Chapter 2
I did not go to prom.
I sat on the bathroom floor in my blue dress while Mom knocked softly from the other side.
“Lena, please open the door.”
I stared at my corsage.
Noah had chosen white roses because I once told him my grandmother grew them before she died.
He remembered little things.
That was why I liked him.
That was why this hurt so badly.
My phone buzzed again and again.
Friends asking where I was.
Pictures from the gym.
A video of the prom court announcement.
Then Noah’s name appeared.
For one second, my heart leapt.
Then the message opened.
I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.
I typed three different replies.
Me neither.
Are you okay?
Please come back.
I sent nothing.
How could I comfort someone who might be my brother?
How could I miss someone I might have to lose forever?
Outside the bathroom, Dad’s voice came low and broken.
“Lena, I’m sorry.”
Anger rose so fast it shook me.
I opened the door.
He stood there in the hall, tie loosened, eyes red.
“You’re sorry?” I said. “You dropped a bomb on my life five minutes before prom and you’re sorry?”
He flinched.
Mom stood behind him.
Eli peered from his bedroom doorway, pale and scared.
Dad said, “I didn’t know how else to stop you from leaving with him.”
“You could have asked to talk privately.”
“I panicked.”
“You panicked, so you humiliated him?”
Dad’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
That stopped me.
I wanted him to defend himself.
It would have been easier to keep yelling.
Mom stepped closer.
“Your father recognized him, Lena. Not just the name. His face.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You mean your old girlfriend’s face?”
Dad closed his eyes.
“My face too.”
I hated that I had seen it.
Noah’s jaw.
His eyes.
Things I had once thought were just beautiful now felt like evidence.
Dad said, “I called Caroline.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“Noah’s mother. I found an old number. It still worked.”
I gripped the doorframe.
“What did she say?”
Dad looked down.
“She hung up when I said my name.”
The hallway went silent.
Mom whispered, “That means something.”
“It means she was shocked,” I snapped. “It doesn’t mean he’s his son.”
I meant Dad’s son.
But the words came out wrong.
His son.
The truth waiting in the sentence made me sick.
Dad said, “I ordered a DNA test.”
I stared at him.
“You what?”
“For me and Noah, if he agrees. We need the truth.”
“We?” I shouted. “You and Noah need the truth. I need my life back.”
Eli started crying.
Mom went to him.
I turned away, ashamed and still furious.
Dad did not move.
“I know I hurt you,” he said. “But if there is any chance—”
“Any chance that my boyfriend is my brother?”
The words echoed.
Eli cried harder.
Mom held him in the doorway.
Dad’s voice cracked.
“Yes.”
I slammed the bathroom door again.
This time, nobody knocked.
The next morning, Noah was not at school.
Neither was I.
Mom called us both in sick.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling while my phone filled with messages.
Rumors had already started.
Prom pictures had shown my empty chair at the table.
Someone had seen Noah leave my house.
Someone said we broke up.
Someone said Dad caught us doing something.
Someone said I had a panic attack.
None of them knew the truth.
That was worse.
At noon, an unknown number called me.
I almost ignored it.
Then something told me to answer.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice said, “Is this Lena?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I’m Noah’s mother.”
I sat up so fast my head spun.
“Mrs. Reed?”
“Caroline,” she said softly. “Please call me Caroline.”
Her voice trembled.
“I am so sorry.”
My throat tightened.
“Is it true?”
She did not answer.
That was answer enough.
“Is Noah my brother?” I whispered.
Caroline began to cry.
“I don’t know. But Mark might be his father.”
The room tilted.
I pressed my free hand against my mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
She took a shaky breath.
“Because I was told he didn’t want us.”
“By who?”
Silence.
Then Caroline said, “His mother.”
My grandmother.
Dad’s mother, Ruth.
The woman who sent me birthday checks and called every Sunday.
The woman who cried at my baptism.
My blood went cold.
“What did she do?”
Caroline whispered, “She gave me money to leave. Then she told Mark I had run off with someone else.”
I could barely breathe.
“My dad doesn’t know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because Noah won’t speak to me. And because you deserve the truth too.”
A door opened downstairs.
Dad’s voice called, “Lena?”
I stepped into the hallway with the phone pressed to my ear.
Dad looked up from the kitchen.
I said, “It was Grandma.”
His face went blank.
Caroline heard me.
She whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Dad climbed the stairs slowly.
“Who is that?”
I held out the phone.
“Caroline.”
Dad stared at it like it was a ghost.
Then he took it.
His voice broke on one word.
May you like
“Carrie?”
I watched my father sit on the stairs, phone in hand, as seventeen years of lies came home.
