# **My Husband Kissed My Mother Beside My Father’s Funeral. The DNA Test in Dad’s Locked Desk Revealed a Secret None of Us Were Prepared to Survive.**
The worst moment of Claire Bennett’s life was supposed to be watching six men carry her father’s casket through the doors of the funeral home.
It wasn’t.
The worst moment came forty-seven minutes later.
Claire turned into a quiet side corridor looking for her mother and stopped so suddenly that the funeral program slipped from her fingers.
Her husband was kissing her mother.
For several impossible seconds, Claire simply stood there.
Dean’s dark suit was the same one he had worn while carrying Robert Bennett’s casket. Elaine’s fingers were twisted into the lapels of that jacket, holding him close.
Behind them, through the open viewing-room door, Claire could still see the white lilies surrounding her father.
“Mom?”
Elaine jerked backward.
Dean turned.
His face lost every trace of color.
Claire looked from one to the other.
Then toward the room containing her father’s casket.
“Dad’s in there.”
“Claire—”
She stared at Dean.
**“You carried his casket.”**
He stepped toward her.
“Please. Let me explain.”
Claire backed away.
Elaine closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Claire’s grief suddenly ignited into rage.
“Today?”
Dean reached for her arm.
Claire slapped him.
The sound cracked through the corridor.
Conversations stopped.
A distant door opened.
Dean stood motionless, one hand near his cheek.
Elaine moved toward her daughter.
“No.”
Claire raised both hands.
“Don’t touch me.”
She bent, retrieved her father’s funeral program, and walked away.
Neither followed.
That somehow hurt almost as much as the kiss.
—
Claire drove without knowing where she was going.
Her phone rang repeatedly.
Dean.
Elaine.
Dean again.
She ignored them.
Then a message appeared from her mother.
**Please don’t blame Dean until you know what your father did.**
Claire nearly drove through a red light.
What her father did?
Robert Bennett had spent his final months becoming thinner, quieter, weaker. Claire remembered hospital rooms, medication schedules, whispered conversations and her mother sleeping upright beside his bed.
She remembered Dean helping constantly.
When Claire had been trapped at work, Dean drove Elaine to appointments.
He fixed Robert’s broken porch railing.
He brought groceries.
Sometimes he stayed at the Bennett house for hours.
Claire had loved him more because of it.
Now those memories felt contaminated.
Another message appeared.
**Come to the house. Alone. There’s something in your father’s desk you need to see.**
Claire stared at it.
Then another memory surfaced.
Three nights before Robert d/i/ed, he had asked to speak privately with her.
Dean had been downstairs with Elaine.
Robert’s breathing had been shallow. His hand trembled when he suddenly grabbed Claire’s wrist.
“There’s something you need to know about Dean.”
Before he could continue, Elaine entered.
Robert stopped speaking.
Claire had assumed exhaustion and medication were confusing him.
Now she wasn’t sure.
Twenty minutes later, she entered her parents’ house.
Silence met her.
Robert’s jacket still hung beside the staircase.
Claire touched the sleeve.
“Dad,” she whispered.
For one dangerous moment, grief almost folded her in half.
Then she kept moving.
Robert’s study was exactly as he had left it.
His reading glasses rested beside an unfinished crossword puzzle. A coffee stain marked the corner of his desk.
The bottom drawer was locked.
Claire knew where the spare key was.
Inside a crooked ceramic fishing boat she had made for him when she was eleven.
She opened the drawer.
A thick envelope waited inside.
Her name was written across it.
**For Claire. If I don’t get the chance to explain.**
Her fingers shook as she opened it.
Photographs.
Bank records.
Printed emails.
And a DNA laboratory report.
Claire unfolded it.
Dean Mercer’s name appeared first.
Robert Bennett’s appeared beneath it.
Her eyes moved toward the conclusion.
She stopped breathing.
She read it again.
Then a third time.
The report indicated a biological relationship.
Father and son.
“No.”
A floorboard creaked behind her.
Claire turned.
Elaine stood in the doorway, still wearing her funeral dress.
Her eyes fell to the report.
“So you found it.”
“What is this?”
Elaine began crying.
Then another voice came from the hallway.
“You were never supposed to see that.”
Dean entered.
Claire stared at him.
“My husband is my father’s son?”
“No,” Elaine said immediately.
Claire laughed once, almost hysterically.
“I can read, Mom.”
“You’re reading the result correctly. You’re misunderstanding what it means.”
“What possible explanation makes this better?”
Elaine looked at Dean.
Dean looked sick.
Finally Elaine whispered:
**“Claire… Dean wasn’t the secret your father was trying to protect.”**
Claire’s anger disappeared.
Something colder replaced it.
“Then who was?”
Elaine stepped into the study.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“Tell me.”
Elaine looked toward Robert’s empty chair.
“Robert wasn’t your biological father.”
The room went silent.
Claire stared at her.
Then she smiled faintly because the alternative was screaming.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I wish it were.”
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
“Your father knew.”
“Stop calling him my father while telling me he wasn’t.”
“He was your father,” Elaine said fiercely. “In every way that mattered.”
Claire looked at Dean.
He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
The DNA report trembled in her hands.
“If Robert is Dean’s biological father and Robert isn’t mine…”
She stopped.
The implication landed.
Dean finally spoke.
“We’re not related.”
Claire’s knees weakened.
She grabbed the desk.
Elaine explained.
Thirty-six years earlier, before Robert and Elaine married, Robert had been engaged to another woman.
Margaret Mercer.
Dean’s mother.
Margaret became pregnant shortly before their relationship ended.
Robert never knew.
Margaret married another man, Thomas Mercer, and raised Dean as Thomas’s son.
Years later, after Thomas d/i/ed, Margaret wrote Robert a letter revealing the truth.
But Robert never received it.
It had been sent to an old address and returned.
Margaret stored it away.
Then, two years earlier, while settling Margaret’s estate after her d/e/@/th, Dean found it.
He confronted Robert privately.
Robert demanded a DNA test.
The result confirmed everything.
Robert Bennett was Dean’s biological father.
Claire’s stomach turned.
“You knew for two years?”
Dean nodded.
“And you never told me?”
“Robert begged me not to.”
“You chose him over your wife?”
“No. I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Elaine answered.
“From me.”
Claire looked at her mother.
Elaine sat in Robert’s chair.
“When I was twenty-one, I loved someone before Robert.”
Claire said nothing.
“His name was Samuel Cole. We were together almost three years. I thought we would marry.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
“People don’t disappear.”
“He did.”
Elaine looked toward the window.
“Samuel worked construction across several states. One morning he left for a job in Colorado. Two weeks later I learned I was pregnant. His phone had been disconnected. His apartment was empty. Letters came back unopened.”
Claire’s mouth went dry.
“Me?”
Elaine nodded.
“You.”
Robert met Elaine when Claire was seven months old.
He knew she had a baby.
He knew another man was Claire’s biological father.
And when Claire was three, Robert adopted her.
“He never treated you as anything except his daughter,” Elaine whispered.
Claire’s eyes filled.
She remembered Robert teaching her to ride a bicycle.
Waiting outside school dances.
Threatening to interview her first boyfriend.
Walking her down the aisle toward Dean.
Her father.
Biology suddenly seemed both enormous and completely irrelevant.
Then Claire remembered the corridor.
She turned toward Elaine.
“That still doesn’t explain why you were kissing my husband.”
Dean flinched.
Elaine stood.
“I kissed him.”
Claire stared at her.
“That distinction isn’t helping.”
“It wasn’t romantic.”
Claire gave a disbelieving laugh.
“I saw your hands on him.”
“I was falling apart.”
“So you kissed him?”
Elaine swallowed.
“Because Dean told me what Robert had done.”
Claire looked between them.
“What had he done?”
Dean walked to the desk and removed another document from the envelope.
“Your father found Samuel.”
Claire froze.
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
Claire stared at the paper Dean placed before her.
A private investigator’s report.
**Samuel Cole — age sixty-one.**
An address in Oregon.
Employment history.
Photographs.
Claire stared at the image of an older man standing outside a woodworking shop.
Something about his eyes disturbed her.
They looked familiar.
“Dad found my biological father?”
“Yes,” Dean said.
“And didn’t tell me?”
Dean shook his head.
“Robert contacted him first.”
Claire looked down.
There were emails.
The first was from Robert.
**My daughter deserves the truth.**
Samuel’s response was shorter.
**Then tell her what Elaine did.**
Claire slowly raised her eyes.
“What did you do, Mom?”
Elaine’s face changed.
Fear.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“Nothing he claims.”
“What does he claim?”
Dean handed Claire another page.
Samuel had written that he never abandoned Elaine.
He claimed Elaine’s father, Claire’s grandfather, intercepted every letter Samuel sent.
He claimed he returned six months after leaving and was told Elaine had married Robert and wanted nothing to do with him.
“He came back?” Claire asked.
Elaine looked stunned.
“I never knew.”
Claire kept reading.
Samuel claimed he sent money for his daughter for years.
The payments were returned.
He claimed he eventually received a handwritten letter telling him never to contact Elaine or Claire again.
The letter was signed Elaine Bennett.
Elaine shook her head.
“I never wrote that.”
Robert apparently believed her.
That was why he hired an investigator.
The investigator discovered something else.
Elaine’s father had forged the letter.
Claire’s grandfather had deliberately separated Samuel and Elaine because he considered Samuel unsuitable.
For thirty-five years, two people had believed the other rejected them.
Claire sat down.
“This is insane.”
“There’s more,” Dean said.
“Of course there is.”
Robert contacted Samuel.
The two men met.
Not as rivals.
As fathers.
Robert told Samuel everything about Claire—her childhood, college, marriage, career.
Samuel apparently cried through most of the conversation.
Then Robert asked him to meet Claire.
Samuel refused.
“Why?”
Dean hesitated.
“Because he thought appearing while Robert was d/y/ing would feel like replacing him.”
Claire covered her mouth.
That sounded painfully decent.
Robert disagreed.
Their argument continued for weeks.
Then Robert’s health deteriorated.
Three nights before he d/i/ed, he tried to tell Claire about Dean because Dean was the only person who knew the entire story.
Elaine interrupted before he could finish.
Not intentionally.
Simply tragically.
Claire looked at Dean.
“So Dad wanted you to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because the morning after he tried telling you, he changed his mind.”
“Why?”
Dean’s eyes reddened.
“He asked me one question.”
“What?”
“He asked whether you would still remember him as your father once you met Samuel.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Oh, Dad.”
“He was terrified,” Dean whispered. “Not rationally. He knew better. But he was d/y/ing, Claire. He was scared.”
Claire wiped her face.
“And today?”
Dean glanced at Elaine.
“After the funeral, your mother asked why Robert had been acting strangely before he d/i/ed. I told her about Samuel.”
Elaine took over.
“I realized Robert had carried this secret alone while he was sick. Then Dean told me Robert’s last request.”
Claire looked at him.
“What request?”
Dean reached inside his jacket.
He removed a small digital recorder.
“Robert made this four days ago.”
Claire’s heart stopped.
“His voice?”
Dean nodded.
“I was going to give it to you tonight.”
“Play it.”
Elaine whispered, “Claire—”
“Play it.”
Dean pressed the button.
Static.
Then Robert Bennett’s weakened voice filled the study.
“Claire-bear.”
Claire broke immediately.
No one had called her that except him.
“If you’re hearing this, I probably chickened out.”
A faint breathy laugh followed.
“I’ve been brave about a lot of things. Apparently telling my daughter how much I love her is harder.”
Claire covered her mouth.
Robert continued.
“I need you to know three things. First, Dean is my biological son. Life apparently decided one stubborn child wasn’t enough punishment.”
Despite herself, Claire laughed through her tears.
Dean did too.
“Second, you are not biologically mine.”
A pause.
“But anyone who uses that sentence to tell you I wasn’t your father can answer to me wherever I’ve gone.”
Claire lowered her head.
“I chose you, kiddo. Every fever. Every school play. Every scraped knee. Every tuition bill that made me question my financial planning. Every Christmas morning. Every argument. Every hug. **I chose all of it. I chose you.**”
Claire sobbed.
“And third… Samuel Cole deserves the chance I got.”
Claire looked up.
“I got thirty-three years of being your dad. He got none. That wasn’t his choice. Don’t punish him for another man’s cruelty.”
Robert coughed.
Then his voice softened.
“There’s one more thing. Dean doesn’t know this part.”
Dean frowned.
Claire looked at him.
Robert continued.
“Samuel isn’t a stranger to you.”
Claire’s breathing slowed.
“You met him once.”
Everyone in the room became still.
“When you were eight years old, you disappeared at Lake Crescent.”
Claire’s eyes widened.
She remembered.
A family vacation.
A crowded lakeside campground.
She had wandered after a dog and become lost in the woods.
Searchers found her four hours later.
Except that wasn’t exactly what happened.
A stranger found her first.
A man with a red flannel shirt.
He carried her on his shoulders through the woods.
Claire had never known his name.
Robert’s voice continued.
“That man was Samuel.”
Claire stood abruptly.
“No.”
Elaine looked equally shocked.
“He was there?”
“Samuel had been trying to see you from a distance,” Robert explained through the recording. “He saw you wander away and followed. He brought you back, then left before Elaine saw him because he believed she wanted him gone.”
Claire remembered rough hands lifting her across a stream.
A wooden whistle carved like a bird.
A man telling her:
*Your parents are looking for you, sweetheart.*
Parents.
Not *your mother*.
Not *I’m your father*.
He had protected the life she already had.
Claire pressed both hands against the desk.
Robert’s recording continued.
“I found out because Samuel still has the picture you drew for him.”
Claire remembered drawing a blue bird on a napkin while they waited for searchers.
“I’m sorry I kept this from you. Fear makes cowards of good men sometimes.”
Robert inhaled shakily.
“Forgive your mother. Forgive Dean if you can. And please… don’t let my d/e/@/th become another secret that steals thirty years from somebody.”
The recording ended.
Nobody moved.
Then Claire looked at her mother.
“The kiss.”
Elaine nodded miserably.
“When Dean played part of Robert’s message for me after the service, I collapsed. Dean caught me. I hugged him. I don’t even know why I kissed him. It was one second. Grief, confusion—nothing romantic. The instant it happened, I knew it was wrong.”
Dean said quietly, “I pulled away.”
Claire remembered what she had seen.
Her mother gripping Dean’s jacket.
Dean’s arms not around Elaine romantically, but bracing her.
She had entered at precisely the worst possible second.
It didn’t erase what happened.
But it changed it.
“Why did you say I was never supposed to see the DNA test?” Claire asked Dean.
“Because Robert wanted me to tell you myself, not let you discover our relationship on laboratory paperwork.”
Claire sank into her father’s chair.
For the first time since the funeral, silence felt gentle.
Then the doorbell rang.
All three looked toward the hallway.
Elaine frowned.
“Who could that be?”
Dean went still.
Claire noticed.
“You know.”
Dean didn’t answer.
The bell rang again.
Claire walked through the house.
The perspective of her entire life seemed to move with her: past Robert’s jacket, past childhood photographs, past the staircase where he had measured her height in pencil marks.
She opened the front door.
A man stood on the porch.
Early sixties.
Silver hair.
Work-worn hands.
He held something small.
A wooden bird whistle.
Claire stopped breathing.
Samuel Cole looked at her.
Neither spoke.
Finally he held out the whistle.
“You left this with me twenty-eight years ago.”
Claire stared at him.
“You found me.”
“At the lake.”
Her eyes filled.
Samuel nodded.
“I promised Robert I wouldn’t come unless you invited me. But Dean called after the funeral and said things had gone wrong.”
Claire looked back.
Dean stood several feet behind her.
Samuel immediately stepped backward.
“I can leave.”
Claire looked at the wooden bird.
Then at the stranger who wasn’t entirely a stranger.
“No.”
Samuel froze.
Claire opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
—
They talked until midnight.
Samuel never tried to call himself her father.
That mattered.
He told Claire about the letters, the returned money, the forged message.
He showed her a box containing every birthday card he had written but never mailed after being told she wanted no contact.
Thirty-three cards.
Claire opened the one marked **Age Nine**.
Inside was a drawing of a blue bird.
Her knees nearly gave way.
Samuel had copied the picture she drew at the lake.
Elaine entered quietly.
Samuel stood.
For thirty-five years, these two people had existed inside each other’s worst misunderstanding.
Elaine whispered his name.
“Sam.”
He looked at her.
“Elaine.”
Neither moved closer.
Claire realized some wounds were too old for dramatic reunions.
Sometimes truth did not restore what had been stolen.
It simply stopped the stealing.
Elaine sat opposite him.
“My father told me you left because I was pregnant.”
Samuel’s jaw tightened.
“He told me you married Robert because you wanted stability.”
“I waited for you.”
“I came back.”
Elaine covered her face.
Samuel’s voice broke.
“I came back.”
Claire reached across the table and took her mother’s hand.
Dean stood near the kitchen doorway.
Claire looked at him.
There was still pain between them.
Still anger.
Still the image of that kiss.
Truth explained betrayal.
It didn’t automatically erase it.
Later, when Elaine and Samuel moved into the living room to continue talking, Claire found Dean outside on the back porch.
Cold rain had begun.
“You should go home,” she said.
Dean looked at her.
“Our home?”
Claire hesitated.
“Not tonight.”
He nodded.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“You kept enormous secrets from me.”
“I did.”
“Even because Dad asked you to, you still did.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother kissed you.”
“Yes.”
Claire almost smiled at his miserable expression.
“You’re not going to defend yourself?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if I were you, I wouldn’t want explanations tonight. I’d want someone to finally stop deciding what information I could handle.”
That answer reached her more deeply than an apology would have.
Claire looked toward the rain.
“Did you love him?”
Dean knew whom she meant.
Robert.
“Yes.”
“As your father?”
Dean swallowed.
“I was learning how.”
Claire nodded.
Then she said something she never expected to say.
“I’m glad he had you.”
Dean’s face crumpled.
Claire stepped forward and hugged him.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But perhaps the beginning of it.
—
Six months later, Claire stood beside Lake Crescent.
Robert’s ashes had already been buried beside the family plot, but Claire had kept one small portion with Elaine’s permission.
Robert had loved this lake.
Samuel stood several yards away.
Dean was beside him.
Two sons of circumstance.
One biological.
One chosen through marriage.
Elaine stood behind Claire.
Claire opened the small container.
“You sure?” Dean asked.
Claire nodded.
“Dad spent his whole life holding everybody together. I think he deserves somewhere peaceful.”
She released the ashes over the water.
Wind carried them outward.
Claire cried.
Then laughed because she could almost hear Robert complaining that she had chosen a windy day.
Samuel handed her the wooden whistle.
“Keep it.”
Claire closed her fingers around it.
“No.”
She placed it into his palm.
“You kept it twenty-eight years. Your turn isn’t over yet.”
Samuel looked confused.
Claire smiled.
“I’m pregnant.”
Silence.
Dean stared at her.
“What?”
She laughed through tears.
“I found out yesterday.”
Dean’s mouth fell open.
Then he pulled her into his arms.
Samuel turned away, openly crying.
Elaine shrieked and hugged both of them.
For several minutes, everything was chaos.
Beautiful chaos.
Then Samuel asked, “How long have you two been trying?”
Claire looked at Dean.
“Almost three years.”
Dean kissed her forehead.
They had nearly given up.
Claire looked across the lake.
A strange peace settled over her.
But the final surprise came seven months later.
Their daughter was born on Robert Bennett’s birthday.
Claire named her Robin.
Not Robert.
Robert would have hated that.
Robin Elaine Mercer arrived screaming, furious and healthy, with Dean’s dark hair and Claire’s eyes.
Samuel waited outside the hospital room because he refused to intrude.
Claire sent Dean to get him.
When Samuel entered, Claire placed the baby in his arms.
He stared down at his granddaughter.
“I missed this with you,” he whispered.
Claire touched his shoulder.
“You’re here now.”
Samuel cried.
Across the room, Elaine cried too.
Dean pretended not to.
Then Claire noticed something in Samuel’s wallet as he reached for a tissue.
A photograph.
Old.
Faded.
Claire.
Age eight.
Standing beside the lake.
Holding the wooden bird.
“Where did you get that?”
Samuel froze.
“I thought nobody took pictures that day.”
Samuel looked at Elaine.
Then Dean.
Finally he handed Claire the photograph.
On the back was Robert’s handwriting.
**Thank you for bringing our girl home. — Robert**
Claire stared at it.
Samuel whispered, “Robert knew who I was that day.”
Claire’s head snapped up.
“What?”
“He recognized me.”
The final truth unfolded quietly.
Robert had seen Samuel carrying Claire from the woods.
He recognized him from an old photograph Elaine once kept.
Robert confronted Samuel privately.
Samuel told him everything.
Robert could have exposed Elaine’s father then.
He could have told Elaine.
He could have changed all their lives.
But Elaine’s father was recovering from a stroke, Claire was eight, and Robert feared detonating the family over something he couldn’t prove.
So Robert made Samuel a promise.
**He would investigate.**
But Elaine’s father d/i/ed months later, taking the evidence with him.
Robert searched for proof for years.
He never found enough.
Until six months before his own d/e/@/th, when an old storage box belonging to Elaine’s father surfaced during the sale of a property.
Inside were Samuel’s original letters.
Returned checks.
And the forged goodbye letter.
Robert finally had proof.
Claire stared at the photograph.
All this time she had believed her father discovered Samuel near the end.
He hadn’t.
**Robert Bennett had known for twenty-eight years.**
Claire felt anger rise.
Then Samuel said, “Before you judge him, there’s something else.”
He removed another folded note.
Robert had written it shortly before his d/e/@/th.
Claire opened it.
**I spent years believing protecting people from painful truths was the same thing as loving them. It isn’t. Love gives people the truth and trusts them to survive it. I learned that too late. Please do better than I did.**
Claire read it twice.
Then she looked around the hospital room.
At Elaine.
At Samuel.
At Dean.
At baby Robin.
A family assembled from biology, marriage, mistakes, forgiveness and choices.
No version of it was simple.
But it was real.
Claire folded the letter.
Dean approached carefully.
“You okay?”
Claire looked at him.
Months earlier, she had watched him kiss her mother beside her father’s funeral and believed her entire marriage had become a lie.
Instead, that terrible moment had torn open a secret buried across three generations.
It had given Dean a father just before losing him.
It had returned Samuel to the daughter he had never willingly abandoned.
It had freed Elaine from believing she had been discarded.
And it had taught Claire something Robert had spent his final days desperately trying to understand.
**Families are not held together by secrets.**
They are held together by what happens after the secrets are exposed.
Claire looked down at her daughter.
“One rule,” she said.
Dean smiled cautiously.
“What?”
“No family secrets.”
Elaine raised a hand.
“Agreed.”
Samuel nodded.
Dean placed his hand over Claire’s.
“Agreed.”
Claire smiled.
Then Elaine cleared her throat.
“There is technically one tiny thing I haven’t mentioned.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Mom.”
Elaine smiled for the first time without sadness.
“Relax. Robert prepaid Robin’s college fund.”
Dean blinked.
“How?”
Elaine handed Claire an envelope.
Robert had established an education trust years earlier for his first future grandchild.
He had never known whether that child would exist.
He simply believed Claire would become a mother someday.
Inside the envelope was one final handwritten sentence.
**For the kid who comes after us: may you inherit our love and none of our stupidity.**
Claire laughed so hard she cried.
Dean laughed.
Elaine laughed.
Samuel laughed while holding his granddaughter.
And somewhere inside that bright hospital room, with morning sunlight stretching across four generations of complicated love, Claire finally understood the man she had buried.
Robert Bennett had not been her biological father.
He had been something biology could never guarantee.
**He was the man who stayed.**
The man who chose her.
The man who made mistakes trying to protect her.
The man who eventually found enough courage to leave behind the truth.
Claire kissed Robin’s forehead and looked toward the window.
For the first time since the funeral, remembering her father’s final weeks no longer frightened her.
Those memories had changed.
But they had not become uglier.
They had become human.
And as Dean wrapped one arm around her while Samuel rocked the baby and Elaine unfolded Robert’s ridiculous final note again, Claire realized that the day she thought she had lost her entire family had actually been the day a broken family began finding its way back to one another.
**Not because the betrayal had never happened.**
**Not because every secret could be forgiven.**
**But because, at last, nobody had to live inside a lie.**
