He kept staring at his wife as if he were waiting for her to laugh and tell him the clinic had mixed up the samples.
Monica finally shook her head.
“The test has to be wrong.”
Jeremy’s voice stayed low.
“Is there any reason it might not be?”
That question changed her face.
Skye saw it, too.
“Mom.”
Monica looked at Bruce, then Gloria, then finally at Jeremy.
“There was someone else,” she said.
Jeremy stopped breathing for a second.
“When?”
“Around the time I got pregnant.”
Skye pushed back from the table.
“What are you saying?”
Monica rushed to explain.
It had happened once.
It was years ago.
She genuinely believed Jeremy was Skye’s father.
Jeremy asked who the man was.
Monica started crying and said this wasn’t the place.
“You’re right,” Jeremy said.
He stood up and walked out.
Sky called after him, then turned on her mother.
“Who is my biological father?”
Gloria immediately said they should repeat the test before anyone made decisions.
Sky snapped.
“Stop talking about the test.”
I reached under the table and took Gemma’s hand.
She held on tightly.
The accusation that had started with my daughter had landed somewhere nobody expected.
But the worst part wasn’t the report.
It was watching Sky realize that the adults in the room suddenly knew something about her life that she was only beginning to understand.
After Jeremy left, the room got uglier.
Sky was crying now, angry enough to swing between people with every sentence.
She turned toward Spencer.
“Why did you have to make everybody do this? The test was supposed to be about Gemma.”
Spencer took the hit without getting defensive.
“None of what you just found out is your fault.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I made everyone test because I wasn’t going to let Gemma be the only person forced to prove she belonged.”
Gloria pulled Sky toward her.
“Sweetheart, nothing has changed between us. You are my granddaughter. You will always be my granddaughter.”
Gemma’s fingers tightened around mine.
She heard it.
So did I.
Sky buried her face against Gloria’s shoulder, but Gemma looked directly at her grandmother.
Gloria noticed and immediately seemed to understand the contradiction.
“This is different,” she said.
Gemma didn’t even ask what she meant.
Spencer did.
“How?”
Gloria stammered that Sky had been raised in the family, that Russell had known her, that biology wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
Spencer nodded slowly.
“Interesting.”
Bruce told him not to start.
“I’m not starting anything,” Spencer said. “I’m listening.”
A few weeks earlier, biology had been important enough to humiliate Gemma and threaten her inheritance.
Now, with Sky in Gloria’s arms, biology suddenly had limits.
Gemma said nothing.
She didn’t have to.
Gloria’s double standard was speaking for itself.
A little over a week later, Jeremy came to our house alone.
He looked like he hadn’t slept properly since the results.
Spencer made coffee while Jeremy sat at our kitchen table and stared at his hands.