She blinked a few times and gulped. Then her face crumpled as the tears started. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders hitched as she cried silently.
I grabbed a stool and forced her to sit. She laid her head on the surface of the worktable and continued to cry with heart-wrenching sobs. I rubbed her back but felt completely useless. I rifled through my purse and found a packet of tissues and shoved one into her hand.
I couldn’t believe it. After a lifetime of not knowing, this girl finally had a chance to meet her father. And now he was gone. And her mother was dying, too. How could anyone survive that much pain?
My heart broke for Abraham, too. What a happy shock it must’ve been to find out he had a daughter after all these years. At the same time, I felt a spurt of anger for Anandalla’s mother. How could that woman have kept them both in the dark for so many years?
And I suddenly realized this must’ve been what Abraham had been talking about the night of the Covington opening. “Life is good, Brooklyn,” he’d said, hugging me. “I didn’t think it could get any better, but it can.”
At the time, I thought he’d been referring to the overwhelming success of the exhibition. Now I realized he’d been talking about his daughter. It was so unfair.
Anandalla’s sobs echoed in the room and reached right inside me. As always, no one cried alone when I was nearby. I wiped my damp cheeks as I put my hand on her arm.
“I’m so sorry, Anandalla,” I said. “He was a good man and I know he would’ve gone to any lengths to find you if he’d known. I-I don’t know what else to say. It’s just a tragedy.”
Anandalla sat up, took in a big breath and let it out. She hopped off the stool and absently pulled at the cuffs of her jacket. “Yeah. It sucks.”
“That pretty much sums it up,” I said.
After a moment, she blurted, “You can call me Annie.”
“Annie?”
“My mom tried to be Hindu for a while, so that’s where I got the name.”
“There was a lot of that going around back in the day.”
She snickered. “Yeah. After a few years, she went back to being a legal secretary and I’ve been Annie ever since.”
“I like the name Annie.”
“Thanks. So I guess I’m going to be an orphan,” she said with a chuckle, but it set off a fresh bout of tears and another round of heavy sobs.
I pulled her into my arms and held her. After a few minutes, she stopped sobbing but began to gasp with heavy jerks as she tried to catch her breath.
“Easy,” I said. “Take it slow.” I patted her back. Her breathing slowed, deepened, softened.
Finally, she stepped away. “I’ll be okay.”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “I’d be a complete disaster.”
“Denial helps. I’m hoping it’ll kick in any minute now.”
“Well, I can promise you one thing.”
She dabbed the tissue along her wet temple. “Yeah? What?”
“You’ll never be an orphan. Not while you’ve got the Fellowship around you.”
“The what?”
I sighed. “I guess your mother never told you about that, either.”
She took a defensive step back. I was making an educated guess that her mother had kept Abraham from her because of his connection to the commune and Guru Bob. To an outsider, Guru Bob had often been mistaken for a cult leader. But he wasn’t, just as his followers weren’t held captive and hypnotized into drinking Kool-Aid.
“What exactly didn’t my mother tell me?” Annie asked as she swiped her eyes dry with her knuckles. Some of her Goth eye makeup smeared across her cheek and I handed her another tissue.
“I could try to explain but it would take hours.” I grabbed my bag. “Why don’t I show you instead?”
The three hundred or so assorted family and friends still partying at the town hall were overwhelmed by the news that Abraham had a daughter. But never let it be said that the members of the Fellowship for Spiritual Enlightenment and Higher Artistic Consciousness couldn’t rise to the occasion and welcome a newcomer into the fold.
Literally.
They closed in, encircling Annie in a warm, loving, sugary sweet human sandwich as they plied her with good wine and platefuls of delectable treats, then began peppering her with nosy questions and sentimental stories.
After twenty minutes, Annie was able to catch my eye. I almost laughed at her unmasked look of sheer terror. She was in serious danger of frying from happy face overload. I took pity on her and worked my way through the crowd to rescue her, but I was too late. My mother had cleverly intervened. She assured everyone they’d have their chance for a one-on-one heart-to-heart with Annie, then tucked her firmly under her wing and whisked her away to our house.
It was pretty much guaranteed I was about to inherit a third sister. I needed another sibling the way I needed a sixth toe. Or a twelfth toe. You know, an extra one on each foot. Never mind.