Phần I
Snow had been falling on Lake Tahoe since noon, and by Christmas Eve dinner the Whitfield lodge looked like something out of a catalog — which, Nora suspected, was exactly how her mother had planned it.
Twelve-foot windows. A fire that someone, somewhere, was paid to maintain. A Douglas fir dressed entirely in silver and white, because Diane Whitfield had decided in 2009 that colored ornaments were "a little desperate."
Nora sat on the arm of the sofa with a glass of wine she hadn't touched, watching her family the way she watched patients in the ER: quietly, noticing everything.
Her father was by the fireplace, laughing too loudly at something Caleb said. Caleb was still in his suit jacket, phone face-down on the mantel but buzzing every few minutes. Her mother moved through the room like a hostess at her own party, adjusting a candle here, a napkin there.
And Lily — twenty-two, barefoot, glitter on her cheekbones — was standing on the coffee table.
"Lily," Diane said, without turning around. "Off."
"One second. I'm doing gifts."
"We do gifts in the morning."
"These are special gifts." Lily hopped down and dragged a shopping bag from under the tree. Inside were five identical white boxes with a blue double-helix logo. "Everybody gets one. We're going to find out if we're secretly descended from Vikings. Or royalty. Or, like, Kevin Costner."
Caleb picked up a box and frowned at it. "You bought us spit tests."
"I bought us heritage." Lily tossed one to Richard, who caught it against his chest. "Dad, you always say Grandpa was Irish. Let's prove it."
Richard laughed and turned the box over in his hands. "Fine. But if we're Swedish, I'm not changing anything."
Lily handed the next box to Nora with a flourish. "For my favorite sister."
"I'm your only sister."
"Still counts."
The last box went to Diane.
It happened so fast that afterward Nora wasn't sure she'd really seen it. Her mother reached for the box, and her wine glass — the heavy crystal one she'd carried around all evening — slipped from her other hand. It didn't shatter. It hit the rug, bounced once, and rolled under the coffee table, leaving a dark red trail across the white wool.
The room went quiet.
"Oh, for God's sake," Diane said, and laughed. It was a perfect laugh. "That rug is from Morocco."
"I'll get club soda," Caleb said.
"No, no, Maria will handle it in the morning." Diane set the DNA box on the side table without looking at it. "Lily, sweetheart, this is very thoughtful. But I don't think I need a company in Utah keeping my saliva on file."
"Mom, it's fun."
"Then you have fun." Diane smiled. "Who wants dessert?"
Lily rolled her eyes and dropped onto the sofa next to Nora. "She's so weird about privacy."
"She's weird about everything," Nora said.
But she kept looking at the stain on the rug, spreading slowly, the way blood does on gauze.