I bought the DNA kit to trace my grandfather's village. Two matches came back. One of them carried a surname I had only ever heard in my own jealous nightmares.

She held up the test like a winning lottery ticket. I should have been thrilled. Instead I sat very still, counting backward through a calendar that didn't add up.

I knew one strange fact about the man I suspected. So I sent my spit to a lab and let the math decide whether I was paranoid or right.

I gave my little sister a DNA kit as a gag gift. The results unstitched thirty years of our family in a single afternoon.

I surfaced from sleep to a rhythm I didn't recognize in my own bedroom. When I opened my eyes, the woman I loved was already mid-betrayal.

I mailed off a plastic tube for a school science project. Six weeks later the results page held a stranger who shared half my blood and lived ten minutes away.