Elizabeth carefully set the heavy silver tray onto the sideboard. The dining room remained completely still, the clinking of silverware and rustle of napkins fading into a tense, suffocating silence.
She reached beneath her unused chair and pulled out the matte black box. It sat heavy in her hands.
“What is that, Elizabeth?” her father asked, his voice low, a hairline fracture appearing in his usually unflappable demeanor. “Put that away. We are hosting guests.”
“You’ve spent thirty-one years letting Victoria and Jonathan treat me like an unwanted stray, Dad,” Elizabeth said, her voice terrifyingly calm—the exact tone she used when managing a code blue in the intensive care unit. “You let them whisper. You let the neighbors wonder. You sat there just now and smiled while Victoria handed me a DNA test to prove I don’t belong.”
Victoria sneered, folding her arms. “Oh, please, Lizzy. Don’t play the victim now. If you’re so confident, take the test.”
“I don’t need a saliva kit from a box, Victoria,” Elizabeth replied, unclamping the dual brass latches of the black box with two sharp, metallic clicks. “Because Grandma Eleanor left me the original documents.”
She pulled out the top document—a certified, notarized copy of a paternity exclusion test performed in 1993, bearing the seal of the State of Connecticut.
“I took a DNA test three years ago, Victoria,” Elizabeth continued, placing the paper directly beside her sister’s wine glass. “And it turns out, I am one hundred percent Douglas Reed’s biological daughter.”
Jonathan laughed again, though it sounded forced this time. “Then what’s the big dramatic mystery, Lizzy? You’re Dad’s kid. Great. Pass the pie.”
“The mystery,” Elizabeth said, looking straight into her brother’s eyes, “is which of us isn’t.”
To see the truth about Jonathan and Victoria’s parentage, continue reading below for Part 3.
