After the service, I hurry to the bathroom. When I get into a stall, away from all the staring eyes, the grief voices, I pinch my skin, hard, and the pain zings up my arm, but my eyes stay dry.

“Those poor girls,” someone says as the bathroom door opens.

I go still, trapped in the stall.

“Hannah’s the spitting image of Lila. I almost thought it was her!”

“Isn’t she? It’s uncanny how much they look alike,” another woman says. “Except for the eyes, of course. All Greg there. And Mae … Can you imagine being orphaned twice? Jesus.”

“Oh God, the whole thing is so horrible.”

There’s the sound of running water and the whine of the paper towel dispenser. How can they talk about us like this while they redo their makeup, like we’re small talk, the weather?

“But do you think this is a little easier for Mae, though—dealing, I mean? That sounds bad! But you know what I mean? They weren’t really her parents. But Hannah…”

They weren’t really her parents. Is that why Uncle Tony made sure to say that the inheritance would be split fifty-fifty? Would he have felt the need to say that if I weren’t adopted? Does everyone in my extended family see me like these women do?

“Well, they got her when she was two or something. They always saw her as their child.”

Three. Not that it’s any of their business.

“Of course. But you know what I mean. There’s that bond. When I had Jack, it was this whole chemical thing, right? I can’t imagine my actual body responding in the same way with an adopted baby.”

I close my eyes, try to imagine it: Mom holding me as a baby. Is that why she and Nah are closer? It wouldn’t be Mom’s fault—she can’t fight her biology. I was never good at twisting my body into weird shapes on the yoga mat, like Nah. And I’m better at math, but she has Dad’s genes, so I don’t know what happened there. I used to think those were our only differences. Genetics. But maybe it was always something more. Deeper. Primal. What about me didn’t turn on that primalness in the woman whose body I grew in?

I don’t like this train of thought.

Water, splashing. Paper towels being scrunched up. “Still, they loved both those girls something fierce.”