“Oh, champagne. Of course. We’ll serve mimosas, then. Do I have orange juice? Hara, you’ll need to stop and pick up champagne tomorrow after work. I have that cheap bottle from New Year’s and I can’t serve that to your dad’s old work colleagues.”

I decide to make these twenty-eight sandwiches and then confess. No, not confess, because that feels like I’ve done something wrong. It can’t be wrong to want to know more about my past—that yearning is normal. Even Boyoung, who has been arguing with me for the past week about being careful about strangers on the internet, isn’t against me connecting with my birth parent. She is concerned about me being ripped off. Understandable. A couple of days ago, she texted me a mass of Hangul with stern instructions to paste it into the reply section of the email. I didn’t, though. The machine translation made it sound like an angry rebuke along with a command to never contact me again.

Mom won’t think it’s a con artist, but she’ll be hurt. She’ll take this as a direct assault on her parenting, even though this isn’t a binary thing where if I go to Seoul to meet Lee Jonghyung then I’ll denounce Ellen Wilson.

“Mom, listen.”

“How many bottles of champagne do you think I should buy? Three? Or maybe two because Karen will bring a bottle of wine, don’t you think? She’s the type to bring wine everywhere. Macy might, too. She said she wanted to help out—”

“Mom—”

“Three is a good number. I’m bound to have guests over again, so if we don’t drink the three bottles I’ll be set for next time.”

Talking isn’t getting me anywhere. I abandon the sandwich assembly line and pluck the phone out of Mom’s hands.

She jerks to attention. “What is it?”

Of course, now that I have her attention, my courage falls somewhere around my knees. “I’m . . . I am . . .” I pause to clear my throat.

Mom’s forehead creases. “You’re not ill, are you?” Her hand comes up to rest against my cheek.

“No. It’s not that. It’s, well, I got this email, you see.” I reach around her and drag my purse across the counter. The folded email falls out.

Ellen looks at the paper and then at me. “What is this?” She doesn’t want to touch it, somehow sensing she’s not going to like the contents. I unfold it and hand it over.

She takes it reluctantly. The paper shakes a little as she brings it close enough to read. “Is this a time-share?” She tries to laugh. “You know those things are rip-offs.”

“No. It’s not a time-share,” I say softly. “It’s an email from my dad.”

“Pat?”

“No. My—” I almost say “real” but stop myself at the last second. “My bio dad.”

“The sperm donor?” Mom blurts out in shock. Her eyes quickly scan the document, stopping at the blue inked translation that I’d penned after my pizza dinner with Boyoung. Mom starts shaking her head. “No. No. This— You can’t.”