Summary
The next day, Don reflects on his offer to help Rosie determine the identity of her father, and he becomes concerned that the offer is illogical. He reasons that he should be spending his time pursuing the Wife Project instead, and he phones Rosie, intending to retract his offer to help. However, when Rosie tells him that the offer means a lot to her, Don decides to go ahead with it. The two of them meet at a coffee shop and Don tries to quickly explain to her how to collect a sample, but they end up deciding that it will be easier if they collect the sample together. Rosie has a man in mind who she thinks is likely her biological father: Eamonn Hughes. Eamonn is a longtime family friend, so Rosie and Don go to his home for coffee. Rosie plans to discreetly swab the lip of his coffee cup in order to collect a sample. During the conversation, Eamonn assumes that Don is Rosie's boyfriend, and Don doesn't correct him. Don does eventually become nervous that Rosie will not successfully collect the sample, so Don invents a fictitious research project into genetic ancestry, and Eamonn readily offers a blood sample to help with the project.
Don and Rosie immediately go to the university laboratory so that Don can test the sample. Rosie becomes more and more excited to have it confirmed that Eamonn is her father—and then abruptly learns that this is not the case. She insists that Don join her for a drink, so the two of them go to a wine bar and end up staying on for dinner. Rosie explains more about why she wants to find her biological father: she is dissatisfied with her relationship with Phil. While Don doesn't fully understand why this is important to her, he offers to continue to help her test other candidates. Rosie's mother had maintained friendships with two other men from her med school days, so Rosie posits that either of them could be her father. One of them, Alan McPhee, has died, but Rosie knows his daughter, so she plans a meeting with the woman to obtain a sample from her.
Meanwhile, Don experiences a conflict at the university. While Don is teaching a class on genetics to medical students, a student objects to the theory of evolution because of his religious beliefs. Don is frustrated by what he sees as illogical reasoning and is eager to explain his point, so he later brings a fish he has scavenged from the cafeteria garbage into class. Don simply wants to use the fish to make an observation about its anatomy and further argue for evolution, but the student thinks Don is trying to humiliate him and lodges a complaint. Don is called in to discuss the situation with the Dean; the Dean makes it clear that she can't discipline Don because he has not technically broken any rules, but she wishes he would behave in more socially conventional ways. Don is uncomfortable with this interaction because he knows he will never behave like other people, and he needs to believe that the university is a place where he can feel safe to be himself.
Don and Rosie go to see Natalie McPhee and her baby, where they have some difficulty obtaining a sample. Don feels frustrated because he lacks the social skills to smoothly obtain a sample from either Natalie or her baby. However, Rosie is able to secretly steal some hair from Natalie's hairbrush. However, Rosie does not want to test the McPhee sample until she also obtains a sample from the other possible candidate: Dr. Peter Enticott. Rosie's plan is to set up a meeting with Enticott under the guise of wanting to discuss going to medical school. Don will accompany her and pretend to be her boyfriend.
During the meeting, Don is impressed by how intelligently Rosie speaks about scientific and research topics. They are able to get a sample, but in order to do so, they steal a cup and leave without paying their bill, both of which feel shocking to Don. Don assumes they will now go immediately to the lab to test the samples, but instead, Rosie drives them to the beach. Don is at first uncomfortable but finds himself enjoying the spontaneous decision and getting the chance to spend more time with Rosie. Back at the lab, they find that neither sample is a match. Rosie is now prepared to give up on finding her biological father: she has no other leads, and it doesn't seem feasible to her to attempt to test every man from her mother's medical school class. However, Don finds himself unwilling to abandon the project, even though he doesn't fully understand why. Instead, Don does some research and confirms that 124 students attended the graduation party where Rosie was conceived. One of them presumably has to be Rosie's father. 63 of these students were men, and Don eliminates some of them because he deduces that Rosie's father is almost certainly Caucasian. Don is pleased to see that a 30th-anniversary reunion for the med school class will be taking place in only a few weeks.
Don sets up a meeting with Rosie and even agrees to meet her at the bar at 3 A.M. when she has finished her shift. Don explains his research to Rosie, concluding that there are essentially 41 men who could potentially be her father. He proposes that Rosie get hired as a bartender at the reunion and collect samples from the guests. Rosie at first rejects the idea, but a few days later, she comes to Don and tells him that they have both been hired as bartenders. Don will have to teach himself how to make drinks, and he throws himself into this task. He is also growing increasingly concerned about whether Rosie thinks he is romantically interested in her. In Don's mind, Rosie is totally unsuitable as a partner, but he worries that she would be hurt if she knew he felt that way. Don talks to Claudia about these worries, and she reassures him that he should just focus on enjoying spending time with Rosie.
The next day, Gene meets with Don, since he has heard from Claudia that Don and Rosie are spending time together. Gene cautions Don not to expect much from Rosie because he believes that Rosie does not like many men and does not bother to try to make herself appealing to them.
Analysis
When Don first volunteers to help Rosie with the Father Project, he imagines that it will be a fairly simple task. While Don often seems literal and transparent, his thought process around the project reveals his capacity for self-delusion and misunderstanding of his own emotions. There is no reason for Don to offer to help Rosie with this project after knowing her for such a short time, and it certainly does not benefit him to start devoting time to this project when his life is already busy with his work, his routines, and the Wife Project. Don either feels invested in Rosie's happiness, drawn to the prospect of spending more time with her, or both. Don is able to observe that he is behaving in an irrational fashion and this knowledge troubles him, but he lacks the self-awareness to understand why he is doing so. There are clear hints that Claudia and Gene both suspect Don's growing attraction to Rosie, but they also allow him to continue to progress through the experience at his own pace. The novel doesn't present much information about Claudia and Gene as parents, but they display parental behavior towards Don by carefully monitoring his safety and future happiness while encouraging him to push himself, grow, and take risks.
Through the first few sample collections and tests of the Father Project, it becomes evident that Don and Rosie function effectively as a team. They have complementary strengths: Don has the scientific knowledge and access to technology, and he can also conceive of bold plans that might seem unfeasible to others. Rosie, on the other hand, has the charm, social skills, and ability to build rapport that ensures the plans can actually succeed. With her experience working in a bar, she can quickly assess social situations and put people at ease. The fact that Rosie and Don can quickly start working together as an effective team shows their compatibility. Don's perspective on the project does hint at a somewhat condescending and hierarchical attitude towards Rosie. Don repeatedly refers to Rosie's job working at a bar, and he seems to become stuck on the idea that she cannot be truly intelligent or ambitious if that is her line of work. In fact, Don is shocked when Rosie shows her ability to speak intelligently about scientific and medical topics. While Don is not someone who seems focused on arbitrary markers of success like income and status, he does have his own biases.
In spite of Don's occasional misgivings, it becomes clear that he is actually the one driving and expanding the Father Project. Rosie might have been willing to give up when the first and most likely candidate did not work out, but Don encourages her to sample and test other candidates. After eliminating the other two possibilities, Don radically expands the scope to consider all of the other doctors who attended the graduation party. This behavior is another sign of Don being contradictory and not always self-aware; he sometimes gets overwhelmed by the Father Project, but whenever Rosie seems about to stop, he insists on moving the project forward. Readers are never given insight into what Rosie thinks about these interventions, but she is effectively the one going along with Don, and at times indulging him, even though the goal of the project is ostensibly to make her life better.
While Don's personal life seems to be expanding due to his relationship with Rosie, there is an increasing number of signs of trouble in his professional life. Don and the Dean have an antagonistic relationship because they present different value systems and viewpoints on the function of the university. Don sees the university as a place that should be devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and scientific truth. He also knows that it is a place where (unlike many other workplaces) his eccentricities will be tolerated because of his intelligence. The Dean, however, has to contend with more complex realities: the university is also a place where money and reputation are important concerns. Being able to attract funding and be an attractive choice for students is a necessary component of ensuring that people like Don can continue to do their research. Don sees the Dean as ethically compromised and unnecessarily concerned with optics and reputation. For him, integrity is a simple, black-and-white question, where there is always a clear-cut right and wrong. Don, however, also knows that he has to keep the Dean happy if he wants to remain secure and advance in his career. For someone like Don, who is very independent and wants to march to the beat of his own drum, this need for compromise is a bitter pill to swallow. Don also feels vulnerable because he feels the same doubt about his professional life as he does about his love life. Don assumes that only very few women could ever love or accept him, and he also assumes that he could never be employable anywhere except at a university.
