the Third Twin (1996)

She went down to her floor and stepped into the lab. Lisa was at the bench, checking the concentration of Steven’s and Dennis’s DNA that she had in the test tubes. She had mixed two microliters of each sample with two milliliters of fluorescent dye. The dye glowed in contact with DNA, and the quantity of DNA was shown by how much it glowed, measured by a DNA fluorometer, with a dial giving the result in nanograms of DNA per microliter of sample.

“How are you?” Jeannie asked.

“I’m fine.”

Jeannie looked hard at Lisa’s face. She was still in denial, that was obvious. Her expression was impassive as she concentrated on her work, but the strain showed underneath. “Did you talk to your mother yet?” Lisa’s parents lived in Pittsburgh.

“I don’t want to worry her.”

“It’s what she’s there for. Call her.”

“Maybe tonight.”

Jeannie told the story of the New York Times reporter while Lisa worked. She mixed the DNA samples with an enzyme called a restriction endonuclease. These enzymes destroyed foreign DNA that might get into the body. They did so by cutting the long molecule of DNA into thousands of shorter fragments. What made them so useful to genetic engineers was that an endonuclease always cut the DNA at the same specific point. So the fragments from two blood samples could be compared. If they matched, the blood came from the same individual or from identical twins. If the fragments were different, they must come from different individuals.

It was like cutting an inch of tape from a cassette of an opera. Take a fragment cut five minutes from the start of two different tapes: if the music on both pieces of tape is a duet that goes “Se a caso madama,” they both come from The Marriage of Figaro. To guard against the possibility that two completely different operas might have the same sequence of notes at just that point, it was necessary to compare several fragments, not just one.

The process of fragmentation took several hours and could not be hurried: if the DNA was not completely fragmented, the test would not work.

Lisa was shocked by the story Jeannie told, but she was not quite as sympathetic as Jeannie expected. Perhaps that was because she had suffered a devastating trauma just three days earlier, and Jeannie’s crisis seemed minor by comparison. “If you have to drop your project,” Lisa said, “what would you study instead?”

“I’ve no idea,” Jeannie replied. “I can’t imagine dropping this.” Lisa simply did not empathize with the yearning to understand that drove a scientist, Jeannie realized. To Lisa, a technician, one research project was much the same as another.

Jeannie returned to her office and called the Bella Vista Sunset Home. With all that was going on in her own life she had been lax about talking to her mother. “May I speak to Mrs. Ferrami, please,” she said.

The reply was abrupt. “They’re having lunch.”

Jeannie hesitated. “Okay. Would you please tell her that her daughter Jeannie called, and I’ll try again later.”

“Yeah.”

Jeannie had the feeling that the woman was not writing this down. “That’s J-e-a-n-n-i-e,” she said. “Her daughter.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

Jeannie hung up. She had to get her mother out of there. She still had not done anything about getting weekend teaching work.

She checked her watch: it was just after noon. She picked up her mouse and looked at her screen, but it seemed pointless to work when her project might be canceled. Feeling angry and helpless, she decided to quit for the day.

She turned off her computer, locked her office, and left the building. She still had her red Mercedes. She got in and stroked the steering wheel with a pleasant sense of familiarity.

She tried to cheer herself up. She had a father; that was a rare privilege. Maybe she should spend time with him, enjoy the novelty. They could drive down to the harbor front and walk around together. She could buy him a new sport coat in Brooks Brothers. She did not have the money, but she would charge it. What the hell, life was short.

Feeling better, she drove home and parked outside her house. “Daddy, I’m home,” she called as she went up the stairs. When she entered the living room she sensed something wrong. After a moment she noticed the TV had been moved. Maybe he had taken it into the bedroom to watch. She looked in the next room; he was not there. She returned to the living room. “Oh, no,” she said. Her VCR was gone, too. “Daddy, you didn’t!” Her stereo had disappeared and the computer was gone from her desk. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t believe it!” She ran back to her bedroom and opened her jewelry box. The one-carat diamond nose stud Will Temple had given her had gone.

The phone rang and she picked it up automatically.

“It’s Steve Logan,” the voice said. “How are you?”

“This is the most terrible day of my life,” she said, and she began to cry.

24

STEVE LOGAN HUNG UP THE PHONE.