“That’s great for you, Meg. But you know, some things are better to hide. I didn’t want to tell you this. I wanted to work on moving past it, on my own, because I know it’s not fair to you, and I know it’s small of me. It’s humiliating,” she says, her voice cracking, her chin crinkling again. But immediately she tightens it, takes a breath through her nose.

“I’m happy with Elijah, and I’m happy I’ll have some new opportunities in the city. That is what is going to help. Not . . . not this.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again, flustered now. I’d thought I was being so brave, pushing this. Now I’m confused, unsure, worried I’ve hurt her worse. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was this.”

Part of me is saying, Stop, don’t push her. But another part of me is so worried about losing her. I’m so deep into this confrontation that I don’t know how to stop it now.

“Sib, if we could only—”

But I break off when I see the look on her face. She is . . . exasperated. With me, with this apartment, with this entire conversation. “Of course it’s this,” she says, as if she can’t believe I wouldn’t have realized. As if I was selfish not to have.

I almost apologize again, because maybe I was selfish. Maybe this was my fault. The not knowing, but also the not . . . the not leaving it alone. When I open my mouth again, hoping to say this in some halfway coherent way, Sibby speaks before I can, her voice hard, harsh.

“Not everything is some big ‘I’m not your real mom’ scandal, okay?”

All of the air is sucked out of the apartment, out of both of us. Sibby looks absolutely shocked that she’s said it, that she’s brought up the worst possible thing.

The family secret that brought me here.

The secret, I guess, that led to me encroaching on her New York City dream.

I don’t know if I look shocked. I don’t even know if I feel shocked. After all, I’ve been here before, and recently, too. This is where pushing, where fighting can lead. I’ve known it all along.

It can hurt.

It can hurt so, so bad.

“That’s beneath you,” I say, my voice cracking.

The tears filling her eyes spill over, tracking in gray-black tears down her cheeks. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I know she is, and it’s more than the tears that tells me so. It’s in the set of her shoulders; it’s in the way she’s rubbing her thumb up and down along her index finger, a nervous habit. It’s in the way she looks at me, full of regret.