that feels like better than most, I don’t interfere. Instead, I walk to the kitchen and get her a glass of water and some more tissues.
I feel bad for her, this woman I barely know, but I’m also curious as to how exactly she ended up on my couch. Did Angela tell her where I live? And if so, why?
Her sobs wind down to occasional soft whimpers by the time I get back to the family room, so I silently extend the tissues and the glass of water.
She takes both with a murmured “thanks,” then doesn’t say anything else until I’m sitting next to her. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispers.
“It’s okay.” I offer an encouraging smile. “How can I help?”
She sniffs. “I didn’t want to tell you this way.”
Every nerve ending in my body goes on red alert, and if I had antennae, they’d be standing straight up, too. “Tell me what?”
“I’m—I’m—” Tears start to fill her eyes again.
Meanwhile, my heart rate is so jacked up, I might start hovering over the couch. I stand, needing to do something, anything, at the moment as nausea climbs its way up my throat.
Please God, don’t let this be another one of Karl’s cast-offs. Please God, don’t let me have one of his ex-girlfriends sitting on my couch right now, about to pour her heart out to me. I can take a lot, but I’m pretty damn sure I can’t take that.
Sarah gets herself together enough to lift her chin and look me square in the eyes.
And my whole body goes cold in one of those moments when you know what’s going to come next will hurt—a lot.
“I’m your…your…your…sister.”
Chapter Thirty
And just like that, the already shaky foundation beneath my favorite pair of high-heeled boots dissolves, and I collapse onto the couch beside her.
“I’m sorry?” I must have misheard her. “What did you say? You’re my—”
“Sister.” She starts crying again. “I’m your sister. That’s how I knew where to find you, because Aunt Maggie was my aunt, too.”
And then the sobs start up all over again, but I’m too flummoxed to comfort her. To be honest, I’m too flummoxed to do anything but sit here with my mouth open and my head on the verge of exploding.
Because if she’s my sister and Aunt Maggie was her aunt, too—and that smarts, considering that means my aunt lied to me about something this hugely important—and it’s obvious that she’s younger than I am by at least five years and maybe even more…
Okay.
I take a deep breath.
Okay, okay, okay. I can deal with this. I can totally deal with the fact that my father is a dirty, lying cheat.
I blow out the breath, and that’s when it happens. A sob that I was totally unprepared for comes out right along with it. Because no matter how much I want to deny it, no matter how much I want to pretend that Sarah is just pulling a cruel, cruel trick—or worse, is some kind of con artist—there is one thing I can’t ignore.
From the moment I first saw her, I thought Sarah looked familiar. And now that I’m staring at her in the middle of my very bright family room, I realize why that was. From the tips of her streaked brown hair to her ocean-blue eyes to the tiny little cluster of birthmarks on the side of her neck, she looks exactly like my father did when he was young.
All those times he lectured me about the sanctity of marriage even during hardship… All the times my mother told me that I needed to go back to Karl because a woman belonged with her husband no matter what… They hadn’t been talking about me at all. They’d been talking about themselves.
They’d wanted me to stay with Karl so they could feel better about themselves—about what they’d done and the choices they’d made.
And all the time my father had been lecturing me on what a good man Karl was, about how adultery didn’t have to mean the end of a marriage—all the time my mother had told me to wear sexier underwear and more fucking makeup—they’d been carrying around this secret.
The secret that not only did my father cheat on my mother with at least one woman—though my very angry gut says there were probably a hell of a lot more through the years—but that he fathered a child with her. And he kept that child a secret for more than two decades.
What the hell am I supposed