Blood Match

Miriam’s brownstone smelled like coffee and wet wool. The kitchen table was covered with papers, a laptop, and a plastic evidence bag Miriam had laid out like she was setting a place for dinner.

Elena stood by the sink with her hands flat on the counter. Damian kept to the doorway, jacket still on, jaw set so hard it made a line in his cheek.

Miriam slid the lab report across the table. “Maternal match. Elena is the mother.”

Elena read the page twice anyway. Her fingers pressed at her throat.

Damian looked at the second sheet. “And me?”

Miriam didn’t soften it. “Excluded.”

The room went quiet except for the refrigerator humming.

Elena’s chair scraped when she sat. “So she’s mine.”

Damian’s hand curled once against the doorframe, then relaxed. He looked toward the hall where Sofia was playing with blocks under a blanket. “She’s yours by blood,” he said. “That doesn’t change what’s happened here.”

“No,” Elena said. “It doesn’t.”

Miriam took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “We need the rest of the file. And we need Luciana.”

At the name, Elena’s shoulders rose. “My mother knows.”

“Enough to help us find what she’s hiding,” Miriam said.

Damian’s phone buzzed. He checked the screen, then held it out. A text from Marco: motel off the Belt Parkway. Room 18. Her car’s there.

Elena grabbed her coat. “Then we go now.”

Damian stepped aside so she could pass, but he didn’t move from the hall until Sofia ran in barefoot and wrapped both arms around his leg.

“Daddy,” she said, small and sure.

Elena stopped.

Damian looked down at the child like the floor had shifted under him. He didn’t answer right away. Then he put one hand on Sofia’s back, careful as glass.

“Go get your shoes,” Miriam told Elena, already reaching for the car keys. “And no one goes alone.”

Outside, rain tapped the brownstone steps. Elena’s phone lit up before they reached the car. Unknown number. One photo.

Her apartment door hanging open.

On her pillow, the baby blanket folded square, with two words written across it in red lipstick:

WELCOME HOME.