“It’s complicated, Mom.”

“Yes,” she says. “It looks that way.”

Back over at the bar, the young bartender is wiping down the counter, throwing curious glances our way. He was there when Dennis came striding over, calling my name.

“Want to sit?” Mom points to the bar and I shake my head.

“Well then, you’re coming upstairs,” she says, in a no-nonsense voice that takes me right back to my teens, “and then you’re going to tell me what on earth is going on.”

*

Mom just listens as I tell her the story. Her eyes widen a little, but that’s all. Even when I’m finished she just sits there, nodding slightly, her mouth neither tight nor agape, but neutral.

“Well?” I say, feeling suddenly impatient.

“What should I say, Gillian?” She shakes her head. “It’s terribly startling for you, of course. I’m certainly sympathetic. But I’m not sure it matters as much as you think it does.”

“How can you say that?” I feel outraged for the second time tonight. “After everything with Abigail?”

“It is extraordinary, isn’t it?” Mom says. “How one little thing…an anniversary present, you said? How one little thing could have set off such a chain reaction.”

It’s not the DNA tests that are the problem, I think bitterly. The problem is that no one’s been telling the truth. No one’s been facing up to the past. And then the past came back to bite us all.

“But maybe,” Mom goes on, “maybe it’s because of everything with Abigail, Gillian, that I can suggest that this…development…of Oliver’s, doesn’t matter so much.”

“Gillian,” Mom pauses. “Oliver is a very nice man—very nice—but perhaps he’s not in quite as much demand as you think he is.” She looks at me. “You’re acting as though this young woman has asked him to be her father—but what I’m hearing is that she simply wants to meet him. Which, if you ask me, sounds perfectly normal.” She pauses. “The thing is, Gillian…well, blood isn’t family. Family is family.”

It would be easy, and probably cruel, to retort right now with a comment about Abigail, and ask whether my sister would agree. But then Mom’s right. It’s not questions of blood that have rocked our family this past week. It’s questions of trust.

It’s not that blood doesn’t matter. But it’s up to us to choose how it matters.

“But…” I take a breath, and come out with it. “But what if she’s all the family we get?” I look up at Mom. “What if I never get pregnant and she—Hannah—she’s it?”

Mom gives me a long, unreadable look. Another mother might take my hands in hers right now, or wrap her arms around me. But that’s not Mom’s way.