“Yes,” she says. “She said you gave her some coupon.” She looks down at the coffee in her mug, which must be long cold by now. “I hadn’t realized it was so easy, you know. I thought those tests were just things people did to tell you how Italian or Irish you were; that sort of thing. I didn’t know you could simply tick a box and find all sorts of people on it. Only people that want to be found, of course.” She clears her throat. “Evidently Lorna wanted to be found. I suppose she must have done it on purpose. She must have thought about it—about Abigail looking for her one day.”

I sit there, trying to imagine what it would have been like in my sister’s shoes. Getting information like that from an automated message on some internet site. Seeing a stranger flash up as a genetic match for your parent. I look over at Oliver.

“But she kept it to herself?” I say. “She didn’t tell us when she found this all out?”

Mom looks away.

“I think she tried to tell me, Gillian.” She clears her throat. “I…I was in the middle of the Thanksgiving fundraiser. I was barely even looking at my phone. I had some missed calls from your sister…”

Dad was driving back from Westchester ten days before Thanksgiving last year. I think it’s a pretty rough time of year for all of us.

“And then,” Mom stumbles on, “when I called her back…I assumed it was because of your father, Gillian, how strange her mood was, but she was just…seething. I don’t know how to describe it. I felt like she was waiting to catch me out somehow but I didn’t understand why. I suppose by then she’d had a couple of days to figure things out; to absorb the worst of the shock. She’d spoken to Lorna…” Mom hesitates. “Apparently Lorna said to talk to me first, but Abigail had had enough by then.” She looks at me. “By the time I talked to her I suppose she already knew all the important parts, and she’d changed her mind about wanting to confront me. By then she was just angry. I think it was her way of punishing me, Gillian—and of staying in control. Feeling like she was fooling me, watching me make a fool of myself in all my ignorance…” Mom swallows.

I sit there, with this new reality swirling around me. Small truths drop like coins, plinking somewhere in my memory. Things about our world that suddenly make sense in a new way.

Like why Lorna has stayed away all these years; more even than Dad’s other siblings.