“Finally sinking in?” Aunt Sondra said.

He didn’t answer. He just kept his gaze fixed on Raven.

“Tell me where you prefer to have her sample taken. Do you know a lab that has a fast turnaround?”

“Yes.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her.

She gave him a card with her cell phone number and wrote the name of their hotel on the back. “Call me anytime.”

He nodded. He kept looking at Raven like she was a strange kind of animal.

She knew he wasn’t her father. She felt no connection whatsoever to him and his ugly city. So what if Raven looked like his ex-wife? Lots of people looked like other people; kids at school called that having a doppelg?nger. But Raven was still scared Sondra and Jonah would never let her go home. Everything Mama had warned her about was happening.

They returned to the limousine. Raven was afraid about the test, but all the woman did was rub a Q-tip inside her cheek.

“What should we do for the next few days while we wait?” her aunt asked. “We’re close to New York City. Would you like to go there?”

Raven remembered Reece saying he wanted to go there, but she hated everything she’d seen so far.

“We can do anything you want,” Aunt Sondra said.

“I want to go home,” she said. “I can’t miss this much school.”

“I’ve talked to your school. Everything will be fine.”

Raven went to bed at the hotel, though it was the middle of the day. She wouldn’t get up when her aunt tried to make her. Most of the day, her aunt talked on her phone, telling people at her company what to do. Sometimes she spoke in a quieter voice to someone, probably her husband or son.

The following day went the same, Raven in bed, her aunt on the phone. Raven couldn’t eat. Her aunt had all kinds of food delivered, but Raven never wanted to eat again. She wanted Mama not to be dead. She wanted to be in Jackie’s arms.

The next day, Aunt Sondra sat on her bed. “Raven, please look at me. I have news.”

Raven’s empty stomach squirmed. All those fears and doubts that had spun relentlessly in her mind for a week. Would they turn out to be real?

“Raven . . .”

Raven didn’t move. “I don’t want your news.”

“I know you don’t. Of course you don’t.” She put her palm on Raven’s back. “The test results are in. Jonah Bauhammer is your father.”

Muted city noise filled the room. Raven’s tears soaked the pillow fast.

“Please, let’s talk about this,” her aunt said.

“There’s nothing to talk about. He’s not my father.”

“Half your DNA comes from Jonah Bauhammer,” her aunt said. “And I know you understand about DNA. You told me about it when you were just seven years old.”

Raven hadn’t really understood about DNA until she was in middle school. That was when she’d once asked Mama if she had half raven DNA in her cells. The question had angered Mama. Raven was a miracle, Mama said, and who knew what differences lay inside her? That was why she had been kept away from doctors other than Dr. Pat. To probe the mystery of her being could be dangerous for her. For both of them.

Raven had asked no more about her DNA. She had only been curious about what might be unusual about her body—because she certainly knew she was different from other people—even Mama. She had felt the two sides of her spirit from the time she was a tiny child.

But now the test said Jonah was her father. She felt like the news was the cascading effect of a gale uprooting trees in the woods. One tree falls and knocks over a second tree, and that one pulls down another. If Jonah was her father, Mama must have stolen her from him and his wife. And that led to the worst blow of all: Mama had lied to her about everything. Everything.

It hurt too much to believe. She curled up tight and cried.

Aunt Sondra sighed, pressed her hand more firmly against Raven’s back. “I’m sorry, Raven. But we can’t deny the science of a DNA test.”

Raven wished she could just run away. From Aunt Sondra, from the hotel and city, from everything that had happened since the day Mama sat on her bed and said she’d been the best sixteen years of her life.

She didn’t want Mama to be a bad person. She wanted to be Mama’s miracle. She wanted to be the child of a powerful earth spirit.

She felt eviscerated of all spirit, both raven and human. She couldn’t even cry anymore. She lay still beneath the blankets, wishing her body to depart with her spirit.

A few hours later, her aunt returned to her room. “You have to get up,” she said. “A detective needs to talk to you. We’re meeting your father there. Afterward, he wants you to have dinner at his house with the rest of the family.”

“Don’t call him my father,” Raven said into her pillow.

“Okay, we’ll call him Jonah. Please get up, Raven.”

“No.”

“You can get through this. You’re strong. You’ve excelled at school, made friends, and grown into a fine young woman—despite everything . . .”

Raven sat up. “Despite what?”

Her aunt looked sad and tired. “I know what it’s like to live with her. The episodes. Speaking to spirits. Her disappearances into the woods. It had to be frightening for you.”