Робин Кук - Genesis

“That’s unfortunate,” she said. She remembered from her reading that the term’s genealogical meaning referred specifically to situations where there was an apparent break in a family tree that couldn’t be solved by following the paper trail of birth certificates and marriage licenses. Donor conception, as she was claiming with her leukemia scam, was one issue that could create such a brick wall. So was adoption, misattributed parentage, or even hospital baby switches that caused a sudden change in the genetic family tree defined by DNA inheritance.

“Yes, it is unfortunate,” Vijay said. “And it is discouraging. Using a lot of tricks and taking advantage of the huge ancestral DNA database that now exists, we’ve traced down the appropriate Thompson family tree to where we should have found our target, but frustratingly enough, we haven’t. An hour or so ago we even found what we believe to be half-siblings of Hansel’s father using the Lazarus kit we developed for the missing sperm donor. And one of the half-siblings, named Robert Thompson, even created a very complete family tree, all the way back to Clarence Thompson, that he was willing to share with us. That gave us Hansel’s paternal grandfather and several half-aunts and half-uncles. That should have been more than enough, but we are still empty-handed. Unfortunately, the paternal grandfather, Eric Thompson, wasn’t helpful like his son. When we tried to explain the situation to him, he told us we had to be mistaken and that he only had the three kids, two girls and Robert, all of whom we already had on the Thompson family tree. He also denied ever being a sperm donor. Of course, that flies in the face of what genetic genealogy is trying to tell us, meaning in all likelihood a son of Eric Thompson had to have been the sperm donor for Hansel’s creation. When there’s this kind of problem, it’s really frustrating. What we are beginning to believe is there was an adoption involved.”

“So, what does all this mean?” Aria said with irritation. It seemed that after all the effort she was going to be deprived of success. It wasn’t fair. “Does this mean the search is over?” The way everyone was working suggested otherwise, but how was she to know?

“No, not yet. We haven’t totally given up,” Vijay said. “What we are concentrating on now is the maternal side of the missing sperm donor’s family, or Hansel’s paternal grandmother, who would be the mother of the missing individual. If we can find her, and if she is cooperative, and if it was an adoption as we now suspect, and if it was an open adoption, we’ll have the father. Otherwise, all bets are off as adoption records here in New York State are sealed.”

“Would they be sealed in a situation of life or death like we’re facing?” Aria asked. She looked down at the family tree diagram she was holding, lamenting that all this work might be in vain.

“My understanding is that New York State has some of the most restrictive laws guarding confidentiality in adoption, even for medical reasons. Unsealing a record can happen if all parties agree, but it is a time-consuming process that would take months, if not a year. At the same time, if criminality is involved, I believe a district attorney can subpoena them, but that is the exception, not the rule.”

“Shit,” she said, feeling progressively depressed.

“Hallelujah!” someone cried out suddenly, causing Aria’s head to pop up. Simultaneously a round of applause broke out along with accompanying cheers from many of the people in the room. Aria could see the youthful, skinny boy with mild acne who had asked her the sole question the previous day pumping his hands in the air like a professional bicyclist having just won a race. He had apparently jumped up from the desk where he’d been sitting at his laptop. “I’ve come across another first cousin, but this time on the father’s maternal side,” he cried. “And it’s a good match, with over eight hundred centimorgans.”

From her reading, she knew that centimorgans were a complicated method of measuring distance on a chromosome. The more centimorgans involved, the better the match. Thanks to the applause and excitement, she was encouraged. “Are we back in business?” she asked.

“Let’s hope,” Vijay said. “This should give us the grandmother we are looking for. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

May 10th

4:50 P.M.

Hesitating at the curb for a moment, Aria looked up at the building she was about to enter. She knew enough about New York to know that the Fifth Avenue structure was considered a prewar building, meaning it had been built sometime in the early twentieth century. She knew such buildings contained coveted apartments but had no idea why as she had never been in one. The building itself was a nondescript fifteen- to twenty-story structure with a few penthouses perched wedding-cake-style on the top. It also had the de rigueur blue canvas awning ringed with lappets that stretched from the front door to the curb. Inside the door and peeking out through glass was a doorman in a blue uniform that was mildly worse for wear.

She was on her way to talk to a woman named Diane Hanna, whom Vijay and his team had successfully located with their genetic genealogical magic. An hour or so after the skinny geek had come through with a new match, one of the few woman techies stumbled across a brand-new results kit from AncestryDNA, the company with the largest database: a thirty-two-year-old unmarried woman named Patricia Hanna, who shared a whopping twenty-five percent of DNA with the Lazarus kit of the missing sperm donor. At that point Aria had learned from Vijay that this newly found woman had to be either an aunt or a half-sibling of the target individual because of the amount of DNA they shared. From the woman’s age alone, Vijay explained that Patricia had to be a half-sibling, which meant that her mother, named Diane Hanna née Carlson, was most likely the missing man’s mother. From Patricia they had learned that Diane was currently a vigorous, healthy sixty-five-year-old socialite married to a highly placed New York lawyer. At no time during Vijay’s phone conversation with Patricia, who considered herself to be an only child, was she told of the motive for the sudden interest in her mother.

The reason Aria was dawdling was that she still had no idea what she was going to say to Diane Hanna. If she was Lover Boy’s mother, which Vijay and his team were convinced of, Aria had multiple major problems. First off, if Diane was the mother it had most likely been a premarital teenage pregnancy that had been relegated to the distant past, meaning the chance of its having been an open adoption was minimal at best. Even though Aria wasn’t all that concerned about other people’s feelings, she couldn’t imagine Diane was going to be excited about an unpleasant and potentially socially jarring issue being suddenly dredged up and brought to the light of day. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the story she had concocted to get GenealogyDNA interested in pursuing the case certainly could not be used with Diane. The woman would instantly see the mythical leukemia toddler as a grandson, which would evoke an emotional connection and rapid exposure of the story as a hoax. Nor did she think she could tell the truth, namely that she believed the adopted son had played a role in the overdose death of a young woman, as that would certainly reflect badly.

“Can I help you?” the doorman said. After eyeing Aria for a few minutes, he had stepped outside.

“In a minute,” Aria said. She glanced away so she didn’t have to look at the man’s expectant face. She hated it when people, particularly men, intruded in her space. Gazing with unseeing eyes across the street into the newly leafed trees in Central Park, she went back to her musing about what she was going to say to Diane Hanna that might not turn her into a persona non grata and get her immediately kicked out of the apartment. She again wished that Vijay had been willing to talk to her, but he had absolutely refused. He said the role of GenealogyDNA was to supply what information customers wanted or needed, and then let them deal with it. He reminded Aria that adoption situations were fraught with emotional difficulties, as if Aria couldn’t guess.