Chapter 2: A Name Mom Knows
“Mom,” I said again. “Why do you know that name?”
For a moment, the only answer was the soft hiss of the phone line. Then she whispered, “Because Mara is your sister.”
The word sister seemed too large for the room. It filled the space between the bed rails, crowded the air from my lungs.
“My sister?”
“Your older sister,” Mom said. Her voice broke on older. “Ethan, I’m so sorry.”
I looked down at the notebook on my lap. The envelope was tucked beneath it, its corner pressing into the cover. “How can I have a sister I’ve never heard of?”
“I didn’t say you’d never heard of her.”
“You let me grow up without knowing she existed.”
“I know.” She took a shaky breath. “Your father—”
A shadow crossed the narrow window in the door.
I looked up. Dad stood on the other side, one hand braced against the wall. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the notebook.
“Mom,” I said, keeping my voice low. “What did Dad do?”
“Ethan, I should tell you this in person.”
“No. Tell me now.”
The door opened before she could answer. Dad came in, pulling it shut behind him with careful quiet. His eyes went straight to the bed, then to the notebook in my lap.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Mom.”
“Give me the phone.”
I tightened my grip. “She was telling me about Mara.”
Something flickered across his face—fear, maybe, before he pressed it flat. He stepped closer and held out his hand.
“Hang up, Ethan.”
On the phone, Mom said, “Don’t you dare order him around.”
Dad’s jaw hardened. “This isn’t your decision.”
“It’s his life.”
“Mom,” I said. “What does that mean?”
She swallowed audibly. “Your father forbade me from contacting Mara years ago. He said it was better for you. I let him decide.”
Dad reached for the phone. I jerked it against my chest, and the monitor gave a quick, agitated chirp.
“Stop,” I said.
His hand hovered over the blanket. For the first time since he’d entered, he looked at me instead of the things I was holding.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From my sister?”
“From this.”
He pointed at the notebook. I felt the letter beneath it, hidden but suddenly impossible to ignore.
“She says I wrote it,” I said. “The handwriting looks like mine.”
“Anyone can copy handwriting.”
“I can’t even remember writing it.”
“That doesn’t make it yours.”
The argument came too quickly, like he’d been waiting for it. He reached for the notebook. I pulled it beneath the blanket, heart hammering hard enough to make my ribs ache.
“Don’t,” I said.
Dad stopped. His face had gone pale beneath the hospital lights.
Mom’s voice crackled through the phone. “Leave him alone.”
He leaned toward me. “That letter is a forgery.”
“Then you won’t mind if I look at it.”
“I do mind. You have surgery in a few hours, and you don’t need some stranger feeding you a story.”
“She’s not a stranger,” Mom said.
The words seemed to surprise her as much as they surprised me. On the phone, she went quiet.
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
“I know Mara is my sister,” I said. “I know you kept her away.”
“You know what your mother just told you while she’s half asleep and frightened.”
Mom made a small, wounded sound. “Don’t put this on me.”
Dad looked away. It was the first crack I’d seen in him, and it made me angrier than if he’d shouted.
I shifted the notebook onto the blanket and opened it. My hands trembled, but the familiar pages steadied me: grocery lists, half-finished thoughts, the sentences I’d written when sleep wouldn’t come. I found my name on an old page and held it up.
“Look at the capital E,” I said. “I leave the middle line short. And every time I write a g, I loop it back too far. The letter does both.”
Dad didn’t take the notebook.
“Those are common habits,” he said.
“Maybe. But I know my own handwriting.”
“Not tonight you don’t,” he snapped. “You’re scared. You’re tired. Your medication—”
“Don’t use the operation to make me doubt what I can see.”
The words hung there. Dad blinked, and I saw his hand curl into a fist at his side.
Mom’s voice softened. “Ethan, I should’ve told you. I was wrong.”
I hadn’t expected her to say it so plainly. The admission hurt, but beneath the hurt was something I could hold on to: she wasn’t telling me I’d imagined it. She wasn’t asking me to pretend the name didn’t matter.
Dad turned toward the phone. “You can apologize after he’s through surgery.”
“No,” Mom said. “He deserves the truth now.”
He let out a bitter breath. “You want to do this here? The night before his operation?”
“I want him to know he has a sister.”
“And what happens when he wakes up confused? What happens if he remembers none of this?”
The fear in his voice sounded real. So did the way he used it like a locked door.
“I’m the one having the operation,” I said. “I get to decide what I hear.”
Dad stared at me, then at the envelope beneath my notebook. His shoulders had risen toward his ears.
“You think that letter is proof of something,” he said. “It isn’t.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
“I’m telling you not to make a decision tonight you can’t take back.”
“You mean don’t ask about Mara.”
“I mean don’t let someone else steer you.”
“Like you have?”
His expression tightened. For one second, neither of us moved. Then he stepped back from the bed.
Mom was crying quietly on the phone. I wanted to reach through it and hold her hand. I wanted to ask how many years a person could be kept from her own brother, and how a mother could help it happen. But Dad was still in the room, and his silence was its own kind of answer.
He looked at me with a desperation I had never seen in him before.
May you like
“If you reopen this past tonight,” he said, “you could lose the one chance you have at surgery.”
He turned and walked out before I could ask what the past had to do with my chance to live.
