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She lets out a breath, frustrated. “You don’t get to decide that for me either.”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t answer.”

That lands. Not cleanly. But enough that she pauses.

“I went to the clinic today,” she says.

I frown. “The clinic? Why?” Alester hadn’t informed me about it. Just the thought of him and our last conversation leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

“One of the early screenings came back… off,” she says. “They said it’s not dangerous. But something showed up that shouldn’t have.”

“What kind of screening?”

“Carrier panel,” she says. “Standard.”

I nod once. “And?”

She hesitates. “There’s a marker,” she says finally. “Something they didn’t expect to see.”

That, by itself, doesn’t mean much.

“What kind of marker?” I ask.

“They didn’t go into detail,” she says. “Just that it doesn’t… line up with what they had on file.”

I go still. “Line up how?”

She exhales slowly. “Enough that they flagged it.”

“When do you hear back?” I ask.

“Soon,” she says. “They’re reviewing it properly.”

I lean back against the counter, keeping my voice even. “And now you’re waiting.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“A few days. Maybe less.”

I nod once, but my mind is already ahead of the conversation.

A test like that doesn’t just tell them whether some marker is present. It tells the story the first flag only hinted at. If something has shown up that doesn’t fit with the genetic assumptions of the parents they’ve been working from, then the full result won’t stay vague for long.

And Maggie knows that too. She isn’t saying it, but I can see it in the way she’s standing, in the way she keeps folding and unfolding her arms, in the way her mouth tightens every time the silence stretches.

“What exactly did Acharya tell you?” I ask.

She exhales slowly. “That there’s a possible marker for something inherited. He didn’t want to go into too much detail before the report comes back. He said it may be nothing, or it may just be a variant that needs context.”

“And that context comes with the result.”

She looks at me then. “Yes.”

There’s a pause after that. A long one.

Neither of us says the obvious part, but it hangs there anyway, solid as furniture.