A heavy silence settled over the kitchen. My father finally leaned forward, his elbows on the table.

"Fine. You were two years old. Your birth parents..." He hesitated, glancing at my mother as if asking for permission.

"They died," my mother finished softly. "There was a car accident in the neighborhood."

"At night," my father added.

"Yes, at night," she echoed. "You two were in the back seat, crying your eyes out. The only other one was a woman in the driver's seat, and she... well, she didn't look great."

"To say the least," he added, nodding softly.

"You took us?" Sam asked, her expression unreadable.

My mother rushed to answer. "There was no other family, and you probably would've been split up in the system.. We... we couldn't let that happen."

"Of course not," Sam replied. I turned my head toward her.

"We wanted you. We couldn't have children of our own."

"Yeah," my father chimed in. "We tried and tried over and over again, but..."

"Of course you did," Sam said, looking at my father.

My mother finished the sentence for him. "But nothing happened."

"That explains a lot," Sam said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

My father shot her a death stare.

"Do we have anything of hers?" I asked quietly. "Pictures? Newspaper clippings?"

My parents looked at each other, feigning ignorance.

Sam scoffed.

I turned to her. "You're taking this weirdly well."

"Surprise, surprise!" she said, waving her hands like a clown.

I ignored her and took a long sip of wine.

My father sighed, pushed back from the table, and trudged out of the room. "I'll be... well, you know where."

And then we waited, the air thick with everything left unsaid.