Page 76 of Make The Cut

“No, I’d never pick up your calls. Especially not from your dad.” She looks affronted by my assumption. “I just listened to the voicemail that he left…”

I pick up my phone and play the voicemail from my father.

“A sister?” I say out loud, trying to process my thoughts. Not just a second wedding. But asister?

I guess I knew all those years ago that his mistress had come to the house because she was pregnant. But I’d never known what happened after, and because I never saw the baby—never asked about them or about my father’s mistress—I assumed that nothing had come of it. That maybe she miscarried, or that the child just disappeared into the ether just because I didn’t think about him or her.

But apparently not. Apparently, there’s a girl a few years younger than me, who shares my DNA. Someone I could’ve known all my life, but never did. Someone who could’ve commiserated about our father, who could’ve been in my life, who would’ve been myfamily—

“Are you okay?” Poppy says softly.

“No,” I say, and my tone levels all the brute force I can into that one word, even at the wrong target, even at Poppy when it should be aimed at my father. “He never told me I had a sister.”

“Maybe he didn’t know either,” she suggests.

“Damn it, Poppy, that makes it evenworse. And she’s okay with this? With seeing her half-brother she’s never met before at her father’s wedding?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know her,” she says, her voice ratcheting up a notch.

“You suspect something,” I say, hearing the panicked defensiveness in her voice. “Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.” She takes a deep breath. “And even if I did, it would be a crazy suspicion—”

“Poppy, please just tell me whatever it is that you’re thinking even if it sounds crazy.”

“Fine.” She blows out a long inhale. “I think I know your half-sister. I think she’s Sasha. As in, my friend from work.”

“Oh, my God.”

A realization, no matter how implausible it may seem, clicks together in my mind.

Sashais my stalker.

She’s the one who’s been trying to get close to me all these months.

She’s the one who was at the costume party. But I never suspected it because I just thought she was Poppy’s friend, not someone I might know.

“What?” she says, leaning across the table.

“You’re right. Sasha is my sister. And she’s the girl who’s been stalking me these past few months.”

Poppy arches an eyebrow. “Where did thestalkerthing come from? Why didn’t you tell me you had a stalker?”

“I didn’t want you to feel threatened by the competition.”

“This is not the time for flirting or making bad jokes.” Her lips purse into a thin line.

“Fine, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry, and it was a weird thing that I thought would blow over, and—I was hoping that if I didn’t tell you, it wouldn’t come true.”

Poppy reaches for my hand. “I’m here for whatever weird secrets or problems you have, you know.”

“I know.” I do know. But right now, it feels like everything I’ve worked so hard to shove under the floorboards and leave in the past is resurfacing, and I can’t handle that. “I know you are, but right now–Right now I just need to be alone.”

The truth is, I can’t see past my past right now. And I don’t know if I ever can.

“I’m going to go then,” she says quietly. “I’ll see you at the Grammys.”

I take a deep breath and stand up as she leaves. “This isn’t over.”

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