And here’s the part that won’t let me sleep at night. The Huntington’s. It came down from Ray. It can land on me, and it can land on Sarah, and either way it can reach those babies.

Emma. And the new little one Sarah’s pregnant. Due in the fall. Nobody’s tested anybody, because nobody but me even knows there’s a reason to.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m seventy-two years old, sitting on a secret that could turn my whole family inside out, and I haven’t said one word of it to my son. How do you walk into your boy’s house and tell him his wife is his aunt? That the woman he loves is my sister, and that the baby coming might be carrying the same thing that killed the father none of us ever got to meet. I’ve picked up the phone to call Kevin maybe forty times. I always put it back down.

Last Sunday they came for dinner like always. Emma climbed up in my lap and pressed her little hand flat against mine to see whose was bigger, like she does. Same wide knuckles. Same crooked little finger. Sarah’s, and mine, and Ray’s, all sitting there at one table. Everybody laughing about the casserole. And me, holding my granddaughter’s hand against my own, knowing the one thing that ties us all together is the one thing I can’t bring myself to say.

I keep telling myself I’ll find the words by the time the baby comes. I really don’t think I will.

Sarah caught me looking at our hands and she smiled at me across the table. “We’ve got the same weird pinky, Mom,” she said, wiggling hers at me. “Maybe we really are related.” She laughed when she said it.

Just a sweet little joke she’s made a hundred times. I had to get up and pretend I needed something from the fridge so she wouldn’t see my face.

Kevin came in behind me, put his hand on my back. “You okay, Ma? You’ve been quiet all night.” I said I was just tired. “You sure?” he asked. I told him I was sure. That’s twice now I’ve lied straight to my own boy’s face in his own kitchen.

Before they left, Sarah hugged me in the doorway like she always does and patted my belly’s worth of years and said, “Love you, Mom.” Emma waved her little crooked-fingered hand at me from the car window.

I stood on the porch and waved back at all three of them. Four, really. The one coming in the fall.

I’ve got the genetic counselor’s number written on the pad by the phone. Been there three weeks now. Sarah’s name is right under it, where I scribbled it the day Linda told me, before I knew. I look at those two names sitting one on top of the other every single morning.

I’ll call. I keep saying I’ll call.