He hesitated.
“Eleven months ago.”
That hurt immediately.
“Eleven months?”
“She found me.”
“And you never told me?”
Alex looked at Leo.
“Sara died five days ago.”
My anger stopped for a moment.
“What?”
“There was an accident. Leo didn’t have anyone immediately available to take him. She had listed me as an emergency contact and had made temporary arrangements involving me.”
I looked at the baby again.
A child had lost his mother.
Whatever Alex had done, Leo hadn’t done anything.
But one question remained.
“Why does he look like me?”
Alex closed his eyes.
When he opened them, I knew the answer was worse than an affair.
“Sara didn’t contact me just because we grew up together.”
“Then why?”
“Because she found out who you were.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
His voice became quieter.
“Lucia, Carmen wasn’t your biological mother.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the sentence was absurd.
I had photographs of my mother pregnant.
Family stories.
Hospital keepsakes.
Thirty-five years of memories.
“No.”
“Lucia—”
“No.”
Alex explained slowly.
My mother, Carmen, had lost a baby late in pregnancy.
During that period, she and my father eventually became connected with a young woman named Elena Vidal who had given birth and was unable to raise her child.
After a legal adoption process, Carmen and Javier brought that baby home.
Me.
I felt as though the room had physically shifted.
“And Sara?”
“Elena later had another daughter.”
I already knew what he was going to say.
“Sara was my sister.”
“Your biological half-sister.”
I sat down.
Eleven months.
I could barely think past those two words.
“You knew I had a sister for eleven months.”
Alex’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“And she’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll never meet her.”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
“You took that from me.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
That sentence made me look at him.
“From my own sister?”
“No. From everything at once.”
Eleven months earlier, I’d miscarried.
It had been one of the worst periods of my life.
Alex told me Sara had contacted him shortly before it happened.
Initially, she’d asked for a little time.
She wasn’t ready to introduce herself.
Alex agreed.
