My middle brother, Anthony. He’s a lawyer like Dad. The loudest and most obnoxious of us three kids. Now he was playing true to form, stomping around complaining that there was never beer in the house, and that this family powwow better not take longer than an hour, because he had dinner reservations at Rasika at eight, and did we know how hard those were to get?
As usual, my oldest brother, Martin, told him to shut up. Martin works in finance. Real estate investment banking. He has repeatedly tried to explain what he does, but my eyes always glaze over when he launches into the benefits of maximizing liquidity through joint-venture recapitalization and tax-syndication equity. Are you still speaking English? I want to ask. A similarly glazed expression creeps over his face when I prattle on about how you can’t read Balzac without applying Roland Barthes’s semiotic code and accepting the plurality of the text. It’s safe to say we have different interests. Fortunately, Martin and I really like each other.
Now he plunked himself down next to me on the sofa. “Sis? You okay? You look like hell.”
“Martin, please.” My mother.
“Fine, but seriously, what’s up? Why the sudden summit? And why isn’t Sis talking?”
I stared pointedly at my father, waiting for him to speak.
He cleared his throat. “Your sister got some news today.” Dad’s voice was low, soothing. The voice he must have cultivated to command respect in the courtroom. I rarely heard him use it at home. “It’s news she wasn’t expecting, and that frankly your mother and I weren’t expecting. And it leads to some questions, and to a conversation best had as a family.”
My mother nodded. Martin leaned forward, frowning. Even Tony stopped pacing and sat down.
“Caroline got an X-ray today. And it revealed”—Dad patted his neck—“it revealed right here—”
“It revealed this,” I snapped, and held my phone out to Martin. He examined the photo, used his fingers to zoom in and out a few times.
“What is it?”
“My neck.”
He drew the screen closer to his face and squinted. “Your neck?”
Tony leaned over and grabbed the phone. “But what’s that?” He pointed toward the lower left corner of the screen.
“That would appear to be a bullet.”
Both my brothers looked up at me as if I were insane.
Dad attempted to regain control of the conversation. “It is a bullet.” He swooped down and took the phone. “And I’m sorry, we are so sorry”—he gestured at my mom—“that you’re finding out this way. We didn’t know it was there. But we did know . . .” He took a deep breath. “We did know that you were shot. When you were three years old.”
Silence. Then Tony spoke. “Where? How?”
My mother crossed the room, knelt in front of me, and took my hands. “Before you came to us. Before you came to be our beautiful angel girl.” A tear slid down her cheek.
I still didn’t understand. “Before I came to you? What are you talking about—before I came to you? Dad said, when I was three. I’d been here for three years.”
“Ohhh.” Martin exhaled the word slowly. “Was that why, Mom?”
She ignored him, kept her eyes fixed on mine. “We adopted you, Caroline. Your parents had—had died. We promised to love you and raise you as our own. And we have. We do.” She squeezed my hands tightly. “You’ll have so many questions, I know. We’ll do our best to answer them. But you need to understand: within this room, within this family, nothing changes. Nothing. You are our daughter. You are their sister. Period.”
She shot my brothers a fierce look that meant Say something.
Martin cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly on the sofa to face me. “Right. Absolutely. Nothing changes.” He glanced at Tony for support.
“Sure, right.” Tony sat blinking incredulously. “I haven’t thought about all this in ages, to be honest. We were so little when you came. But, Mom and Dad, I have to say, this is a hell of a way to break it to Sis—”
“You knew?” I stared at him. “And you?” I turned to Martin.
Of course they had. I quickly did the math. Tony would have been seven, Martin already nine, when I arrived.
Does it sound strange to say that at that precise moment this felt like the more painful betrayal? Not the shock of learning—at thirty--seven—that I was adopted, that I was not and had never been who I’d thought I was. But that my brothers had known and kept it from me. They had kept a secret from me, kept it so long they had nearly forgotten it themselves. Then again—Jesus—they were not really my brothers.
I began to shake.
My father reached for me.
But I was lurching backward, scrambling over the top of the sofa, then running, desperate to get out of that room.
? ? ?
I SPENT THE next two hours locked in my old bathroom. I threw up, then sat shivering on the edge of the bathtub, a towel wrapped around my shoulders.
From downstairs I could hear noises, footsteps as people moved from room to room. I imagined my mother crying, and my brothers calling home to their wives, explaining that a family crisis was under way and they would be late. Actually, that was an interesting point—did their wives know about my history? Did everyone in this family know except me?
I searched my memory. Nothing stood out. My childhood had felt normal, or as normal as I suppose anyone’s ever does. I did think now to question the lack of baby pictures. Above the fireplace in the room I had just fled stood a row of silver frames, snapshots of family milestones. My parents’ wedding picture, my brothers’ weddings, a triple frame to hold portraits of each of my brothers and me at our respective college graduations. On the left side of the mantel, Anthony and Martin were both displayed as plump, bald babies in christening gowns. My mother had brushed me off when I’d asked where my own baby photo was: “Third-child syndrome. I was too busy chasing your brothers to snap pictures of you.”
Now I felt like an idiot.
Outside the bathroom door someone moved, and then came a knock.
“Feel like talking?”
Martin. I frowned at the door.