Chapter 20 (My Story)

IT TOOK ME most of the week to get the story of my dad’s family in Italy written. I scanned the pages from my journal and sent them to Megan and gave the book to Brenda to read. They were both pretty stunned by the revelation. I talked to Megan Friday night.

“Okay. So, if it’s all true,” Megan postulated, “then our DNA should be shared by people from different parts of the world. I’ll expand the search a bit.”

“That’s making a huge assumption that it’s true,” I said.

“No. It’s suggesting a theory to test. Nothing more.”

“You seem really committed to the idea, though.”

“Nat, I wasn’t sure if I should share this with you yet,” Megan said. “But it’s been weighing on my mind for two days and I have to tell you. Please don’t jump to any big conclusions. But this could be life changing.”

“Megan! What could be so dangerous? Is it something in our DNA?”

“Yes. You’re sitting down, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. You’ve got me really worried.”

“We found a couple of variants that are currently of unknown significance. The qRNA seems to be carried in gene MBD4. It’s unknown and not tracked through other tests. It’s found in all our immediate family—you and me, your children, and both Mom and Dad. This is the first I’ve been able to track where the qRNA resides, so gene MBD4 is entering known space. It seems obvious, however, that it’s hereditary. That gene is not in Brenda’s genome.”

“Meaning the rest of us are all related,” I laughed. “Doesn’t sound so serious to me. Probably right up there with blue eyes and brown hair.”

“It could be that insignificant, or it could be the gene that fights cancer or something. You know both Dad’s parents died of cancer. Dad said he was diagnosed with terminal cancer but was miraculously healed. He said his doctor called it faith healing. The story you wrote suggests it was related to his time travel.”

“It would be nice to find a cancer-resistant gene.”

“Here’s a surprise for you, though, that will make you think twice about the story you just wrote. It’s not hard to trace our maternal DNA back to Central Europe generations ago. That’s done through the mitochondrial DNA. Both male and female can inherit that DNA, but only females pass it on. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“But there’s been paternity testing and such like that for years. So, there must be a way to trace paternal DNA, too,” I said.

“Of course. That’s done through Y chromosome DNA and can reveal exact relationships two or three generations previously. That’s where the mysteries begin to appear for us.”

“How so?”

“We can tell how closely family members are related. You and I share a genetic makeup that clearly points to our mother and father. The same is true of Luke and Lisa, pointing back to you and Brenda as parents and Mom and Dad as grandparents.”

“Okay. I’d expect that, right?” I asked.

“Yes. What you wouldn’t expect is for Brenda’s DNA to point to Dad as her grandfather.”

“What?” I practically shouted into the phone.

“I think we have or had a half-sibling, Nat. And you are married to her daughter.”

“Oh, fuck!”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the implications of that. I’d found no mention of offspring from Dad’s first marriage. I needed to get up to Grand Rapids and investigate the school records up there.

It was disturbing news. I sat at my desk with my journal open, making notes about what it implied regarding Dad’s life before Mom. Megan implied that I’d married my niece. She was the daughter of an obviously much older half-sibling I didn’t know I had. Of course, Meg had quickly shuffled around with the evidence not being an absolute guarantee. In fact, if our father had an identical twin, she might only be a first cousin once removed.

I don’t think that was as comforting as she intended it to be. It just increased the anomalies in our family. I had a father who wouldn’t talk about anything in his life before he met Mom but insisted on having had a life as a time traveler, even though I’d found records of his birth, his high school graduation, and his career as a minister. I wondered if the whole time traveler thing was related to his trying to cope with the radical changes in his life when he got divorced, cancer, and defrocked—if that was what happened.

‘Records’ was a loaded term. I’d found a birth announcement in a back issue of the Battle Creek Enquirer. I’d found a picture of Dad in a high school yearbook. I’d found his name in my grandfather’s obituary. None of those had made any mention of a twin brother. I was going to need to do a lot more investigating, and I hated the idea of investigating my wife.

She was sixteen when I found her on the streets of East Lansing and took her home to Mom and Dad. I was nearing graduation from college and had a job lined up in Grand Rapids with a privately owned medical devices company that needed a technical writer. I’d taken a technical writing course at the university, so I figured, somehow, that qualified me for the job.