“What can I help you with, Olive?” Josephine asks, pushing back her long sandy hair from one shoulder to another.

I take a deep breath.

When I open my mouth, it goes completely dry.

I start to say something but then I can’t help but cough. Not wanting her to think that I’m stonewalling, I start anyway.

“I’m your daughter,” I say, clearing my throat.

The housekeeper placed two glasses of water on the coffee table before she left and I take a sip of mine.

Josephine doesn’t react.

I expect her to either be happy or mad but she has absolutely no reaction. Her effect remains flat and I’m not sure what to do with that.

“Um, I got your records from a private investigator and it seems to all check out.”

“Can I see them please?” she asks.

I reach into my backpack and pull out the folder with all of the information that I have on her.

It’s only when she has it in her hands that I realize that I should’ve probably made a copy of this.

What if she takes them?

What I lose the only information that I have? The only proof!

I scoot to the edge of the couch and sit as close to her as possible as she lays the folder on her lap.

She goes through it, examining each page carefully.

Then she reaches the results of the DNA test.

“How did they get these DNA results?” she asks.

“I’m not sure. He worked for my ex-

boyfriend, I never met him. But I think he probably followed you and took it off a cup of coffee you discarded, or something like that.”

Josephine closes the folder slowly and looks up at me. It’s only when our eyes meet that I see the tears in hers.

“Olive,” she says quietly, pressing her index finger into her eye to make it stop. “I am your mother.”

I sit here, dumbfounded, until she throws her arms around me. “I’ve been looking for you for…so long,” she whispers into my ear.

Tears start to well up and stream down my face.

I wipe them off but more come.

After a few moments, I give up and just let myself cry.

We hold each other for some time before we finally pull away. This is so beyond the response that I thought I would get.

At first, she seemed quiet, cold even, but now I realize she just wanted to make sure that I was really who I was saying I was before confirming.

“Tell me about yourself,” Josephine says. “Tell me everything.”

I don’t know where to start but I take a deep breath and just begin.

I tell her about how I grew up and about my family. I gloss over the addiction and my brother being in prison.