“Congratulations, Mr. Larson! It’s a healthy bouncing baby boy! Eight pounds-seven ounces, jet-black knappy hair, brown eyes…”

I was too excited and overjoyed to hear the rest. My boy! My first son! The heir to my name and fortune, meager as it may be! My little prin—Hold on a minute!

“Doctor, did you say jet-black hair and brown eyes?”

“Yes, much like his sisters, Mara and Celeste. One never knows when these dormant genes will erupt into such prodigious manifestations. You, or your wife’s, lineage must have had…”

But I had tuned out, again. I’m six feet-four, the ‘shorty’ in my family, blond, blue-eyed, and straight as an arrow. The darkest member of my Swedish heritage, as far as I knew, was a dirty blond distant cousin with hazel eyes.

My wife, of north Finnish stock, is also quite slender, fairly tall at six-one, blond, and green-eyed.

My adorable daughters, Mara—7—and Celeste—4—are stout, of a stockier stature, dark haired and eyed, and of caramel complexion.

I went into the maternity room to see my wife and newborn.

“He has your face and smile,” Brenda said, beaming, as she gently rocked the child against her bosom.

I peered at the ochre-toned infant and grimaced.

“Congratulations, Henrik!” Mbomo, our local milk-man and groceries purveyor, called out to me from across the street a few days later.

“Each child is a ferry, channeling its ancestors into eternity,” he said, grinning. He was always spouting some African proverb or the other.

“Extend my well-wishes to Brenda. I hope to see the new one soon.”

I knew that smirk from somewhere else and stood transfixed trying to place the very familiar face I’d seen it on.

Mbomo had been supplying us milk and foodstuffs for the last eight years.