Well, duh, I wanted to say. It was instantly underwhelming. I already knew my mom’s side of the family was Irish; I could trace them back generations. My grandma even knew the name of the village her family had left when they immigrated to the US. The southern Italian part was interesting, I guess, but there were tons of Italian Americans around New Haven. If my bio dad was there on vacation visiting family, chances were he was some part Italian too, just like most of the kids I’d gone to school with growing up.

My mom had told me my birth father’s name, Carmine (another reason I’d always assumed he was Italian American), but because I knew she didn’t want to talk about him, I’d always just left the topic alone. And maybe that was for the best, anyway. Because mixed in with the disappointment was relief that I didn’t have to actually deal with the fear of hurting my mom by digging into her past. Just this alone always outweighed my desire to know exactly where I’d inherited half of my DNA, even if it could explain why I’d always felt like an outsider in my own family.

Sure, they loved me unconditionally, but that didn’t mean they quite understood me. I’d always been a little bit louder, a little bit more emotional, a little bit more creative than everyone else. It had felt confusing and isolating knowing exactly who I was while also never quite feeling like it was good enough. But no matter what my issues were, I didn’t want my mother to feel like she wasn’t enough for me, or for her and Jim to think that I didn’t appreciate them and all they’d done for me.

Still, I’d always existed at arm’s length from the more intimate parts of their lives. It was just how it was; we didn’t share deep feelings, big emotions, hard things. And my birth father fell squarely into that last category.

When the second email came through about thirty minutes later, with the subject “Hello from your half sister” and a link to my DNADiscovery inbox, my first instinct was to assume it was spam. I forwarded a screenshot to Lola and Cleo. This is fake, right? Someone scamming me for something? I wrote.

But then Cleo responded immediately with It looks real to me, and Lola added, I told you this happened to my coworker! Anytime there is a DNA match they alert people.

I read the subject again, and said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” out loud to my empty apartment. I was in the middle of getting ready for a spin class. I stood there, pants bunched around my knees, and clicked on the link to the message, which opened on the DNADiscovery site.

Hello,