Page 204 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

Everything in me stills. “You have the result.”

“Yes.”

I close my eyes for a second. “Go on.”

He doesn’t drag it out. “The result excludes Chandler as the biological father.”

I knew it was possible. That doesn’t make hearing it any easier.

“When?” I ask.

“Maggie came in before I reviewed the file,” Acharya says. “We saw it together.”

I drag a hand over my face. “Christ.”

Acharya is quiet for a beat, then says, with the detached curiosity of a man who genuinely likes difficult medicine, “From a clinical standpoint, it’s a remarkable case.”

I let out one short, humorless laugh. “You could not have picked a worse audience for that.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“No.”

He isn’t.

I hate that too.

I start pacing, because sitting still suddenly feels impossible. “Does Chandler know?”

“Yes,” he says. “Maggie insisted on telling him the results herself. I’m not sure if she did, so I had the results forwarded to him anyway.”

I grip the phone harder. “She went to see him alone?”

“Yes,” he says. “I haven’t heard from either of them.”

Acharya must hear something in my breathing because his voice sharpens slightly. “Dalton.” I stop pacing. “What exactly is going on?”

I tell him enough.

Not everything. Not any detail that turns Maggie into a story for someone else. But enough.

When I’m done, Acharya is quiet for a second.

Then he says, “That’s worse than I thought.”

“Yes.”

“And what does Chandler say about the result?”

“Nothing at all, apparently.”

Maggie not texting me, I can explain. Maggie avoiding me, I deserve. Chandler keeping his own counsel is practically his religion.

But Maggie going alone and then disappearing into silence with him⁠—

No.

I look at my phone on the counter. She hasn’t texted. I haven’t texted.