Linde Jacobs paced backwards and forwards throughout her bed room, eyeing the open laptop computer on the dresser and keen the physician to seem. Her husband was dropping off their older daughter at college. Their youthful daughter was downstairs, occupied by a display screen. Linde needed to be alone when she realized whether or not she carried the household curse.
Linde’s mom, Allison, had died simply 4 weeks earlier than, after a mutant gene progressively laid waste to her mind. In her 50s, Allison remodeled from a joyful household ringleader into an impulsive, misleading pariah. She drove like a maniac on cul-de-sacs. She pinched strangers, shoplifted craft provides and stole cash from her daughter.
Now, on this morning in September 2021, Linde would discover out if she had inherited the identical vile genetic mutation.
She had a foul feeling. She and her mom had been so alike. Allison had been a bodily therapist and Linde was a nurse. They had been each doers — taking cost, mending wounds, planning theme events. They had been each chipper and a bit unfiltered, simple to a smirk or a four-letter phrase.
She most likely gave me this, too, Linde thought.
The physician lastly popped up on the pc. Wasting no time on pleasantries, she shared her display screen and zoomed in on one line of laboratory paperwork: POSITIVE.
Linde was 33. Within about twenty years, in all chance, her daughters would watch her turn out to be egocentric, manipulative, reckless — the other of all the things she’d taught them to be. Just like Allison, Linde would flip into somebody arduous to tolerate, not to mention love.