“Yes,” I said. Anybody who’d known my dad five minutes knew that.
“Well,” Kit said, taking a breath. “This lab breaks down the results by particular regions.”
“Okay,” I said.
Kit went on. “My results came back with everything you’d expect from Mom: England, Ireland, Western Europe—exactly what we already knew. But I also have Italy and Greece.” She checked my expression.
I shrugged. “So?”
“Guess what I don’t have? Scandinavian.”
I puffed out a little laugh at the idea: Kitty Jacobsen didn’t have any Scandinavian.
But she just crossed her arms and waited for me to catch up. “I don’t have any Scandinavian in my ethnic heritage.”
Now I frowned. I shook my head. “That can’t be right.”
“Think about it,” Kit said.
I couldn’t think about it. My brain refused to think about it.
“If Dad is fully, or at least mostly, Norwegian,” Kit said, “and I don’t have any Norwegian in my genetic profile…” She waited.
I shook my head. “That’s crazy. That’s wrong.”
Kit’s eyes were very serious. “It’s not wrong.”
“They must have mixed up the samples!” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” Kit said. “So we sent another sample. Same results.”
“This can’t be right. This is insane.”
“Next, I confronted Mom about it. At the Fourth of July party three years ago.”
The conversation was starting to feel like a rickety old mine cart on a downhill track. “And what did Mom say?” I asked.
“What didn’t she say? She told me I was crazy and wrong and spoiled and selfish. She told me to back off, and it was none of my business. She told me to drop the whole subject and throw the test results in the trash. She told me I’d ruined her life. Then she plastered a big, false, Stepford smile on her face and walked out to the backyard to continue hosting her pool party.”
I blinked at Kit.
“And that was the moment when I knew for sure. Our dad is not my father.”
Twelve
I RUBBED MY eyes. “That can’t be right.”
“I’m telling you,” Kit said. “It is. The minute I knew, I knew.”
She had a patient look, like she didn’t really have to convince me. Like the facts would get me there, and all she had to do was wait.
“But!” I protested. This was impossible. “You have his same smile! And his same sense of humor! And you both love sailing! And The Matrix! And popcorn!” Case closed!
Kit gave me a look. “Everybody loves popcorn. That’s not genetic.”
“There has to be a mistake.”
“Mom was livid that night. She denied everything, but she did it so viciously, I knew I was right. I, of course, drank the entire margarita machine after that, because that’s what I used to do back then, and then I pushed her into the pool—not my finest moment. When she climbed out, sopping wet, I followed her and got in her face until she finally told me the truth.”
I waited a long time before I said, “What was the truth?”
Kit looked right into my eyes. “I was a mistake.”
I did not look away.
She went on, “I was an ‘unfortunate accident.’ With someone who was not Dad.”
All the air leaked out of my lungs. I felt like a punctured tire.
When my chest started to sting, I sucked in a big breath. “Does Dad know?”
Kit shook her head.
I tried to put the pieces together. Our mom knew, of course. Kit knew, and had for three years. Now I knew. Everybody except our dad.
A long silence. Then at last I said, “That’s why you left.”
Kit nodded. “I told her she had to choose. Either she told the truth, or I was gone.”
“That’s a tough choice,” I said.
Kit’s eyes snapped to mine. “Are you taking her side?”
“I’m just saying that’s tough.”
“Not for Linda,” Kit said. “She kicked me out in five seconds flat.” For just a second, I saw Kit’s expression sag—before she raised her shoulders, stood up a little taller, and said, “Whatever.”
“Just think,” I said. “She carried that secret all those years.”
Kit nodded.
“It must have terrified her to be confronted with it.”
“That’s why she wanted me gone,” Kit said. “I’m the evidence.”
“Who was the guy?” I asked.
Kit shook her head. “She wouldn’t say.”
“Are you going to tell Dad?”
“Never!”
“But you told me.”
“I told you because I needed you to understand.”
It was a lot to process. My head was swirling. “Why did you wait so long?”
Kit sighed. “I kept thinking she’d tell you, but she didn’t. I kept thinking she’d reach out and apologize to me, but she didn’t. At first, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to get through rehab and that whole first year of being sober. Then I was getting the Beauty Parlor going, and the time kind of flew. But the truth is, I was really, really, really angry. I thought I would never want to see any of you again.”
“But I didn’t do anything!”
“No,” Kit said. “But you got to be Dad’s real daughter—and I didn’t. I know this sounds crazy, but it felt like you’d stolen him from me.”
“But I didn’t!”
“My brain knew that,” Kit said. “But my heart was a different story.”
I tried to put myself in Kit’s shoes. “You were just mad at everybody.”
“Everybody. Everything. It stirred up a lot for me. Mainly about how I always thought she loved you better. Turns out, I was right.”
“She does not love me better,” I said, but now I wondered—and not, actually, for the first time.
Kit shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s hopeless with her. But I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
“So the crash made you miss me?”
“The crash made me want to stop wasting time.”
“So you came home to see me.”
“But then I just couldn’t explain. It didn’t feel like my secret to share. I wanted to give her a chance to say something, at least.”
“Why today?” I asked. It was a fair question. She’d been here two weeks. Why come storming in now?
“I ran into Piper McAllen at Starbucks this morning. Do you remember her?”
I shook my head.
Kit shrugged. “A mean girl from my grade, now a show-offy mother of two. She told me everybody says I went crazy and was put into a home. She said that to my face! In Starbucks! Apparently, the whole world just thinks I lost my marbles. And that was it for me. I was like, We’re done here. Time to set the record straight. I left my latte on the counter and stormed over.”
I was about to suggest maybe Kit should go find our mom—she’d left her purse here, after all, and wouldn’t get too far without it—when there was a knock at the door. When it pushed open, it was our dad.
In the instant I saw him I felt a rush of sympathy. He was my mother’s high school sweetheart. They got married the summer after they graduated, and Kit was born a few months later. My dad had been all set to go to college in California, but he joined the marines instead. Of course, my mom gave up college altogether.
Neither of them had gotten quite what they’d hoped for.
These were facts I’d known for a long time, but they were only part of the story. What would my dad think now, if he knew everything? Would it change how he felt about his family? About Kit? About my mom? Would he leave if he knew? I couldn’t imagine our family without him. He was the best thing about it.
Right then, I made a mental vow I would never tell him.
“Hey, girls,” my dad said then, as he stepped into the room. “Look what I found!”
Out from behind him, of all people, stepped Chip.
*
CHIP LOOKED LIKE hell, just like my mother had threatened.
Even so, just seeing that face of his gave me jolt of pleasure. It was like some kind of Pavlovian response. See Chip; feel a thrill. Whether I wanted to or not. Whether he looked like hell or not. Whether he deserved it or not. It was quite a realization, and it reminded me of what Kit had just said. My brain knew one thing, but my heart was a different story.
Plus, my mother had spent our lunch hour scaring the hell out of me.