A Woman With a Rare Gene Mutation Fights to Avoid Her Mother’s Fate

Linde Jacobs paced back and forth across her bedroom, eyeing the open laptop on the dresser and willing the doctor to appear. Her husband was dropping off their older daughter at school. Their younger daughter was downstairs, occupied by a screen. Linde wanted to be alone when she learned whether she carried the family curse.

Linde’s mother, Allison, had died just four weeks before, after a mutant gene gradually laid waste to her brain. In her 50s, Allison transformed from a joyful family ringleader into an impulsive, deceptive pariah. She drove like a maniac on cul-de-sacs. She pinched strangers, shoplifted craft supplies and stole money from her daughter.

Now, on this morning in September 2021, Linde would find out if she had inherited the same vile genetic mutation.

She had a bad feeling. She and her mother had been so alike. Allison had been a physical therapist and Linde was a nurse. They were both doers — taking charge, mending wounds, planning theme parties. They were both chipper and a bit unfiltered, easy to a smirk or a four-letter word.

She probably gave me this, too, Linde thought.

The doctor finally popped up on the computer. Wasting no time on pleasantries, she shared her screen and zoomed in on one line of laboratory paperwork: POSITIVE.

Linde was 33. Within about two decades, in all likelihood, her daughters would watch her become selfish, manipulative, reckless — the opposite of everything she’d taught them to be. Just like Allison, Linde would turn into someone hard to tolerate, let alone love.