He didn’t bring up the test again, but I could feel that it was all he was thinking about. The whole house felt like the uneasy calm before a storm. He made the appointment at a private lab himself and told me the process would be quick and painless.
On the day of the test, the three of us drove there in strained silence. I held Ethan’s hand the whole way, trying to make the trip sound like some harmless errand. I chatted about the nice nurse and the little swab they’d use, while Adam drove with a face like stone.
The lab itself was sterile, impersonal, and all business, which only made me more anxious. A nurse with a practiced smile quickly took the cheek swabs. Ethan got scared by the long cotton swab and started crying, and I pulled him close and comforted him.
Adam didn’t move. He just stood there staring at a poster of a DNA helix with his jaw clenched. A chill ran down my back. In that moment, it didn’t feel like he was doubting anymore. It felt like he had already decided I was guilty and was just waiting for the paperwork.
The nurse told us the results would be ready in ten business days and placed the samples in a secure container. Those ten days dragged by so slowly they felt unreal. At home, Adam shut down again, replacing his recent warmth with pointed distance.
He moved to the couch in the living room, saying he wasn’t sleeping well and didn’t want to keep me awake. But I knew the real reason: he didn’t want to be near me. He flinched away from my touch and carried himself like there was an invisible electric fence around him.
I tried to go on with normal life, but the strain was exhausting. Every time the phone rang, I jumped. I stopped seeing friends because I was too ashamed to explain that my husband wanted a paternity test.
I felt dirty and falsely accused, and by the tenth day I was barely holding it together. When Adam’s phone rang, I was in the kitchen and watched him step out onto the balcony. Through the glass, I could see him listening in silence and nodding with a blank face.
When he came back in, he said only that the results were ready and he’d pick them up after work. The rest of that day I moved through the house on autopilot. Part of me was already imagining the look on his face when he saw he’d been wrong. Another part of me felt a sticky, irrational dread I couldn’t shake.
My mind kept throwing up awful possibilities—some lab mix-up, some new disaster I hadn’t even imagined yet. He came home late that evening, and the sound of his key in the lock made my heart stop for a beat. He walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and placed that same white envelope in front of him.
Adam didn’t open it right away. He just stared at it as if it might explode. The expression on his face was so tragic it would have been laughable if I hadn’t been so scared. Finally, unable to take the suspense, I told him to open it and end this miserable circus once and for all…
