“Stop!” my mother said again, eyes on Kit. “What do I have to threaten you with? Never speaking to you again?”

“You already don’t speak to me. I’m not sure you ever did.”

But my mom was still searching. “Cutting you out of my will! Not giving you Grandma’s ruby ring!”

“I don’t need to be in your will,” Kit said. “I don’t need a ring. I need my only sister”—and here her voice rose to a shout—“to understand what the hell is going on here!”

My mother blinked.

Kit turned back to me. “Remember when I was working for that genealogist?”

I shook my head. “Vaguely.”

“She had that business helping people find their ancestors and trace their family histories?”

I squinted. “Okay. Sort of.” I did not see where this was going.

“She talked me into having my DNA analyzed. She had a bulk discount with a mail-in company. She was sending in several samples, and she had an extra kit, and so I just did it. On a whim.”

I frowned. “I have no memory of that.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Kit said. “I didn’t tell anybody. Why would I? The results weren’t going to be interesting.”

True. We could recite our various heritages in that way that lots of Americans can. Our mom had a little bit of lots of places. Irish, English, German, Canadian, French, and even, rumor had it, some Huron. Our dad’s family, in contrast, was all Norwegian. His Norwegian ancestors had immigrated to an all-Norwegian town in Minnesota where Norwegians just married other Norwegians for generations—until one day, my dad’s dad moved their family to Texas and broke the trend.

“Huh,” I said. “So you, like, sent in your blood?”

“Saliva, actually.”

Then there was a pause.

Kit looked at my mother.

My mother looked at Kit.

“Did you learn anything?” I finally asked.

“Yes,” Kit said.

My mother shook her head at Kit. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do! Because you won’t!”

My mother looked around the room, her eyes stretched and frantic in a way I’d never seen before—searching, it seemed, for some way to stop what was happening. But short of tackling Kit, there wasn’t much my mom could do. “Whatever comes of this,” my mom said to her then, “it’s all on you.”

“Oh,” Kit said, narrowing her eyes, “I think it’s at least a little bit on you.”

Everything about my mother’s expression and posture was pleading. She shook her head, like, Don’t.

Kit tilted her head, like, You leave me no choice.

At that, my mom sucked in her breath and, without another word, walked out of the room, clacking her heels, and leaving her purse and her sandwich behind.

When she was gone, I looked at Kit. “Maybe you shouldn’t tell me,” I said. “Maybe we can agree that you had your reasons, and I’ll just promise not to be mad anymore.”

“You need to know.”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure I do.”

But she nodded. “It’s time.”

I sighed.

“When the results came back, they were surprising.”

I could not even fathom how something as random as this could have driven such a rift between my mom and Kit. “Surprising how?”

“You know how proud Dad is of his Norwegian-ness?”

“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?”