“I don’t think it worked. Maybe I didn’t give a good enough sample to work with, or I didn’t get a good enough one from my mother.”
“Why do you say that?” Cassie focused on the diagrams.
“I asked them to compare my DNA and that of my mother and father. I show a direct match with my father.” She pointed to her father’s graph, then moved her finger to the one labeled Linda Greenway Matson. “There’s so little similarity between my mother’s sample and mine that the test came back as no relation.”
“Like you said, the sample might not have been good enough for them to run the comparison,” Cassie said.
“But if they were able to identify the percentages of different origins, shouldn’t they have been able to run a valid comparison?”
“These tests aren’t foolproof.”
Abby pushed to her feet. “They use DNA to convict rapists. I’d hope they’re at least 99.9 percent correct.” Her voice rose with her words. “What does it mean? If we aren’t a match at all, I’m not her daughter. She’s not my mother.”
“Adoption?” Cassie suggested.
“I’ve seen copies of my birth certificate. It clearly states that Linda Matson was my mother.” She paced the short distance across the little office, turned and paced back. “Why would they lie to me?”
Cassie hated seeing the happy, optimistic Abby so disturbed, but she couldn’t fix this. “That’s a question for your father.”
Abby came to a stop in front of Cassie. “I think that’s what worries me the most. What if he lies to me again? What if he’s angry that I used his and my mother’s DNA for the comparison? He didn’t want me to do it.” She shook her head. “This could explain why.”
“No matter what, your father is your father. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Ask him for the truth.”
Abby lifted the comparison chart and stared down at it. “I need to think about how to approach him. God, I hate this.”
Cassie rose from her chair and wrapped her arms around Abby. “If you need me to come with you, I will.”
She shook her head. “No, I have to confront him by myself. I don’t want to put him on the spot in front of others.”
“I’m here if you need me. Call, and I’ll drop everything and come.” She smoothed Abby’s hair down her back. “I’m sure your father has a perfectly logical explanation.”
Abby hugged Cassie. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without someone I can trust to talk to. I don’t even have a mother I can go to.” She stepped back. “We never had much of a connection. And she’s been losing touch with reality for the past year. She wakes up screaming and telling me about her nightmares as if they were real.”
“It must be terrifying to wake up every day and not know where you are or who the people around you are.” Cassy pasted a soft smile on her face. “Things will work out, one way or another. Just know you have friends who are like family.”
Abby nodded. “I’m not alone.”
“Not at all. If you need a place to stay, you’re always welcome at the ranch. You can stay as long as you like.”
“Good to know,” Abby said. “That’s a distinct possibility if my father blows a gasket.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I’d better go. I have to work the night shift at the Blue Moose.”
“And I need to close up.” Cassie walked with Abby to the door and let her out. As she locked the door behind the younger woman, the desk phone rang.
Cassie hurried over to answer. “Eagle Rock Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Douglas speaking.”
“Oh, good. Just the person I needed to talk to. This is Preston Todd with the Montana State Crime Lab. We’ve completed our examination of the female you found entombed behind a wall. I’ll send the full report via email, but we thought you might want the digest version sooner.”
“Yes!” Cassie said, her heart racing. She sat at the desk and pulled out a pad and pen. “Tell me what you know.”
“We estimate she was between twenty-six and thirty years old with blond hair. She died approximately twenty years ago.”
“Cause of death?” Cassie asked.
“Fractured skull.”
Cassie’s heart constricted for the poor woman. “Blunt-force trauma?”
“We don’t think so. It looked more like she’d had a fall where she hit her head on a sharp corner and suffered a brain bleed.”