Chapter 5 - Confronting Loretta
Loretta and Beckett arrived at 11:50 AM, their vehicle pulling into our gravel drive with timid caution.
Beckett got out first—tall, lanky, wearing the perpetual smirk of a younger brother who thought he possessed an elevated sense of humor. But as he saw Elias standing on the front porch, arms crossed over his chest, Beckett’s smirk flickered and died.
Loretta walked up the steps clutching her handbag like a shield against her stomach. Her hair was neatly permed, her lipstick immaculate, but her eyes darted nervously between her son and me.
“Come inside,” Elias said without offering a hug or a greeting.
They filed into the living room. Ren was in her playpen, stacking large wooden blocks, completely oblivious to the adult tension suffocating the room. She looked up, let out a cheerful babble, and waved a chubby hand.
Loretta instinctively reached out toward her. “Oh, my sweet girl—”
“Don’t touch her,” Elias said.
Loretta pulled her hand back as if she had brushed a hot stove. “Elias! I am her grandmother!”
“Are you?” Elias asked, stepping between his mother and the playpen. “Because for the last ten months, you’ve called me once a week asking if I was ‘certain’ she was mine. You’ve sat in church listening to gossip from Marlo’s friends, and instead of defending your daughter-in-law, you called my brother to talk about noses and chins.”
Beckett cleared his throat, shifting his weight. “Hey, man, don’t blame Mom. We were just looking out for you. Look at the kid, Elias. Neither of you has red hair. It’s an unusual thing, that’s all. We just didn't want you getting played for a fool.”
“Shut up, Beckett,” Elias snapped, turning on his brother with such sudden ferocity that Beckett visibly recoiled against the wall. “You don't care about me. You cared about having an entertaining piece of scandal to whisper about over beers.”
I stepped forward, carrying a vintage photo album bound in weathered green leather. I placed it squarely on the coffee table in front of Loretta.
“Open it,” I said.
Loretta hesitated, then lowered herself to the sofa, opening the yellowed pages.
Inside were photographs from the late 1960s. Black-and-white portraits mixed with early color prints of a young girl with porcelain skin, wide hazel eyes, and a tumble of thick, undeniably copper-red curls cascading over her pinafore dress.
Loretta stared at the print. Her throat bobbed.
“That’s my grandmother, Evelyn,” I said. “Carried the MC1R gene variant. Passed it down through two generations until it met another carrier.”
I reached over and turned three pages forward, revealing a photograph I had asked Elias’s estranged aunt to scan and send me that very morning.
It was a faded Polaroid from 1974. A four-year-old girl standing in front of an old station wagon, laughing into the sun, her hair catching the light like a brand of fire.
Loretta stared at the Polaroid. Her fingers trembled against the edge of the paper.
“That’s you, Loretta,” I said quietly. “Before you spent forty years dyeing your hair chestnut brown to hide it. That’s your childhood coloring. Ren doesn’t just have my grandmother’s hair. She has yours.”
Loretta looked up at me, her eyes wide with shock and sudden, suffocating embarrassment. “I... my hair turned brown by the time I was eight. I had forgotten how bright it was.”
“You forgot,” Elias said, his voice laced with bitter disappointment. “You forgot your own genetics, but you remembered to listen to a sociopathic narcissist who wanted to tear my marriage apart.”
Loretta looked down at her hands, tears welling in her eyes. “Elias... I never meant... Marlo was so convincing. She sounded so sure. She told everyone there were hotel receipts—”
“There were no receipts,” I said coldly. “I spent my third trimester in the high-risk perinatal unit and on our sofa because my cervix was incompetent. I was hooked up to monitors three days a week. Elias drove me to every single appointment. There was no affair, Loretta. There was only a sister who couldn't bear to see anyone else happy while her own life was a series of bitter divorces.”
Elias reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, sealed plastic pouch containing a chain-of-custody collection kit from an accredited regional laboratory.
“We’re leaving right now to submit the swabs,” Elias announced to them both. “We are paying three hundred dollars for the expedited twenty-four-hour panel. When the document arrives, I will email it to every member of our church, every member of our family, and everyone who has commented on Marlo’s posts.”
He walked to the front door and pulled it wide open.
“And after that, you two are going to take a very long time to think about whether you have any place in our lives.”
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Beckett didn't say a word. He looked at the floor, his face burning crimson, and walked out. Loretta lingered, her eyes pleading with her son, but Elias didn't even look at her. He held the door until she scurried down the porch steps, weeping into a handkerchief.
***
