Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 30



On the morning following the break-in, I took a few more notebooks out of the closet and found the Bruce piece. I read it over my peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich breakfast.

For real, Gretchen? I thought as I came across the mail-stealing part. It seemed out of character for her, but technically, it fit: She had to have gotten her other DNA samples somehow or other. Had this mail theft led to that 99.9 percent result eventually? If so, what were the results in between Keith’s negative and that final positive from Bruce’s mail? Failed samples? Did she test all three stolen envelopes?

Bruce sounded a little strange—just strange enough to be Gretchen’s biological father. His oddly forward, slightly creepy way of holding a conversation kind of reminded me of some of Gretchen’s more bizarre social habits. Perhaps the physical resemblance wasn’t quite there (Gretchen was tall, yes. But dark? Not by any stretch. She often looked like she had an iron deficiency.) It hadn’t been there for Keith either, apparently. Gretchen, everyone thought, was all Shelly in her looks.

I decided I’d like to get a glance at this Bruce myself sometime.

On my way out for work, I made sure all of our doors and windows were locked. Our deck door in the back was likely how our intruder had gotten in, we’d determined. After we’d called the police, Sam had discovered several of our back windows—looking out onto our deck—unlocked. We didn’t know how long they’d been that way. Probably for weeks. It made me worry about our mutual carelessness. Maybe this was how we were going to be as parents—accidently leaving stairs ungated, outlets unplugged, Quentin Tarantino movies playing on the TV in an empty living room.