For more than a year, my sister had been telling everyone in our family that my baby girl probably wasn’t my husband’s.

The fluorescent lights of the county health clinic hummed with a sterile, indifferent buzz.

It was 8:30 AM on Monday morning. Outside, rain tapped relentlessly against the reinforced glass windows, gray and relentless. Ren sat on my lap, her little fingers tangled in the drawstring of my hoodie, her bright copper hair glowing against the drab gray plastic of the waiting room chairs.

Beside me sat Elias. He hadn't slept a wink. The dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises, but his spine was straight, his shoulders back.

Across from us, sitting with her hands clasped tightly around a faux-leather handbag, was Loretta.

Elias had dragged her here. Literally. He had gone to her home at midnight, confronted her and Beckett in their living room, and told them that if Loretta ever wanted to see her granddaughter again, she would be present at the certified paternity swab at eight in the morning. He wanted no claims of tampered kits, no accusations of online mail-in fraud. He wanted an official, state-certified, legal chain-of-custody test conducted by a licensed phlebotomist.

Loretta looked miserable. Her face was puffy from crying, and she wouldn't meet my eyes.

“Elias,” Loretta whispered, her voice cracking in the quiet waiting room. “You didn't have to bring me here. I told you last night… I was wrong. I let Brenda and Marlo get in my head…”

“You didn't just let them get in your head, Mom,” Elias replied, not even turning his head to look at her. His voice was completely devoid of warmth. “You entertained it. When Marlo brought that landscaper costume at Halloween, you didn't tell her to get out. You called me the next morning and asked if I remembered the lawn guy’s name. You helped poison our home for a year. So you’re going to sit right there, and you’re going to watch the technician seal the vials with your own eyes.”

“Chloe,” Loretta ventured, turning toward me, her hands trembling. “Please… I love Ren. You know I love her.”

“Do you?” I asked, looking at her with a calm, freezing detachment. “Because when Marlo was calling my daughter a bastard in a group chat with twenty of our relatives, you didn't say a word. You stayed quiet because a small, petty part of you wanted it to be true. You never thought I was good enough for Elias. You always thought he settled for me. And Marlo gave you the exact ammunition you were praying for.”

Loretta opened her mouth to protest, but the door opened, and a woman in blue scrubs stepped out with a clipboard.

“Vance family?” the technician called.

Elias stood up immediately, taking Ren gently from my arms. “Let’s go.”

The examination room was cold and smelled of rubbing alcohol. Ren whimpered slightly as the technician, a middle-aged woman named Nurse Davis, explained the chain-of-custody protocol.

“This is a legally binding paternity test,” Nurse Davis explained, adjusting her glasses. “Both parents provide government identification. Fingerprints and photographs will be taken of both the child and the alleged father. The swabs will be sealed in tamper-evident envelopes in your presence and logged into the state database. Results typically take forty-eight hours for expedited legal cases.”

“Good,” Elias said. “Expedite it. I don't care what it costs.”

I watched as Elias sat in the chair, holding Ren securely. Nurse Davis swabbed the inside of Elias’s cheek with four long cotton applicators, dropping them into a sterile paper sleeve. Then, she turned to Ren.

Ren let out a high-pitched cry of protest as the cotton swab rubbed the inside of her tiny cheek. Elias held her close, whispering softly into her ear, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I know, baby. I know. Daddy’s got you. It’s almost over. Daddy’s right here.”

Every word he spoke, every gentle caress of his hand on her back, pierced straight through the remaining walls around my heart. He was suffering, too. He had been an idiot; he had allowed doubt to fester like a rot; but the anguish on his face was real.

Once the swabs were sealed, Nurse Davis signed the legal chain-of-custody form and passed the clipboard to Elias, then to me. Finally, Elias took the clipboard, turned around, and shoved it directly in front of Loretta, who was standing awkwardly near the door.

“Sign it as the legal witness, Mom,” Elias commanded. “Sign your name right there. Witness the seals.”

Loretta’s hand shook so violently the pen nearly slipped from her grasp, but she scribbled her signature at the bottom.

When we walked out of the clinic into the gray morning rain, Loretta tried to reach for Ren’s hand. Elias instinctively pivoted his body, shielding our daughter from his mother’s touch.

“Elias, please,” Loretta begged, the rain plastering her styled hair to her forehead. “Can I come over? Can we talk about this?”

“No,” Elias said. “You’re going to go home. And you are going to call your sister Brenda. You are going to tell her that if she doesn't delete her comment on Marlo’s Facebook post within the next thirty minutes, I will personally file a civil suit for defamation against her as well. Do you understand me?”

Loretta nodded frantically, sobbing. “Yes. Yes, I’ll call her right now.”

She hurried to her car, her shoulders hunched against the rain.

Elias watched her drive away, then turned to me. He unlocked the passenger door of our SUV, helping me secure Ren into her rear-facing car seat. Ren was already calm again, chewing on the ear of her toy, completely unaware of the war being waged in her name.

“Now,” Elias said, shutting the rear door and looking at me. “Where is this lawyer?”

“His name is Arthur Vance,” I said, checking my phone. “No relation to your family, ironically. He’s the top elder law and probate litigation attorney in the county. His office is downtown. Mom and Aunt Clara are meeting us there at ten.”