"I'm all ears," I said to my parents, unaware of the crackdown that was about to happen. My mother had put some food and drink on the table to sugarcoat things and my father was looking at my twin sister and me in the same way as he looks at a store window — interested but not quite. He had never come to grips with me, which was no skin off his nose. My sister, on the other hand, was more like the son he had dreamed of but never had.

So, there we were. My thicket-haired father and my compliant mother were about to reveal the unvarnished truth at the kitchen table.

"So what is it? I asked. My mind had warned me off, but I started the conversation anyway. "Mom?"

"What we're about to tell you, girls, has been in the back of our minds for years, but—"

My father stopped her by raising his hand. Just a little was enough for him to silence her. He removed the napkin slung over his shoulder and wiped his mouth with it before beginning to speak. My mother looked down at her cup of coffee and my sister stopped scrolling through her phone.

If I hadn't known him better, I'd have said he was playing for time, but knowing him, I was sure he was just being himself. He considered himself a man of the world simply because he had served in the Navy for a few years. He had never actually sailed beyond the Atlantic, though.

My sister and I stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something.

"Let's just get this over with," he said.

My sister and I frowned question marks at each other.

"You two are adopted."

"What? "I asked in awe. But my sister unexpectedly burst out laughing. "Wait, you just said you two are not our real parents?" I asked, not realizing that my jaw had dropped.

My sister took a guzzle of wine to calm herself down. "Dad, is this one of your fake stories? Just know it's no funny."

"Like it or not , this is a real one."

My mother flinched, but my father remained unfazed. "We didn’t think it mattered," he said gruffly.

"Didn’t think it mattered?" Sam shrieked, nearly sloshing wine over the rim of her glass. "Oh, that’s rich! So what, we were just supposed to go our whole lives not knowing we had another family out there?"

My father’s jaw tightened. "Watch your tone."

I pressed my fingers against my eyelids, trying to stave off the headache building up behind them. "Just… tell us the truth. All of it."

My mother exhaled shakily. "We wanted to. So many times. But we didn’t know how."

"Try starting at the beginning," I said flatly.

(To be continued)