“My what?”

Becca froze mid-lean, dropping the photograph like it stung her.

Yeah, this was going to be fun. I rubbed at my cry-swollen eyes and pointed at the floor.

“Pull up some rug, Bec, I have a story to tell you.” She looked at me like I’d lost my mind, still frozen in her awkward position. “Sit,” I said.

“I don’t have a brother,” she said. “I don’t have—” She shook her head and smirked at me. “Seriously?”

“Please, sit down,” I said again, needing a calm heart-to-heart and quickly realizing that opportunity had come and gone. My eyes filled with tears again—how that was possible, I didn’t know.

Becca scoffed and stared at me, bracing herself on the wall as if she needed proof of reality. “You’re serious.”

Her gaze dropped to the photos on the floor, and I watched a mixed look of horror and hurt cross her face as the family resemblance registered. I pushed to my feet, her shock pushing away the rest of my day. I needed to make this okay for her. I tucked an errant piece of longer hair behind her ear and smoothed the rest, my heart thumping loudly in my ears.

“Baby, we need to talk.”

“You think?” she said, tears thickening her voice. “You—did I miss something? Like you being pregnant, maybe? I mean—how do you have another kid my age?”

“He’s not your age,” I said. My tongue felt thick and heavy. “He’s twenty-six.”

Her gaze shot up to meet mine, and it broke my heart.

“Twenty-six,” she said, just above a whisper. “What’s his name?”

It felt odd to answer that question, it still being so new to me. “Seth,” I said, wrapping my brain around the sound of it.

She nodded and glanced back down. “And—I didn’t know I had a brother named Seth because—?”

I knelt to scoop everything up. “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Becca. Let’s go sit down—”

“No.”

I stood up, my arms full of photos I was itching to look through again myself.

“What?”

She blinked tears free and whisked them away as if embarrassed to let me see it. Like I’d never seen her cry before. A bitter laugh came out like a cough.

“Lizzy is waiting outside in the car, Mom. I just came in to change clothes. And find you asleep—on the floor with Harley—clearly on a crying hangover. And now I have a brother?” she said, her voice progressively louder. “What the fuck, Mom?”

“Becca!” I exclaimed, stunned by the sound of that word coming from her.

“Really?” she said, tilting her head in a very Ruthie-like manner, gesturing in circles at the photos at her feet. “My language is what disturbs you most in all that?”

Hide your crazy.

The pounding in my skull stepped it up a couple of beats. “Go tell Lizzy to come back in an hour. I’m sorry this is dumped on you like this, but that’s the kind of day it’s been.”

She widened her eyes. “The kind of day? I just saw you at the library a couple of hours ago, Mom. Delivering books. Talking to some lady. How do you go from that to—this?” She pointed to the mess in my arms. “How is this okay?”

“Okay?” I asked. I looked at the floor and back at her. “Look at me. Do I look okay to you?”

“But why now?” she said, waving her arms. “How could you not tell me my whole life that I have—where is he, by the way?”

“I don’t know.”

She laughed as more tears fell. “You don’t know?” She scooped her hair back and let it fall. “Really?”

“Really,” I echoed. “I never even saw these pictures until today,” I said, irritability bringing my own burn back to my eyes. “My mother—” I took a deep breath and let it go. “My mother had these hidden away.”

Becca’s eyes narrowed, disbelief all over her features. “Why would she do that? Why wasn’t he here? Why would Dad let—”

I was already shaking my head, trying to reach for her but she pulled away. And backed up a step, pointing a finger at me.

“Dad wasn’t the dad, was he?” she breathed.

My throat felt like it was closing up. Nothing was going like I’d hoped. Not that I’d hoped any of it. I’d hidden my life in a box just like my mother had.

“No.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, raking her fingers through her hair. She turned and headed up three steps before turning back to me, disgust contorting her features. “You cheated on Dad?”

“No!” I exclaimed. “It was years before I met your father.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Years before?” she said, bewilderment adding to the gamut of emotions on her face.

Then it cleared. The knit between her eyebrows smoothed as I watched her wheels turn and everything I’d dreaded worked out in her head. She did the math. Nana Mae was right. I should have told her long ago. When she was eight and having a mysterious brother would have been cool, and I wouldn’t be a horrible troll.

“If you had a kid twenty-six years ago,” she said. “You would have been eighteen.”

Oh, my math-challenged baby girl. My chin trembled, but I refused to have yet another breakdown today. I held my head up and tried my best to keep up the parent role, although I was beginning to feel more like the child.

“Seventeen.”

She drew in a shaky breath and shook her head. “You’re such a hypocrite.” With that, she wheeled around and stomped up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” I said, my voice cracking.

“To change my clothes,” she said, disappearing over the top and slamming her door.

“Shit,” I muttered, pressing my palms against my pounding temples. Harley sat on the bottom step, looking upward, and I lowered myself to the one above her. “This went well, don’t you think?” I asked her.

I needed to tell her the whole thing so she’d get it. So she’d understand my choices and my reasons—but who was I kidding? Becca wasn’t going to understand those things. Ever. You had to live it, and even then I wasn’t totally clear on it. And I never wanted her to have to make the decisions I’d made.

Two minutes later, changed into all black—clearly the wardrobe choice of the day—and eyeliner fixed from her momentary emotional slip, Becca came charging down the stairs. Her expression was cold and glazed over.

“I have to go,” she said.

“You’re not leaving right now, Bec,” I said, sitting there with Harley like we were some sort of wall.

“The hell I’m not,” she said, her face never breaking its mask.

Oh, how she knew what buttons to push to piss me off. I rose in one move, and even Harley seemed to catch the mood. She got up and headed out back through her doggie door, not wanting any part of the scene about to ensue.

“I told you we need to talk,” I said.

“I told you I have plans.”

“You don’t tell me anything, Becca,” I said, raising my voice. “And you don’t talk to me this way. As long as you live in my house—”

“Then I won’t,” she said, glaring at me. “I’ll go live with Dad.”

My blood felt like it was on fire. The classic manipulative tool in every divorce kid’s arsenal. She’d never played it before.

“Go ahead,” I said softly. “But be damn sure of your decision, because you only get to use that card with me once.”

Her eyes glazed over again. “Whatever. I don’t care what you say anymore.”

“Becca Ann, I know you’re upset right now,” I said, trying to rein my own anger in. She knew how to light me up and seemed hell-bent on pushing me to the limit. “But you watch your mouth. You are not my equal, young lady. Remember your place.”

“And what is that?” she yelled. “Only child? Second child? Daughter to a lying hypocrite?”

Fire blazed hot in my brain and my hand came up before I could stop it. The smack across her cheek made us both suck in our breaths. I felt like my eyes were as wide as hers as we stared at each other in disbelief, neither of us breathing.

I’d never hit her before. Not like that. Not in anger. She’d gotten swats on her hands or bottom when she was little and being disciplined, but I’d never slapped her like that.

Her eyes filled with tears again as she palmed her cheek, and everything in me broke. The day descended on me with the weight of a tank, crushing any resolve I had left. A sob escaped my throat and I gripped the stairway railing.

“Go,” I choked out, emotion taking me over.

She didn’t move, just stood there, shocked and crying silently, holding her cheek. I shut my eyes and clamped a hand over my mouth, wanting the stairs to open up and swallow me. To take me away somewhere dark where I could come apart in solitude, where I wouldn’t have witnesses and couldn’t wreck anyone else’s lives.

“Leave,” I said through my fingers, my sobs pulling the last bit of energy from me.

Finally, she moved. Slowly, robotically, she stepped around me, sniffling. Walked out the door, closing it behind her with a click.

The silence rang in my ears as I sank to my knees on the steps and let it rip me apart.

• • •

I woke to the sound of the dead bolt clicking into place and opened my eyes. Or tried to. They were so swollen and glued together that it took prying one open with my fingers to do the job. I rubbed it to focus better and hit the button to light up my phone.

Ten minutes after midnight.

“Becca?” I called out, my voice hoarse to my ears.

A hazy form stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Mom? Why are you on the couch?”

I struggled to sit up as my feet were tangled under the afghan, another blanket, and Harley’s back end. Becca’s voice got her attention, however, and she jumped off the couch still groggy, nearly face-planting into the floor. I guessed that as long as a burglar was quiet and didn’t talk, Harley would sleep through it.

“I must have fallen asleep,” I said, pushing myself upright. The side table lamp was on, illuminating the stacks of photos and letters I’d been looking through all evening. Five Dr. Pepper cans were lined up next to them, as well as a bag of chips and a nearly empty package of Oreos I hadn’t even known we had.

“Well, I’m home,” she said, turning back to the stairs.

“I thought you were spending the night at Lizzy’s,” I said, trying to rub both eyes open.

Actually, I didn’t know what she was going to do. My fear of her never coming back home after that escapade had me breathing a sigh of relief that she was standing in the living room.

“Didn’t feel like it,” she said.

Her voice sounded down.

“Come sit down?” I asked.

I heard the sigh I couldn’t really see. “Mom, I’m tired.”

“Just come sit,” I said. She couldn’t possibly be more tired than me. I felt like I’d been to New Zealand and back. By paddleboat. “Please?”

Becca trudged around the couch and landed next to me with a long exhale. She looked my way for what was probably intended to be just a quick glance, but then she did a double take.

“Jesus, Mom, what happened to your eyes?”

“Told you, it was a bitch of a day,” I said. “This is why I don’t cry.”

Her eyes fell on the stack of Seth’s photos next to me, then down to her lap and back at the stack. “Any Oreos left?”

I reached back for the package and shook it. “A few.” I handed it to her and she shoved her hand inside.

“You really just see all that today?” she asked, nodding her chin at the photos.

“Yep.”

“How’d that happen?”

There was still snark in her voice, but a little remorse, too. That was her way of fixing things. Talking around them.

I rubbed at my face, too exhausted to start up the fight again. “Do you want the long version or the summary?”

She met my eyes and then looked away. There was still hurt in her eyes, and my stomach tightened.

“CliffsNotes is fine.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was put up for adoption the second he was born, my fiancé left town, and my parents pretended it never happened. Now the guy is back, I found out he had photographs—today. He said they came from his dad. I approached the dad and he told me they came from my mother.” Becca’s eyebrows rose at my rambling summary, and I gestured toward the pictures on the table. “Hence my raid on Mom’s part of the bookshelf.”

In the dim light, I watched her eyes glisten and she blinked it back, averting her gaze to stare straight ahead.

“Why did you keep all this from me?” she whispered, but I could hear the shake.

I opened my mouth to tell her that it was to protect her, but I realized we were past the point of either one of us believing that.

“It was so before your time, Bec,” I said, the pain and guilt and rawness wrapping around my throat, choking the words as they came out. “A really, really difficult time for me. Something I don’t talk about—with anyone. I guess I hoped you’d never have to know that—”

“That you weren’t perfect?” she said.

“That I made horrible choices,” I said, tears rising in my throat. “You called me a hypocrite and you’re right. I did the very thing I’m begging you not to do, and I was in love and thought it was all okay, and then I had to choose between—” I shut my eyes tight against the words that nearly came out. I was about to say choose between my mother and my love. Oh, holy fuck, no wonder Noah had left me. What I’d convinced myself to be a responsible decision, he’d seen as betrayal. I sucked in a shaky breath. “I had to make choices that I couldn’t take back. Like never knowing my son.”

I felt her eyes on the side of my face, but it was my turn to stare straight ahead. I couldn’t look at my daughter and say these things aloud.

“I never want you to have to make choices like that, Bec,” I said. “Things you can’t undo. Like painting over a mistake—it doesn’t change the mistake underneath.”

“I’m not a painting, Mom,” she said. “And I’m not your personal do-over experiment.”

“I know that.”

“Then quit trying so hard to fix me before I’m broken,” she said, whisking tears off her cheeks. “Okay, so you screwed up and you don’t want me to, I get it, but I’m not you. Let me figure things out for myself.”

I looked at her, trying to be so grown up, trying to process so much information at once.

“That’s really hard to do, baby.”

“Well, give it a shot,” she said, her old sarcasm seeping back in. As annoying as that was, it was a good sign. She sniffled and wiped under her eyes again. “So you were engaged at seventeen?”

The memory of Noah replacing the string with his little ring he’d worked so hard for sent a pang of regret through my core. We could have been a family. You had a family, Jules. Now I’d pushed him away again so he could have one.

“For a little while,” I said, forcing the words out. “He was going to marry me.”

“God, it’s like watching a movie, Mom,” she said. “Like I’ve been in this family all along, the stupid one that didn’t know anything. Do you know how crappy that feels?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, inhaling deep and letting it go. I reached for her hand, and she inched it away. “Becca, I’m sorry. That’s another choice I made, and maybe not the smartest. But it’s not like knowing would have helped you.”

“Who was the guy?” she asked, making my head spin with the direction change. “Wait.” She turned to face me. “Linny’s brother just came back from somewhere. Mr. Ryan was making all that noise over—”

I nodded before she finished. “Yes.”

Her wheels were turning again, and all I could do was hang on.

“That’s him?” she asked. “And that lady at the library—you said it was his fiancée—oh, holy crap.”

“Fun, isn’t it?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

Becca’s gaze landed on the photos again, and she leaned over me to pick one up. One of Seth around thirteen years old, braces on his teeth. “So Nonnie had all this and didn’t tell you?” she asked. “Why?”

A laugh that wasn’t really a laugh but really just exhaustion making noise came out. “That’s the question of the day.”

I looked down at the photo in her hand, and then at her profile. At the crazy hair framing her face, the eyes that had evidently cried the eyeliner off before she’d ever gotten home. Still so innocent and young, no matter how many ways she tried not to be. I took a chance and swung an arm around her, pulling her head over to me.

“Things happen as they’re supposed to, baby girl,” I said, kissing her hair. “I thank God for giving me you.” I heard a sniffle. “And I’m so sorry about earlier.”

I knew that slap would haunt me forever.

“Me too,” came a squeaky response.

I didn’t hold any naïve opinions that all would be rosy, but just for one tiny moment, curled up on the couch with my girl in the middle of the night, I took a deeper breath than I had in a week.