Page 79 of Exile and Embrace

She shrugs, picking at her nails. “I don’t know, honestly. He never told me what really happened between the two of them, and she didn’t like to talk about it either. Our friendship changed a lot after she was with your father.”

“Should I ask her about him? I keep running into dead ends. He talks about someone he dated in high school and university, which would be my mom. It seems like they had a lot of falling outs in the relationship.”

Aunt Courtney clears her throat. Her hands drop to her lap, and she takes a deep breath. “I really shouldn’t be the one to tell you this, but I doubt anyone else is ever going to.”

My stomach twists in tight knots as my feet drop to the ground, and I sit forward. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dad didn’t date your mom in high school. He never even met her until he went to college.”

“That’s impossible. That would mean… No. I’ve seen pictures of me with my mom as a baby.”

The oxygen is sucked out of the atmosphere as I lean forward. None of this makes sense.

I’ve got dozens of pictures of me with Mom while I was growing up.

But have you seen any picture with of you two at the hospital?

I used to ask Mom about it when I was younger. Back then, she said that she was so excited to hold me that she didn’t think about getting a picture taken.

She would tell me that I was perfect. That she had been so wrapped up in staring at my little face that no other thoughts occurred to her.

Except now my aunt is telling me my father didn’t meet the woman claiming to be my mother until after I was already on the way. Maybe even after I was already born.

It was all a lie. My whole life is a lie.

Aunt Courtney gives me a sad smile. “She was around because she was friends with your father. He would come down for long weekends to visit you. He would bring her with him.”

“My mother’s not my mother?”

The earth falls out from beneath my feet. Bile rises in my throat as I put my head between my knees and try not to throw up.

I look up at Aunt Courtney, my vision blurring as tears gather. “This isn’t possible. This has to be some sick joke. I know that he wasn’t a good man, but he wouldn’t spend my entire life lying to me about who my mother was.”

I remember feeling like I wasn’t love. Like I didn’t belong. An outcast.

Zoe had admitted more than once that she did too.

This entire time my whole life has been a lie.

My dad and the woman I’ve called mother made sure that I would never find out the truth.

Was Dad plotting this from the beginning?

Is that why he brought Mom home on school breaks, even when they weren’t dating yet?

Aunt Courtney clears her throat. “I know this is a shock, but your dad did love you. Very much. He might not have wanted you at first—what teenager would want a child—but once you were here, you could see the love in his eyes every time he looked at you.”

Even though I knew that my father’s journals were unreliable and frantic, I didn’t think that he would leave out something as big as my mom not being my birth mom.

A thousand different words are on the tip of my tongue, but they all disappear the moment I open my mouth.

My jaw snaps shut, the world still spinning around me.

After a moment, I sit back and stare up at the sky. The shock gives way to a numbness that consumes me.

When I look back at Aunt Courtney, she looks like her heart is breaking.

She shouldn’t have to be the one to tell me the truth about my life. My mom or dad should have told me.

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