Free The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan

official letter to inform you that your genetics pointed to an ancestry of centenarians who died in their sleep.
    â€œLee.” Valerie wheeled around and looked at her daughter, seeming so small and vulnerable in the state-issued office chair.
    Instantly, Lee read her mother’s face. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.
    â€œIt’s not too late to forget about the whole shebang and go home.”
    Gripping the vinyl armrests, Lee admitted, “I’m a little scared, too.”
    That’s all Valerie needed to hear. Crouching low before her daughter, she placed both hands on Lee’s knees. Softly, shesaid, “We can leave, you know. Abby will understand. We can march straight for the elevator right this second. You needn’t ever be more than Lee Parker. My daughter. That has always been—and will always be—enough.”
    Lee looked into her mother’s light green eyes and saw the love she knew would forever be there. She wanted to whisper, Let’s go . Together, they would thank Abby and she would nod knowingly. They would pass the slow elevators and run for the stairs again—set free—handbags flapping in their wake. Outside, in the broiling downtown parking lot, they would tilt their heads up to the setting sun and clamp one hand on their pounding chests and say, “Whew. We dodged a bullet.” On the way home, Valerie would type “ice cream” into Lee’s iPhone and say, “Left at the light. Right two blocks ahead.” All the lights would be green. Inside Baskin-Robbins, Lee would inhale the smell of frost and order a double scoop of Pralines ’n Cream. “Don’t miss that mother lode of caramel,” she’d say, joking but serious. As they slid into pink seats attached to a pink table, they would reach their free hands across the sticky surface to grasp each other in solidarity. It wouldn’t matter that Lee’s fingers were long and thin and her mother’s were Jimmy Dean sausage links.
    Still.
    â€œIf I don’t find out now,” Lee said, her voice quivering, “I will always wonder. I don’t want to always wonder.”
    â€œEverything okay?” Abby suddenly materialized at the entrance to her cubicle with a single folder in her hands. Lee was shocked to see how thin it was. As if nothing were in it at all. Her heart began to push its way out of her chest.
    â€œHoney?” Valerie said to her daughter, still squatting.
    â€œI’m fine.” Lee sat up straight. “I’m ready.”
    â€œYou’re sure?” her mother asked.
    Lee nodded. Not sure she could trust her voice.
    As soon as Valerie got up and out of the way, Abby entered the cubicle and sat down. She set the closed file aside. “We’re in no rush here,” she said. “The information we have for you is yours forever.”
    â€œI want to know,” Lee blurted. “Now. Whatever it is.”
    â€œSome adoptees wait until they’re ready to have children,” Abby went on. “Others don’t feel the need to know medical history at all. You’re young, Lee. You have plenty of time to find out about yourself. What’s the hurry?”
    How could she answer in front of her mother, the woman who didn’t give her life, but who gave her a life? How could she admit that her need to know who she was had been a shadow standing next to her always?
    â€œI’m ready,” she said with a period, silently thinking, Right now . Not in another eighteen years or eighteen seconds. Yesterday was her birthday, but that sunny afternoon in Abby’s cubicle was the moment of her birth .
    â€œWhat do you have to tell me?” she said.
    Abby nodded. “Okay.”
    For the next several minutes, Abby explained the process. She counseled Lee and her mother on what they might hear, what it might mean. “Genetic predisposition is not fate. It’s an elevated risk due to