is he really asking it? What will happen when she replies?
(He does something similar when he has to do math more complex than making change. Kelly used to joke about “tipping fugue,” when he’d stop responding for up to five minutes as he tried to calculate the appropriate amount to leave on a check. What he finds truly interesting about this phenomenon—what he wasn’t able to consider when it was just him, and Dodger was a phantom from his past who might never show her face again—is the fact that when she shuts down, he feels a faint tingling at the back of his mind, like he’s struggling to recall something he’s forgotten. It’s not quite déjà vu—call it jamais vu, the feeling of knowing something he knows he’s never seen before. Dodger worries more about the quantum entanglement than he does, in a quiet reversal of their childhood positions on the subject. He doesn’t want to scare her by bringing this up. Eventually, he’s going to have to.)
Finally, she cocks her head and asks, “What are you hoping to achieve?”
“I want to tell them about you. Maybe something in my adoption paperwork mentions a sister.” It would be easier than a blood test. It wouldn’t involve anyone new.
Dodger’s frown is slow but deep. “I really thought you were going to ask about, I don’t know, asking Erin on a date or something.”
“Uh, no. Dating Erin would be sort of like dating a blender. Sure, it makes great smoothies, but one day you’re going to be minding your own business and it’s going to switch on and remove your hand.”
Dodger raises an eyebrow. “Okay, one, your metaphors have gotten weirder, and two, you are not allowed to borrow horror movies from my collection anymore. Your girlfriends may be a vague, amorphous mass to me, but that doesn’t make them kitchen appliances.”
“You know what I mean, though,” says Roger. “It seemed sort of cliché to compare her to a wild animal, which would have been the easier choice.”
“Heaven forbid you do anything cliché, Mr. English-Professor-in-Training,” says Dodger. “You might find a single cliché is a gateway drug to tweed jackets and khaki slacks, and the next thing you know, you’re teaching Kerouac and making eyes at that cute undergrad in the front row who makes you think about fucking all of Middle America in one triumphant go.”
Roger blinks.
“How long have you been saving that one up?” he asks.
“About a week,” Dodger admits.
“Feel better?”
“Little bit.” She still grins like she did when she was nine years old, on the rare occasions when she’s relaxed enough to grin at all. Even when she smiles with her whole face, one side of her mouth is a little higher, making it obvious that her real smile is buried in the mix. Then the smile fades. “I don’t mind if you want to tell your parents about me. Just . . . be careful.”
“I will be,” he says. “I always am.”
“Not always,” she says.
Roger catches his breath and holds it, studying her. She doesn’t look upset. If anything, she looks . . . calm. Like she’s finally moving past their separation. He exhales.
“You’re a pretty cool sister, you know that?”
“I’d be a lot cooler if we’d grown up together.”
He pauses. “You rethinking that blood test?”
“Considering it,” she admits. “If we could prove we were related, I could take you to meet my parents. Maybe someday you could take me to meet yours. It would be a lot harder to split us up again, if our entire support structure was conjoined.”
Her father probably wouldn’t take well to having her show up with the boy from Boston; it’s been years, but Roger has absolute faith that Professor Cheswich would recognize his voice. How could he not? There are things that can’t be forgotten, and the voice of the boy who called to say your daughter was bleeding to death has got to be at the top of that list. On the other hand, if they had proof they were related . . .
“What if the blood test comes back and says we’re wrong?” he asks. “What then?”
“That seems less likely with every data point,” says Dodger. “We have the same eyes. We have a similar bone structure. Same birthdate—same birth hour. If you can find your birth certificate while you’re at home, see if you can’t get a birth state. Mine’s Ohio. That can all be falsified, but when you add it to the rest of the data,