Chapter 8: Sisters

For one second nobody in the room made a sound.

Then a woman by the cake said, "Oh my God," and somebody started to clap.

The clapping spread.

It rolled through the living room and into the sunroom.

People got to their feet, and women pressed their hands to their mouths.

Simone turned her face into my father's shoulder and cried.

I stayed against the doorframe with the baby socks still in my hand.

My mother came up beside my father and put her arm around Simone's back.

She faced the guests.

"Some of you knew," she said. "Most of you didn't, and that's our fault."

"Simone is Gordon's first child."

"She was born two years before he and I met."

"Her mother never told him, and Simone found him when she was twenty."

She said it plainly, in the voice she had once used to tell patients their results.

Then she looked straight at me.

"We kept it from you, Jeanie, because we thought it would hurt."

My ears were ringing.

I heard my own voice say, quite calmly, "Simone was twenty when she found you."

"Yes," my father said.

"She was twenty-two when she met me."

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

I looked at Simone.

She had lifted her head from his shoulder.

Her eyes were wet, and she was watching me.

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