“You sent her reports about me every month until six months ago. Why’d you stop?”

“You turned twenty-five.”

I blink in surprise. I hadn’t made the connection to my birthday and the stoppage. The reasoning still escapes me. “Why twenty-five? Why not eighteen or twenty or sixteen? Why send them at all? Why not tell me? Why hide it? Why?” I demand.

“Because you’re mine!” Ellen cries out. She pounds her chest. “Mine. I raised you. It was me. Not her. She gave you up and I chose you. I sent her thirteen years of reports and I was done. Done, do you hear me?”

My ears ring with her words as I grab the roll of paper towels off the counter and hold it in front of her. She tears off a sheet and presses it to her face.

“I know you hate it when I cry,” she sobs. I pat her shoulder awkwardly. Yes, I do. I’m Pat’s child, too, after all. Curse him anyway. “I knew this would happen. I should’ve ripped up your ticket the minute I saw it.”

And I should’ve known then.

“Making me out to be some kind of secretary. Demanding to see you.”

My hand flies to my throat. “What did you say?”

“She wanted to meet you. Said that it was her right. She had no rights to you. Just because she gave me some money to help through the lean times doesn’t mean that she had rights to you.”

I draw back the paper towels to my chest. The things I’d said to Choi Wansu, how I accused her of trying to buy me off, settle inside me like a rotten fruit. No wonder her first instinct was to ask how much. Mom had been taking her money all these years, and then, when Wansu wanted something more than impersonal monthly reports, she’d been shut out. I feel like a piece of shit. I swallow around the hard rock in my throat.

“What exactly was the deal?”

Ellen sniffles, wipes her eyes, and then reaches for another towel, but I keep the roll pressed to my chest. “What was the deal? When did it happen? What did you tell her? How much did she pay you?” I want to know it all.

The corners of Mom’s mouth tighten. The tears are still falling, but maybe she reads the resoluteness in my expression because she begins talking. “Choi Wansu reached out to me many years ago and told me she was your birth mother. She had hired a private investigator and said she’d been looking for you for a long time. You have to understand, I was just divorced and struggling to make ends meet. I had a small inheritance from your grandmother, but that was running out. I’d spent all those years as a homemaker and had no marketable skills. She proposed that she send money every month—like a child support payment—and all she wanted in return was regular reports on what you were up to. What grades you were getting. How tall you were. What foods you liked. The books you read. The friends you made. Photos. All of that.”