My aunt, who was white, gave birth to a dark-skinned baby. Her husband, also white, left her, even though she swore she never cheated. We didn’t see him again. 18 years later, I saw his name scheduled for a visit —I work at a doctor’s clinic. I was shocked when he came in with a young boy and a woman.
What really surprised me was that the woman was also fair-skinned, while the boy was dark-skinned. I checked his file and learned they were indeed his wife and son. This confirmed that my aunt had never cheated; he must have had a dark-skinned ancestor he’d never known about, and that’s where those genes came from.
The sad irony is that he turned his back on his first family over something he carried within him all along, only to recreate the same story years later.
