31/365/Serial

With so much of her life bound up with theatre—actor, administrator, director, producer—Sarah recognizes that this could make a good musical. It’s her story now. She’s owning it.

30/365/Serial

Sarah embraces her DNA story as her truth. She doesn’t know exactly what is true, and she will likely never know. Is her father Hugh? One of his brothers? Is it all a mistake? But a mistake wouldn’t bring up the familiar name of an Ancestry-random person on the other side of the country. She believes that she is Hugh Callahan’s biological daughter. Occam’s razor and all that.

29/365/Serial

Her daughters seem most perplexed by Julie’s absolute denial. Sometimes, Sarah explains, people tell themselves a story so emphatically for so long that it becomes truth to them. Julie is ninety years old. The story is older than a half century. Sarah believes that her mother believes that she is speaking the truth—that this discovered “fact” is impossible and not a fact at all.

28/365/Serial

Maureen and Helen take the news pretty well. Sarah is relieved and a little surprised. She wasn’t sure they would.

27/365/Serial

Julie doesn’t budge on this. Sarah tells her mother that she will have to tell Maureen and Helen about the test and what she has discovered. She tells her that the information is out there and now anyone can discover it. Julie does not change her story.

26/365/Serial

Sarah tells Julie about the DNA test, the results, and her alleged cousin. Julie’s response? “That’s impossible.”

25/365/Serial

Sarah knows that no matter what, no one can tell Steve (who’s been splitting his time between assisted living and psychiatric hospitalization), because there is no way he can handle this information in a way that isn’t destructive to someone. Like, chainsaw destructive.

24/365/Serial

Sarah didn’t believe that Julie would admit to this. But, she reasoned, the information is now discoverable. If Ancestry had sent her word that this Mary Callahan was her cousin, she would also appear as a cousin to Maureen and Helen, should they decide to take the DNA test. And they would have the same questions that Sarah did. (Maureen and Helen were curious about Sarah’s results anyway. After all, this was their gift to her.)

23/365/Serial

Jack thought she needed to do both. The girls should be relieved of the worry of the bipolar side of the family. (They may need to be worried about other things, of course. Like alcoholism, Sarah joked/didn’t joke.)

22/365/Serial

But should she confront her mother? If so, how? And should she tell her daughters?

21/365/Serial

Gradually the news begins to settle. Really, this fact of paternity doesn’t change much at all. Sarah’s life is her life. Her experience was her experience. It’s just a shifting of things, new filters. She isn’t genetically Bernhardt. Neither are her daughters. This part of the story is a huge relief.

20/365/Serial

Sarah spends a week reeling, processing the news.

If Hugh was her father, then people Sarah has known all her life and worked with growing up are her half-siblings. Hugh’s young grandson, who’d been struck by a car and killed, was her nephew. Her nephew.

If it’s true, who knew? Who suspected? Did her father know? Did Hugh’s wife? All of Hugh’s family had been good to her.

19/365/Serial

Sarah isn’t sure whether to confront her mother. On the one hand, she feels she’s just read her mother’s diary and invaded her privacy without ever meaning to do so. On the other hand, Sarah has been worried about her genetic history and how it might affect her daughters for thirty years. Her mother knew she was worried. If Julie knew that Ed was not Sarah’s biological father and knew how worried Sarah was and chose to let her worry—well, Sarah is steamed.

18/365/Serial

Sarah married Jack. Twenty-nine years ago, she gave birth to Maureen. Two-and-a-half years later, she had Helen.

 
Whenever Maureen or Helen has a problem, Sarah worries a little more than usual. Is this an early sign of bipolar disorder? Is this normal adolescent/teenage/adult angst/depression? How does one know?

17/365/Serial

When Sarah got pregnant, she was most worried that she would have a child who was bipolar. Before deciding what to do (have the baby? get married? abort?), she went to a genetic counselor. Because all the bipolar people in her family were men, she wondered if it would matter if she had a boy or a girl. The counselor told her that it didn’t matter; that a girl would be just as likely/unlikely to inherit this; that maybe the reason only men in her family were bipolar was a mixture of nature/nurture. Or maybe it was just chance.

16/365/Serial

But back to Sarah’s dad, Ed. Ed came from a long line of crazy, a family filled cases of homelessness, suicide, depression, mysterious deaths. Ed attempted suicide (unsuccessfully) at least once. He likely had bipolar disorder.

Brother Steve is bipolar too. He is almost a decade older than Sarah. He has never successfully lived on his own.

15/365/Serial

Sarah’s brother, Steve, had come home after school one afternoon and told her Hugh was dead. “Stop being so mean to me,” she said. “That’s not true! Why would you say something like that to me?”

But it was true.

At the funeral, she was inconsolable. Hugh’s widow eventually suggested that she pull herself together. “But I’m so sad,” cried Sarah. “How do you think I feel?” asked the widow.

14/365/Serial

Both men had died years before, Hugh when Sarah was just nine years old.

13/365/Serial

Sarah loved her father too. Ed had been a good father who loved her. The news was shaking her, but not her love for her father.

12/365/Serial

It would explain a lot. And it wasn’t necessarily bad news. Hugh was Sarah’s favorite adult friend. They had great rapport. She remembers him even tucking her into bed some nights.

11/365/Serial

Hugh Callahan. Could a name be any more Irish? Could he really be her biological father?

10/365/Serial

Julie works harder than almost anyone on earth. Always has. That alone would entitle her to a share of the business. But that’s not how the world usually works.

9/365/Serial

Because think about it. Hugh and Sarah’s mom, Julie, worked together. Hugh practically made Julie a partner, giving her co-ownership in his family business. Their two families were inextricably linked, spending work and social time together.

8/365/Serial

This means that Hugh Callahan is her father. Or, possibly, one of Hugh’s brothers. But probably Hugh.

7/365/Serial

Among them is Mary Callahan, a likely first cousin. Sarah knows that name.

Mary Callahan is the niece of her mother’s business partner.

WTF?

6/365/Serial

Her last name is Bernhardt. So why is such a small percentage of her ancestry from western Europe? And where did all this Irish background come from? It’s a large percentage. Irish? She pulls up the list of her “likely” cousins.

5/365/Serial

She goes back through hundreds of e-mails in her in-box. Ancestry had sent her the results. She’d missed it. Too much going on. She opens her file.

4/365/Serial

Sarah gets an e-mail from Ancestry.com. It notifies her that they have identified likely cousins. Sarah thinks it odd that she’d receive this notice before she got her results.

3/365/Serial

Weeks go by. She thinks she should have gotten her results by now.

2/365/Serial

It is a birthday gift from her two daughters. With the ancestry/DNA craze, she’s been curious. Maureen and Helen had taken note. It’s a good gift.

1/365/Serial

Sarah opens the package. She reads the instructions. She spits in the tube, adds the chemicals, shakes it, repackages it. She mails it back.