The Names They Gave Us(87)

Her total obsession with abstinence or at least information about safe sex. What if it’s not just a Christian nurse’s perspective? What if it’s from her own experience?

Your mom told me, Tara said to me, about giving birth and everything.

It can’t be. This cannot be. If she had a baby as a teenager, I would obviously know. I know her better than anyone. Or do I just think that because she knows me better than anyone?

Do I know nothing?

There was a man she loved before my father; she told me that.

You’ve never mentioned him, I said. It was a hundred years ago, she replied.

“You ready?” Bryan’s voice comes from the doorway. The first time he saw me at Daybreak, he nearly jumped back. But not because we ran into each other, like I thought. He was startled to be looking at my face. To be seeing my mom’s face.

I look up without raising my head. Just my eyes, leveling him.

He’s adding it up in his mind: me by the bookshelf, holding a photograph. When his eyes widen, I know he’s hit the equals sign.

“This is some kind of joke, right? It’s a joke?” I wave the frame at him.

The gulp in his throat is nearly audible. “I, um. I think it would be best if we got you to the hospital, and you can talk to your parents.”

All the rumors that there was a pregnant counselor years ago. That Bryan was involved. The way he looks at her in this photo. There is absolutely no way.

I don’t budge, not even the tiniest facial muscle or twitch of my finger. I stare, completely unmoved by his suggestion. No way, man. I will stand here until I stop feeling so utterly, impressively lied to. “Was it yours? The baby?”

“I . . . Look. Lucy. It’s—it’s a long story, and it was a very long time ago.” He squeezes his eyes shut as if he’s trying to disappear. “For the record, I did tell her. I told her you would find out sooner or later. It was just hard for her to—”

“Yes or no,” I snap.

“Yes,” he answers, almost reflexively.

“And she miscarried? Or what?”

He looks only momentarily puzzled before his face softens. “No. The baby was healthy. Beautiful. She was adopted.”

“Wait. What?” I feel physically jolted, my worldview shifted one degree to the left. Everything I see looks a little different. My mom had another daughter. A baby that would be my half sister? Not a baby, now.

A grown-up half sister somewhere. Half sister. Sister. No. How can that be true when I have gone seventeen years without hearing a word of this? Without even knowing her name. When I spent half my childhood wishing for a sibling, until I was old enough to realize that asking my mom for one made her sad. “And has my mom seen her since then?”

“No, she hasn’t. Look, let’s get on the road, okay?”

Even with Bryan pushing the speed limit, I have about an hour to process this news. I calm down just enough to do mental math, arms crossed and rapping my fingers. My mom was sixteen; now she’s forty-five. That makes the baby twenty-nine now. My half sister is twenty-nine. Does she look like my mom at all? Like me? Or more like Bryan, his dark skin and slender cheeks and lanky build? I bet she’s beautiful. Under my breath, I laugh darkly, but Bryan says nothing. Why wouldn’t my parents tell me?

But the moment I truly consider this question . . . of course I know why. As a young girl, I would have been upset to learn my mom had another daughter but we don’t know where. And by the time I was old enough to understand, it would have felt shocking, like a betrayal.

Which it does.

Really, though, does it matter? That’s what I keep wondering. We’re barreling toward my mother, who is hospitalized with cancer complications. Is it that big a deal that her younger years were different than I had imagined them? That her life is more complex than I thought. Harder. So what?

“Did you love her?” I can’t bring myself to look at Bryan, but I ask loudly enough that he can certainly hear over the music and open windows. “My mom?”

In my peripheral vision, I see him glance over to gauge my reaction. “I adored her. We were together for a long time.”

This, I suppose, is not a shock. Bryan is a good man, smart and patient. And nothing is a shock compared to having a long-lost sibling.

“Was it a closed adoption?”

“Yes.”

“So, you have no idea where she is now?” It’s a question with a simple answer, but he remains quiet. I twist in my seat while he attempts to strangle the steering wheel. “Oh my gosh. Do you know?”

“She could legally reach out and look for us once she turned eighteen. But she didn’t, until she was twenty-five. She was getting married, and—”

“But my mom hasn’t seen her, right?” I feel sick. I turn my face to the open window, gasping in the air that pushes against my face. It’s poisonous, how proprietary I feel toward her.

“Lucy, this is . . . not a comfortable position for me to be in. I shouldn’t be the one who discusses this with you.” When I glance over, he looks tortured.

“Well, someone needs to tell me. I just want to know and get over it before I have to deal with her being hospitalized.”

My point is taken. “No, your mom hasn’t seen her. When I told Marianne I was open to hearing from our daughter if it happened, she said she couldn’t. She had to leave that part of her life all the way behind.”