Chapter 11 - THE HAIRBRUSHDad’s house had been full of people during his last months.
Nurses.
Family.
Housekeeper.
Richard.
Me.
The hairbrush Richard claimed belonged to Samuel was kept in an upstairs guest bathroom.
Dad used the master bath.
The guest bathroom was used most often by Richard when he stayed overnight.
That fact made Grace stop writing.
“You’re saying the supposed Samuel sample may have been Richard’s?”
“Possibly.”
We did not leap to that conclusion publicly.
We obtained Richard’s consent for comparison only much later under civil discovery.
The private sample profile was retained by the original lab.
When compared, the supposed “Samuel” profile matched Richard’s genetic profile to an extremely high degree.
Not Dad.
Richard had sent his own hair as Samuel’s sample.
Did he do it deliberately?
He claimed mistake.
He said he assumed the brush was Samuel’s.
Possible.
Except house staff testified Richard himself had used that guest bathroom for years.
And a text from Richard to an assistant said:
Grab the dark brush from guest bath. It should work.
Should work.
For what?
He claimed obtaining a family reference.
The court would decide how much weight to give intention.
But the false exclusion now made sense.
The report showed Richard was not my biological father.
A fact nobody had disputed.
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Then he used that exclusion to tell people Dad was not.
That was more than sloppiness.
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