“Did he tell you about Serena?” Tricia was back to business.

“No, Serena came to see me about a month ago. She had done a mail-in DNA test. When her results came back, she got an additional email about being a 99.9 percent match with a Sweeney from Southport, Connecticut.”

“What idiot would do one of those tests and let everyone know your DNA information?”

“I’m the idiot,” Maggie said, raising her hand. “Don’t get mad at me. I had a panic about getting breast cancer like Mom and I wanted to know if I had any genetic predisposition.”

“Then go to a doctor, not a mail-in kit with a public option.”

Liza stepped in. “Okay, I don’t think that’s the point here. Let Cap tell us what we need to know.”

“I understand this is upsetting, but Liza is right. Some details don’t matter very much and some matter a great deal. First off, these DNA tests do hold up in court, so if you decided to contest Serena’s rights vis-à-vis the will, you could stand to lose your share of the real estate holdings entirely.”

Cap paused to let that sink in. A legal battle wouldn’t make this mess go away. Then, he continued. “Serena Tucker was born in May 1982. I was unaware of the relationship until last month when Ms. Tucker came to see me. You should know a few things about her. She is bright and thoughtful.

She’s single, no children, so there are no other relations to contend with.

She’s an experienced investigative journalist in Washington, DC. She was with the Post, then Slate, and now with the political site Straight Up. ”

“I’ve heard her on the Straight Up podcast. I listen to it all the time and she’s on it occasionally. She’s really smart,” Tricia said that like it was a bad thing. “But I’ve heard Straight Up is in financial trouble. Their funding is drying up. Oh, this isn’t good.”

Liza and Maggie didn’t even bother to ask how Tricia knew all about a startup political media company that they’d never heard of. Tricia absorbed information and retained names and knowledge with astonishing accuracy.

It was what made her a good lawyer but a terrible conversationalist. She had a hard time not being a know-it-all.

“Why is that bad?” Maggie asked, barely tracking.

“Serena needs money or a story to sell because she could be out of work any day,” Tricia announced like she was reporting the news.

Cap jumped in. “I would describe her as measured and reserved. She sat on the information for a good while and then had a conversation with her mother, who confirmed the relationship with your father. Then she came to me.”

“It’s creepy to think she was at the wake. That makes me uncomfortable,” Maggie said, thinking more about how she’d noticed Serena at the wake because she was a knockout in the severe preppy way that Maggie herself had never been able to pull off. Maggie was too curvy; Serena was thin as a rail with what Maggie liked to call “perfect European A cups.” She’d been envious of her at the wake, having no idea who she was. Now, knowing they were half-sisters, a childish jealousness was creeping into Maggie’s consciousness. “I don’t know who she thinks she is.”

“What did she want? What does she say she wants?” Tricia asked, convinced already that an ulterior motive was at work.

Cap continued, “I didn’t get the sense she wanted anything specific when we spoke other than to see your father if he was inclined to see her. She didn’t mention anything monetary or otherwise.”

“That’s bullshit. Sorry, Cap. But the timing is uncanny,” Tricia snapped.

“Did she meet with our father? He must have known all along she was his.

They were our neighbors for something like thirty-five years.”

Liza, who’d been quiet, said, “Maybe it was a one-night stand. For all we know, Dad didn’t even remember he’d ever slept with Birdie Tucker.” That was entirely possible. If the stories from the wake the other night were to be believed, the main ingredient for any Willow Lane gathering in the early days was booze, lots of it. Maybe Birdie Tucker happened one boozy night.

Cap proceeded cautiously, because this part of the story did not reflect well on his old friend. “After speaking with your father about Serena, I can tell you this: he recalled the relationship; he claims he did not know the child was his; and he did not want to see Serena. I had not informed her of that last fact yet. Frankly, I was stalling, hoping that your father would change his mind. I suggested this provision in his will as a way of acknowledging her after his death. He agreed. We moved on it quickly.

Then your father died and, like you, I was surprised to see her at the wake.

But not entirely. She was very curious about your father, her father. And about the three of you.”

The Sweeney sisters paused to consider all Cap had said. If their father was a “man of moments,” not grand plans, why wouldn’t he have wanted to see Serena? Wouldn’t he have wanted to see what had become of a moment in 1981? Liza asked the question they all were thinking. “Why didn’t he want to see her, Cap?”

Cap looked out at the three faces of the young women he cherished. “He said that seeing Serena Tucker as an adult, after having paid so little attention to her as a child, would remind him of all the ways he had failed in his life. He said talking to her now would break his heart.”

None of the Sweeney sisters had the instinct to go all “Dr. Phil” as Maggie called it, rushing to meet their long-lost sister in a tearful reunion. “That may be fine for some families, but not for us,” Liza said.

Tricia seconded, “I suggest we proceed with caution.”

Cap suggested a formal meeting with a lawyer present as a start. The sisters agreed and Cap said he’d set it up.

By the time Cap left, it was after five, or as Maggie said while pouring herself a glass of wine, “Rosé o’clock.” The sisters were drained, mentally and physically, from the last four days of grieving, planning, coping at an intense level. They’d already agreed about “next steps,” as Tricia kept saying, on “the Serena situation.” Tomorrow, they could figure out a game plan for finding the manuscript and getting the house on the market, but right now, they needed to absorb everything they had heard from Cap on their own time.

Tricia, normally the most rational of the sisters, was livid. Not even Cap’s measured responses could calm her down and once he departed, she got all riled up again. “I can’t believe this. I can’t fucking believe this,”

Tricia said for the tenth time since they’d learned about Serena. “I am so mad at Dad for dumping this on us. ‘Here, girls, here’s an incredibly complicated financial situation. And, oh! Did I mention my love child?

Yeah, she’s in for a quarter of the house, by the way.’”

“Don’t say love child. Please. Birdie Tucker is not the kind of woman who bears a love child,” Liza said. “The last time I saw her, she was berating the checker at Stop & Shop for the crème fra?che shortage. She’s awful. It makes me sick to think of her ever interacting with Mom.”

“Me, too. I can’t get past the mother to deal with the daughter. But we’re going to have to.” Tricia was pacing on the patio; she processed better when she moved.

“There’s nothing we can do. It happened a long time ago and we have to cope,” Maggie offered in her yoga teacher voice.

“Do we? It’s not our problem, really. This was between Dad and Birdie Tucker. I don’t really understand why we have to cope with the consequences. I have no desire for more relatives.”

“That’s harsh. We don’t even know this girl, really.”

“When Mom died, Birdie Tucker showed up at the front door the next day. I answered it because everyone else was asleep. And there she is in a warm-up suit standing there with a giant wheel of Brie and those thin crackers in the green tin.”

“Bremner wafers,” Liza said. “Nothing says WASP comfort food like Brie and Bremner wafers.”

“I know. She handed me this cheese and this tin and she tried to bulldoze her way into the house. She hadn’t done anything for us when Mom was sick, but now she that she was dead, Birdie needed to express her condolences. It was eight a.m. And why would she think Dad or any of us want Brie? I wouldn’t let her in. I was fifteen and she snapped at me, something about how impudent I was. She wasn’t sorry at all about Mom.

Now that I know what was happening behind the scenes, I’m wondering if she was thinking that she could finally tell Dad that Serena was his,” Tricia said. “It’s all so awful.”

“I’m with Tricia. How do I explain all this to the twins? Or to my in-laws? Or to everybody else in town? You all will leave in a few days, but I live here,” Liza said. “This is going to be a real scandal. And very awkward for my family.”

“But it’s not Serena who is at fault,” Maggie said.