4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Mom doesn’t say anything on the drive home, but her hands are tight on the steering wheel and she refuses to look at me. It feels like she’s shouting. I try a couple of times to bring it up, but she just says, “Later,” her voice tight and brittle.
She parks and walks to the house without a word. We took off so fast after my announcement that she left behind the barely touched casserole dish while she made polite apologies to the Dunns, then ordered me into the car.
She slams the front door on me, but I catch it with my foot and follow her in, almost tripping over her purse. She’s dropped it on the floor instead of setting it on the table.
“Mom,” I say as she disappears down the hallway to her bedroom. “Are we seriously not going to talk about this?”
She shuts her door. Hard.
I slump on the sofa and pull out my phone, refreshing the RootsDNA page. I don’t care that she’s mad, because I’m more and more certain that Mia is right. Mom used a sperm donor and lied about it, and I want to know why I grew up thinking so much of me would always be a mystery when I could have had answers all along.
When Dr. Sandoval gets excited telling a story, his hands help tell it. Mia does it too. And when she’s with Carlos and her fourth oldest brother, Alex, the resemblance is so strong they look like triplets. She laughs exactly like her brother, Daniel.
I don’t laugh like Mom. We don’t move or tell stories the same way. So many times I’ve wondered about my genes, whether the half that belonged to my random dad would explain why I move and laugh the way I do. Do the ways I’m different from Mom belong to my dad or to me alone?
But he wasn’t random. She made an intentional choice about who fathered me. Why lie?
Her bedroom door opens and she appears in the hallway, backlit like a Hollywood director ordered mood lighting for this drama. She stalks toward me, stopping at the end of the hallway, hands balled on her hips.
“Anything you want to tell me?” My question sounds snotty. I don’t care.
“How dare you?”
I sit up straight. “How dare I what? Expect the truth?”
“How dare you humiliate me in front of Robert and his family like that?”
I press my fists into the couch cushions like they’ll somehow anchor me, keep me from flying into bits. “Are you for real right now? I just found out you made up my origin story and you care about appearances?”
“They didn’t deserve to be dragged into this.”
“And I didn’t deserve to find out from an email that my whole life has been a lie!”
She snorts. “You sound like a bad soap opera.”
“Guess who the villain is?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, her voice low and unsteady.
“Because you won’t tell me! Why not give me facts instead of some ridiculous story about a European fling?” I shake my head. That story is so full of holes. “I’m such an idiot. Why would you make all that up instead of telling me you used a sperm donor? Were you embarrassed you couldn’t find anyone who wanted to father a kid with you?”
She sucks in a sharp breath. Good. I hope she feels my words like a gut punch. Maybe the same one I felt when I realized she’d been lying to me—about me—since before I was born.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I continue. “You haven’t been able to get Robert to commit after three years. Your whole career is about selling people fantasies, about the life they’ll have in the houses you dress up with rented furniture. But you can’t pull it off in your own life. You paint all these pictures about who you are with your stupid airbrushed ads. Just be real. Can you even do that?”
She curls her fingers around the edge of the doorjamb, holding it so tightly her knuckles are white. “You have no idea what I’ve done for you and why. And I don’t deserve to be spoken to this way. Apologize.”
I shoot up so fast that I wobble like I’m on the Sandovals’ boat on Lake Adobe for a second. “You know what I’m sorry for? Feeling so different from you my whole life and ever wishing I was more like you.” I brush past her to get to the stairs.
“Kendall . . .”
But I ignore her, and she doesn’t call my name again.
Monday I wake up to an empty house. Mom’s car is already gone and she’s left a note on the fridge under a “Fake It ’Til You Make It” magnet telling me to drink the breakfast smoothie inside. Instead, I dump it into the sink and don’t bother washing it down.
I text Mom on the way to Mia’s house after school to tell her I’m sleeping over. She answers with sounds great, honey . We’ve clearly entered “Pretend there’s no problem until the problem goes away” territory.
I’m not going away. This is never going away.
When Mia’s brother Adrian shows up with Mia’s two-year-old nephew, Maverick, Mia disappears downstairs to play with him. I take advantage of the quiet in her room to open RootsDNA again. There’s a “Live Chat” option, and I click it.
RootsDNA : Hi. I’m Liz. How can I help you today?
Me: I’m trying to verify how accurate my DNA test results are. How often are there errors?
RootsDNA: Great question. While there is always a margin for error, it’s highly unusual. Do I have your permission to access your results? I may be able to help you make sense of them.
Me : Sure.
RootsDNA: Give me a moment. Okay, I see them here. And it looks like you just received them. Can you tell me which results you have questions about?
Me: It looks like I have three possible half-siblings.
RootsDNA: I see. Those could also be an aunt or uncle or grandparent.
Me: Is that likely?
RootsDNA: (Long pause) Based on these centimorgans, it’s far more likely that these are half-siblings. I should also say that there is no possibility that these results are erroneous. Did these results come as a surprise to you?
Me: Try “shock.”
RootsDNA: I see. Would you like me to transfer you to our division for these cases?
Me: You have a division for shocked people?
RootsDNA: Happens every day. We even have a link on the website called “Unexpected Relative Matches.” It has several articles about what to do when you discover a family connection you didn’t know about. Many of our members find these articles a helpful place to begin.
Me: I’ll check them out. Thanks.
I disconnect the chat. Somehow the knowledge that they have a whole division dedicated to people who get shocking results makes it all real. So do the next two articles I read. They offer tips for how to open a dialogue with surprise DNA connections, a link to speak to professional therapists, and another link to hire a professional investigator if I want to look into any of these connections before contacting them.
I close the articles, bizarrely reassured.
I have a brother. It doesn’t feel true to me, not in my stomach and heart and lungs. But my mind knows.
I click open a message to Seth. Despite the articles, I still don’t know how I’m supposed to reach out to a probable brother I barely learned about.
I flex my fingers while I try to think of words. Words to ask: “Are you my brother?” Words to say: “I think I’m your sister.”
I don’t want to sound desperate and needy. I want to sound like someone he’d like to get to know.
Hi, Seth.
Just got my RootsDNA results. I was surprised to see how closely related we are. Using some context clues, I think we might be half-siblings. Is that possible? I’m a little thrown by all of this, tbh. I’d love to connect if you’re up for it.
Kendall
I reread it a dozen times. It falls somewhere between polite and warm, I hope. I hit send.
Mia returns from her baby break and settles on the floor to study. She hands me her science flash cards. I quiz her, refreshing the RootsDNA app every five minutes to see if Seth answered. He hasn’t.
We’re going through the polyatomic ions for the third time when Mrs. Sandoval leans against the doorway.
“Hey, girls. Getting your homework done?”
“Studying for chem.”
“That’s good. No more Bs, Mia.”
“Mom. That was one test. I just said we’re studying. I’m on it.”
“That’s good.” Mrs. Sandoval’s gaze floats to me. “How about you, Kendall? School is okay?”
“School is fine,” Mia says. “But Kendall’s got a non-school problem.”
Mrs. Sandoval straightens. “What’s wrong? Is this about a boy?”
I think Mrs. Sandoval is the only one who ever knew about my painful crush on Gabe. After he humiliated me, I wouldn’t come over unless I knew he was gone, and I’d make excuses to walk home anytime he showed up. After three months of that, she’d come to my house to ask if Gabe had done something to me, and I feared for him if I answered yes. “I see how you don’t want to be in the same room with him, mija,” she’d said. “But not too long ago, you were all heart-eyes for him. All my boys lose their minds around this age, but I’ll take him apart if he stepped out of line with you. Did he?”
But the answer had been no. Not in the way she thought. And there was no way I’d ever tell her about his part in the worst night of my life. I’d promised she didn’t have any reason to go after Gabe. Still, she’s taken a special interest in my love life ever since, like she’s trying to make sure I don’t fall in love with another boy who’s all wrong for me.
“It’s not about a boy, Mom,” Mia says with an eyeroll. “Why do you always have to go there?” Mia definitely never knew about Gabe. She hated it when Gabe was still at Garfield High with us and girls would suck up to her to get close to him. I’d kept my feelings to myself.
“Then is everything okay at home?” Mrs. Sandoval asks.
I can’t confess that Mom and I are fighting. Mrs. Sandoval believes in talking things out, and she’ll be on the phone with Mom faster than I can say yes . I open my mouth and hesitate, unsure of how to avoid triggering a worried call to Mom when Mia steps in with a save.
“Home’s fine. Her brain is stuck, that’s all. She can’t make these flash cards stay in her head.”
“Good luck. Fajitas in twenty minutes,” Mrs. Sandoval says, and I notice the savory smell drifting up the stairs as she heads back down to the kitchen.
We eat, we study some more, I still can’t retain the information, and I keep refreshing my email. The hundredth time is the charm.
You have a message waiting from RootsDNA.
My stomach gives a nasty gurgle.
“Am I about to see your fajitas again?” Mia looks up in alarm.
“Go through these once by yourself,” I tell Mia, handing back her flash cards and opening the message.
Hi, Kendall.
Sister! Another one! So crazy. If you’re ever around Tempe, I’d love to meet. Until then, you can find me on Instagram if you want.
Seth
That’s it?
It feels like opening an awesomely wrapped present to find a pair of white socks inside.
I reread it word by word, stopping on the important ones. Another one. That means the pink avatar is definitely my biological half-sister.
What does he know about her? How did he get in touch? How can I get in touch with her? There are no clues in his message.
Tempe. I look it up. That’s where ASU is.
If you’re ever around.
It’s twelve hours by car.
I’m sick of vague half-answers and pretending like everything is okay. I quit being ambivalent about my DNA results the second three half-siblings appeared.
Screw it.
“Mia? I have a wild plan, and it’s going to take two huge lies and a very old Camry.”