THE NARRATIVE ARC

A DNA Test Led Me to My Sister

I met the daughter Dad (probably) didn’t know he had

An email alerted me that my DNA analysis report was ready to view. When I logged on to Ancestry.com and clicked on my DNA matches, there she was.

The first person on my list of matches surprised me. I expected to see an aunt or cousin listed there — someone I knew. The first entry, however, was “Linda — Half-Sister — 25% Shared DNA.”

I am an only child. If one of my parents had another child from a previous relationship, they would have told me. Wouldn’t they? Surely, I would have known or at least heard of a half-sibling. What I saw on Ancestry had to be a mistake.

My first reaction was that I wasn’t impressed with this company’s product. Sloppy science, I thought.

When I decided to purchase a DNA analysis kit from Ancestry, I wasn’t looking for any long-lost relatives or anticipating any surprises. I was hoping to learn whether or not I was Irish. I had been writing about my maternal grandmother, attributing some of her seemingly supernatural powers to Irish witchcraft. I wanted to be sure that I was correctly assuming that her ancestors were from the Emerald Isle. I wasn’t expecting Ancestry to botch my analysis and claim I had a sibling.