Catherine stood near the window, hands clasped, and did not hover.
"Results in five business days," Dr. Adler said, sealing and labeling the sample in Nora's full view. "Expedited, at Mrs. Marlowe's request. I will call you both."
Nora stood. At the door she turned back.
"Five days," Nora said. "Do not come to the restaurant before then."
"I will not," Catherine said.
"And if you are wrong," Nora said, "you owe me an apology and the best tip of my life."
Catherine almost smiled. "Done."
In the elevator, Nora caught herself touching her left wrist and dropped her hand, staring at the floor numbers instead.
Chapter 6: Ninety-Nine Point Nine Nine
The phone rang mid-shift, which almost never happened, and when Nora saw the lab's number on the screen she went still behind the bar with a tray of glassware balanced in one hand.
"This is Nora."
"Miss Fields, this is Dr. Adler." The doctor's voice was calm and practiced. "I have your results. May I speak freely?"
"Yes." Nora set the tray down and stepped into the alley behind Maison Lumière. "Go ahead."
"The probability that Catherine Marlowe is your biological mother is ninety-nine point nine nine percent."
Nora stared at the brick wall, the dumpster, the fire escape, while the number rearranged itself inside her head. It sounded like a door closing.
"Are you still there?" Dr. Adler asked.
"Yeah. I am here."
"The chain of custody was clean. I will send the full report to both parties. There is no ambiguity in the result."
"Right. No ambiguity."
"Would you like me to call Mrs. Marlowe, or would you prefer to tell her yourself?"
"Tell her what? That she found me? She did not find me. I was right here the whole time."
She ended the call and stood with her back against the brick, thumb pressed over the little heart-shaped birthmark on her inner wrist.
Twenty-three years. Somebody had looked at her as a baby, a whole tiny person, and decided she was nothing to anyone.
She hung up her apron, told the manager she was taking the rest of the night off, and walked the six blocks to the Marlowe penthouse without quite deciding to do it.
Catherine opened the door herself, and whatever she saw in Nora's face made her go pale.
"Nora. What is it?"
"It is ninety-nine point nine nine." Nora's voice shook on the numbers. "Congratulations. You were right."
Catherine's hand went to the chain of the locket she never took off. She did not smile, and Nora hated that it mattered to her.
"Come in," Catherine said quietly.
"No. I came to ask you one question, then I am leaving. Where were you for twenty-three years?"
Catherine's voice, when it came, was stripped of everything smooth. "I was told you died."
"That is not an answer. That is a sentence you memorized."
"I was told you died," Catherine said again, raw at the edges. "There was a fire at the hospital the night you were born. They told me my daughter did not survive it. I carried that locket for twenty-three years because it was all I had left of you. So do not ask me where I was. I was in mourning."
Nora had prepared for excuses and money and smooth rich-people grief. She had not prepared for the shaking hands, or the crack running through her own chest.
"Somebody lied to you," Nora said. "Or you are lying to me."
"Then help me find out which," Catherine said. "Susan Park has the hospital records request moving. Hospitals make mistakes, papers get forged, people get paid. If someone took you from me, Nora, I want their name. Will you dig with me?"
Nora stared at her. The hallway smelled of lilies and money. Everything in her wanted to walk out and never see this woman again.
"Five business days," Nora said. "That is all it took to turn my whole life into somebody else's tragedy."
"I know."
"I am not calling you Mom. Not now. Maybe not ever."
"I would not ask you to," Catherine said. "I am asking you to be my partner in this. That is all."
Nora looked at the locket chain at Catherine's throat.
"Fine. Partners. But the first time you lie to me, I walk. And I will not come back."
"You have my word," Catherine said, and Nora believed her, which frightened her more than anything else that night.
Theodore came home late and stopped in the study doorway when he saw Catherine waiting with the lab report on the desk between them like a weapon.
"What is that?" he asked.
"The DNA result. Ninety-nine point nine nine percent. Nora Fields is my daughter."
The silence that followed was his boardroom silence, the one that made junior partners forget their names. Catherine sat inside it without flinching.