“So, what does all this mean?” Aria said with irritation. It seemed that after all the effort she was going to be deprived of success. It wasn’t fair. “Does this mean the search is over?” The way everyone was working suggested otherwise, but how was she to know?
“No, not yet. We haven’t totally given up,” Vijay said. “What we are concentrating on now is the maternal side of the missing sperm donor’s family, or Hansel’s paternal grandmother, who would be the mother of the missing individual. If we can find her, and if she is cooperative, and if it was an adoption as we now suspect, and if it was an open adoption, we’ll have the father. Otherwise, all bets are off as adoption records here in New York State are sealed.”
“Would they be sealed in a situation of life or death like we’re facing?” Aria asked. She looked down at the family tree diagram she was holding, lamenting that all this work might be in vain.
“My understanding is that New York State has some of the most restrictive laws guarding confidentiality in adoption, even for medical reasons. Unsealing a record can happen if all parties agree, but it is a time-consuming process that would take months, if not a year. At the same time, if criminality is involved, I believe a district attorney can subpoena them, but that is the exception, not the rule.”
“Shit,” she said, feeling progressively depressed.
“Hallelujah!” someone cried out suddenly, causing Aria’s head to pop up. Simultaneously a round of applause broke out along with accompanying cheers from many of the people in the room. Aria could see the youthful, skinny boy with mild acne who had asked her the sole question the previous day pumping his hands in the air like a professional bicyclist having just won a race. He had apparently jumped up from the desk where he’d been sitting at his laptop. “I’ve come across another first cousin, but this time on the father’s maternal side,” he cried. “And it’s a good match, with over eight hundred centimorgans.”
From her reading, she knew that centimorgans were a complicated method of measuring distance on a chromosome. The more centimorgans involved, the better the match. Thanks to the applause and excitement, she was encouraged. “Are we back in business?” she asked.
“Let’s hope,” Vijay said. “This should give us the grandmother we are looking for. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Chapter 30
May 10th
4:50 P.M.
Hesitating at the curb for a moment, Aria looked up at the building she was about to enter. She knew enough about New York to know that the Fifth Avenue structure was considered a prewar building, meaning it had been built sometime in the early twentieth century. She knew such buildings contained coveted apartments but had no idea why as she had never been in one. The building itself was a nondescript fifteen- to twenty-story structure with a few penthouses perched wedding-cake-style on the top. It also had the de rigueur blue canvas awning ringed with lappets that stretched from the front door to the curb. Inside the door and peeking out through glass was a doorman in a blue uniform that was mildly worse for wear.
She was on her way to talk to a woman named Diane Hanna, whom Vijay and his team had successfully located with their genetic genealogical magic. An hour or so after the skinny geek had come through with a new match, one of the few woman techies stumbled across a brand-new results kit from AncestryDNA, the company with the largest database: a thirty-two-year-old unmarried woman named Patricia Hanna, who shared a whopping twenty-five percent of DNA with the Lazarus kit of the missing sperm donor. At that point Aria had learned from Vijay that this newly found woman had to be either an aunt or a half-sibling of the target individual because of the amount of DNA they shared. From the woman’s age alone, Vijay explained that Patricia had to be a half-sibling, which meant that her mother, named Diane Hanna née Carlson, was most likely the missing man’s mother. From Patricia they had learned that Diane was currently a vigorous, healthy sixty-five-year-old socialite married to a highly placed New York lawyer. At no time during Vijay’s phone conversation with Patricia, who considered herself to be an only child, was she told of the motive for the sudden interest in her mother.
The reason Aria was dawdling was that she still had no idea what she was going to say to Diane Hanna. If she was Lover Boy’s mother, which Vijay and his team were convinced of, Aria had multiple major problems. First off, if Diane was the mother it had most likely been a premarital teenage pregnancy that had been relegated to the distant past, meaning the chance of its having been an open adoption was minimal at best. Even though Aria wasn’t all that concerned about other people’s feelings, she couldn’t imagine Diane was going to be excited about an unpleasant and potentially socially jarring issue being suddenly dredged up and brought to the light of day. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the story she had concocted to get GenealogyDNA interested in pursuing the case certainly could not be used with Diane. The woman would instantly see the mythical leukemia toddler as a grandson, which would evoke an emotional connection and rapid exposure of the story as a hoax. Nor did she think she could tell the truth, namely that she believed the adopted son had played a role in the overdose death of a young woman, as that would certainly reflect badly.
“Can I help you?” the doorman said. After eyeing Aria for a few minutes, he had stepped outside.
“In a minute,” Aria said. She glanced away so she didn’t have to look at the man’s expectant face. She hated it when people, particularly men, intruded in her space. Gazing with unseeing eyes across the street into the newly leafed trees in Central Park, she went back to her musing about what she was going to say to Diane Hanna that might not turn her into a persona non grata and get her immediately kicked out of the apartment. She again wished that Vijay had been willing to talk to her, but he had absolutely refused. He said the role of GenealogyDNA was to supply what information customers wanted or needed, and then let them deal with it. He reminded Aria that adoption situations were fraught with emotional difficulties, as if Aria couldn’t guess.
Suddenly she had an idea. Maybe she could pull on Diane’s heartstrings. Aria could claim she was the result of Lover Boy’s sperm donation, meaning she and Diane were genetically related, and that Aria’s interest was to uncover her genetic past. A slight smile found its way to the corners of her mouth. It was by far the best idea she’d come up with and might work.
Armed with a new approach, she turned around and walked up to the doorman, who was now positioned just outside the front door. “I’m here to see Mrs. Diane Hanna,” she said.
“And your name?” the doorman asked.
Aria told the man her name, and his response was cordial. “Yes, she is expecting you. The apartment is 7A.”
Aria nodded and walked into the building’s foyer. One of the two elevators was waiting. As she rode up, she went over the basics of the story she was going to present. The more she thought about it, the better it seemed. In many respects, she was amazed she had already gotten as far as she had. Before she’d called Diane from GenealogyDNA using the number that Patricia had supplied, she questioned if Diane would see her at all, but that had been when she thought she’d have to tell the woman why she wanted to speak with her. As it turned out, it hadn’t been necessary. She had started the phone conversation by saying that she was a doctor at NYU Langone Medical Center and asked to speak with her person to person. Somehow that had been enough because Diane said she had time around five P.M. if Aria wanted to come over. Pleased, Aria had quickly accepted the invitation.