“Who?”
“She’s alive.”
I sat upright.
“She?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Rebecca paused.
“Your sister.”
I stopped breathing.
“I don’t have a sister.”
Rebecca’s answer came quietly.
“According to your father’s documents, you do.”
PART 7 — THE SISTER I NEVER KNEW
Her name was Anna Bennett.
Forty-three years old.
Two years older than me.
Living in Brighton.
Less than two hours away.
For forty-one years, I believed I was an only child.
Now a woman with my father’s surname had apparently been living in the same country I had moved to by accident.
Or perhaps not entirely by accident.
“How?” I asked Rebecca.
“Your father had a relationship before he married your mother.”
“Did my mother know?”
“Apparently.”
That hurt in a way I couldn’t explain.
Secrets again.
But this one felt different.
“What happened to Anna?”
“Her mother married another man when Anna was an infant. Your father respected their decision not to disrupt her life.”
