. I understand why you don’t want to know for yourself. But you have an obligation to the children you helped conceive. Growing up, getting married, having kids of their own. How could you let that happen without disclosing what you know?” I stand and walk toward the front door, just as Jackie returns.

  “I found it under his bed,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Along with an empty bowl I’m pretty sure had ice cream in it once.”

  I smile, but it feels stiff and forced. “Miles, we need to go!” I call. To Jackie I say, “Thanks for taking him today. Sounds like he had a great time.”

  “See you at Nan’s next weekend?” she asks.

  I groan. Nan’s hosting a silent auction fund-raiser and dinner. Everyone is strongly encouraged to attend.

  The look on my face makes Jackie laugh. She pulls me into a hug as Miles comes down the hall. “Buck up. Safety in numbers.” I sink into her for a moment, savoring the weight of another mother with worries as big as my own, wondering how much longer I’ll have her in my life.

  Over her shoulder, I watch Aaron’s eyes track Miles all the way to the car.

  YOUR APPOINTMENT WITH A GENETIC COUNSELOR: WHAT TO EXPECT

  * * *

  Genetic counselors often work in hospital settings, in coordination with medical doctors, and consult with patients about a variety of issues such as:

  • Prenatal diseases/conditions

  • Genetic mutations such as the BRCA gene

  • A relative who has been diagnosed with a genetic condition or disease

  Meetings with genetic counselors are always in-person, where a patient can:

  • Discuss test results (including possible further testing)

  • Review treatment options

  • Learn how to discuss test results with family members

  • Learn about disease prevention/management

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I stand in the doorway to Miles’s room on Wednesday evening. “Get your shoes on,” I say. “And a coat. We’re going on an adventure.”

  Miles looks up from the book he’s reading, confused. “At eight o’clock at night?”

  “Car’s leaving in five minutes,” I say, and push off the doorframe, in search of my car keys. I feel like the entire world has shifted sideways, and my thoughts are dominated by worry—about Miles, about Aaron, and about the secret I so carelessly dropped the other day. I need a distraction. Not work, where I’m consumed with worry over Sophie and whether Scott will qualify for phase two. I need Miles. I need to lose myself in my son.

  “Where are you taking me?” he asks from the back seat. The evening traffic has died down, and the streets are empty as we drive out of the city and toward Malibu. “Are we going to Annesley?” he asks.

  “Sort of.” I don’t tell him any more. It’s the perfect night—cold air and a clear sky. The farther away from town we get, the darker it becomes. My car winds up the road, past the main entrance to Annesley, and I see Miles’s
eyes track it. “Just a little farther,” I tell him.

  We turn onto a service road above campus—more of a fire trail than a road. It’s tucked between two hilltops, and the lights of Santa Monica are blocked. It’s dark, so when I pull over and park, I leave the interior car light on so I can see and pull a large box out of the trunk.

  “I borrowed this from Mark Swinger in the astronomy department,” I tell him. “It’s an automated telescope. We can program coordinates into it and look at anything we want.”

  “No way,” Miles says, bouncing on his feet.

  When I have it set up, I say, “So what do you want to look at first?”

  “Mars,” he says without hesitation.

  I look at the list Mark gave me and punch some numbers into the small black box. The telescope begins to move. When it stops, I take a quick peek, and Mars glows through the lens, a giant rust-colored ball. Incredible. I step aside and let Miles look.

  “Wow,” he breathes. His small shoulders are hunched over the telescope, absolutely still. Crickets chirp in the dark hills that surround us, but other than that, the night is silent. I feel as if we’ve stepped out of time, just the two of us, and I wish we could stay here, cocooned between these hills, where the drama of Aaron or the pain of my father, Scott, and Liam are a distant smudge on the horizon.

  Miles glances at me and smiles. “This is so cool.” He returns to the viewfinder. “Did you know that on Mars, you can jump three times higher than you can on Earth? That’s because there’s less gravity there.”

  These are the moments I dreamed of when I decided to have a child—just the two of us, discovering something together. I take a deep breath, and the cold night air fills me, sharp and refreshing. My mind tries to problem-solve—what will I do next, how can I make this right with Jackie and Aaron—and I take another breath and hold it, suspending everything for just a few seconds. As I let it out, I imagine I’m blowing my fear out too. The pain that’s been a constant companion since Liam and I broke up, pain I didn’t want to acknowledge until now. There’s no one here to pretend for. Just me and Miles. The way I’d always intended it to be.