“She taught you some good skills,” Doug said, “but they’re not enough in today’s world. These are the people the state thought fit to raise you? It’s cruel to withhold education from a child.”
Naomi didn’t know what to say. “From the outside, they look like the perfect, loving family—eight kids of their own, a preacher and his stay-at-home wife, a beautiful farm. I don’t think anyone looked beyond that.”
Winona put lunch on the table—egg salad sandwiches and apple slices—and they ate, Grandpa Belcourt making a spirit plate. Over the meal, they agreed that Naomi and Doug should get the paternity test. It was the only way to answer the biggest question: Was Doug Naomi’s father?
After lunch, they climbed into Doug’s SUV and drove down to Denver to a lab that did DNA tests, including legal paternity tests. The whole thing felt surreal to Naomi, like she was in a movie or living someone else’s life. She’d left South Dakota ten days ago wanting to relax, and now she was hobbling along on crutches with her lover on one side and a guy who might be her father on the other.
Chaska held the door for Naomi, staying close to her, as he’d promised he’d do.
Doug asked a lot of questions of the people at the front desk. “Are the results admissible in court? Can they be used as a basis for tribal enrollment?”
“He’s an attorney,” Chaska whispered in Naomi’s ear.
She hadn’t known that. “Tribal enrollment?”
“If he’s your father, you’re legally Oglala Lakota and able to enroll.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.” Naomi couldn’t think that far ahead, especially now that she’d met Doug.
There was so much she didn’t know about him, this man who might be her father, but she liked him. More than that, she believed what he’d told her—that the medicine wheel had once been his and that he would never have left her in that alley. If it turned out now that he wasn’t her father…
After the young woman at the desk had reassured them that the results would be legal for tribal enrollment, they were brought back to fill out paperwork.
Mother: Unknown.
Child: Naomi Archer
Alleged Father: Doug Otter Tail
A tech, a young man, came and read through the paperwork.
“You don’t know your mother. That’s a first. How does that happen?”
Naomi found the question tactless but answered, if for no other reason than to show him how rude he’d been. “I was abandoned as a newborn in an alley and almost died. I was adopted. They never found my mother.”
The tech looked shocked and then embarrassed. “Oh. Sorry.”
His gaze darted to Doug, and he looked like he was going to ask another question, but he didn’t. He opened two sterile kits and swabbed the insides of their cheeks with what looked like little mascara brushes, explaining that the results would be available in about twenty-four hours and would be emailed to them.
“If you’re not her father, the result will say that you’re excluded and show a zero percent probability of paternity. If you are her father, it will say that you cannot be excluded as her father and that there is a 99.99 percent probability of paternity.”
“Why not a hundred percent?” Doug asked.
The lab tech gave an explanation, which Winona translated for her grandfather, but Naomi was too tense to care.
Twenty minutes later, they were back in the car.
“So now we wait,” Doug’s gaze sought Naomi’s.
It was going to be a long twenty-four hours for him, too.
When they got backto Scarlet, Winona took Grandfather and Doug back to say hello to Shota, then shown them around her clinic. Old Man had seen it all before, but he held a great deal of respect in his heart for the four-legged and winged ones. Chaska knew that Winona’s work was a source of great pride for him.
Chaska had just a little while alone with Naomi, who seemed to be holding up well. They sat together on the front porch, watching the hummingbirds flit from feeder to feeder. “What do you think?”
“I adore your grandfather. He wants me to call him Grandfather, too.”
“That’s how it is back home,” Chaska told her. “Young people often call elders Grandmother and Grandfather or Uncle and Auntie, even when they’re not related.”