“Were you contacted by the adoption agency? By the state? By Johnny and Betsy’s attorney?”

“We hired an attorney. He handled everything for us anonymously. Back then, and because of the circumstances of your mom being a convicted murderer, the adoption records were sealed. Your parents sued to get the information, but the court denied them. Your bio parents fought and lost.”

“So they wanted me.” I tried to breathe, feeling my bio parents’ pain. Sundance, sensing this, licked my hand.

“Very much. And we were scared to death they would win, that they would get custody of you, or visitation.”

“But Mom. Why didn’t you tell me later, when I was a teenager?”

“Because you’re our daughter, not theirs.” She reached for my hand. Her hand was freezing cold. “I didn’t want to bring this mess, this stress, into your life. When would I tell you? When you were in kindergarten? Honey, your parents are murderers. What’s a murderer? Let me explain it to you. . . .

“Or should we have told you when they were trying to get you back as the trial ground on? Bring that fear into your life that you would be taken from us and sent to live with another family you had never met? How would you have felt? You would have been petrified. Or as a teen, should I have told you? When you were battling premonitions and depression and anxiety that was almost crippling you?”

I was angry at her. I was angry with my father. I was angry with my aunts. “Mom, everyone has a right to the truth of their own reality. I understand why you didn’t tell me as a kid. Given the circumstances, I may have done what you did. Even when I was a teenager, I understand why you didn’t tell me. That kind of history could mess up a teenager’s mind, especially mine because I was a wreck, but as an adult, even at eighteen, don’t you think I should have been given the truth about who I am?”

My mother sat back. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. For all the reasons I told you. How are you better knowing what you know now?”

“I’m not better, Mom, but I want the truth. Why can’t you see that?”

“The truth is that I am your mother, your father was your father.”

“I know that, Mom.” I saw the tears in her eyes, but I also saw guilt, and doubt, and the fear that she would lose me now. “I wish you had told me as a young adult.”

“Your father and I, we debated endlessly, but we didn’t want to tear your world apart. I had lied to you, too. Your father had lied to you. Both by omission. I felt awful. But how do you walk back from such a monumental lie?”