Chapter 8 - I Ordered the One Test Mom Feared
I contacted Emma's cardiology team and disclosed the family history.
Then I scheduled my own evaluation.
For years I'd experienced occasional episodes I called anxiety.
A flutter after too much coffee.
Lightheadedness after hard exercise.
Once, I nearly blacked out at work.
I had never mentioned it to anyone.
Now I did.
It was humiliating to admit how easily I'd accepted my mother's version of our family history.
The testing wouldn't produce answers overnight.
But requesting it changed something immediately.
Mom learned what I'd done through Rebecca.
She drove to my house that evening.
I didn't let her inside.
“Cancel the genetic testing.”
“No.”
“Daniel, listen to me.”
“No.”
Her composure cracked.
“You don't understand what knowing does to a family.”
I stared at her.
“You mean what hiding it does.”
She stepped back.
Then she said something I wasn't prepared for.
“The insurance money wasn't for Emma.”
I said nothing.
“The seventy-five thousand was about you.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did you do?”
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time since the porch, my mother looked less like someone protecting a scheme than someone watching an old lie finally reach her son.
May you like
“Ask Wallace about your father.”
Then she left.
