Page 121 of Between Now & Heartbreak

I have refused to let myself believe it.

It was just…it couldn’t be. Beth, the woman I love, the woman I want, can’t be my sister. We would know…I would feel it.

Wouldn’t I?

There has to be some biological switch that would have prevented this.

My biological mother is a murderer. Who’s to say she’s not also a liar?

They kept me in one of their holding cells overnight after the fight at her father’s party. That had been the first, in a string of sleepless nights. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Beth’s father yank her hard enough to make her lose her footing. The image haunted me nearly as much as my own helplessness had.

But if I’d known what hell was waiting for me when I got out the next morning, I would have handcuffed myself to the bars and refused to leave.

Now, it all feels like a blur.

The bombshells from Phil and Drew Wolfe.

The disorienting acceptance of it by everyone as the truth. The ravaged expression on Beth’s face.

I recognized all of that because I’d felt it before. That same terror and horror when you find out the things that are most essential to your sense of self are all complete fabrications.

It’s how I felt the day I found out I was adopted.

I wasn’t upset at all by the fact that I was adopted.

About twenty percent of the kids in my school in Brooklyn were adopted. Some from countries that made it patently obvious that their parents were not biologically related. Some you wouldn’t have known to look at them. Over the course of my childhood, several of them were my best friends and it wasn’t a big deal. Family was family. It was just a biographical fact.

It was this that made my parents secrecy so hard to understand. If there was nothing wrong with me, why didn’t they tell me sooner?

I spent weeks spaced thefuckout. I couldn’t think. Everything I thought about my life was a lie.

So I understood Beth’s devastation as she sat silently, staring at us, while we made arrangements for our DNA tests.

Me and her father.

Me and Phil.

But what I didn’t understand was the way she flinched when I put a hand out to touch her when I was leaving. And how she’s kept her distance in the days since. I haven’t seen her once.

And I’ve been in hell.

We didn’t go to church growing up. My parents call themselves reformed Catholics. The odd “love thy brother” or “let ye who is without sin cast the first stone,” was about as biblical as it got in our house.

I haven’t set foot in a church since my father’s funeral. But in dark days of silence and doubt, I’ve been to church every day. It’s been empty during the week and I’ve found peace in the sanctuary of the piano.

When I finally heard from Beth I decided that it wasn’t a coincidence that I was at church, playing the piano when the call came.

It’s a sign that everything is going to be fine.

I hear the crunch of tires outside and I’m pulled out of my reverie. This is it. The moment we finally get to put this craziness behind us. I’ve already forgiven Beth for her doubt. I know how influenced she is by her father and that prodigal brother of hers, Phil.

At the thought of him, my stomach coils around itself. I haven’t met him. I don’t want to.

He tried to ruin my life.

I glance up at the ornate domed ceiling and read the words etched on the ceiling.

“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes” Psalms 37:7

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