AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s good.”
She gives me a confused look.
“I just mean, I’m glad for the time to talk. This is important.”
We sit back in the same chairs as before, and I spill everything. I’m sure I sound like a raving lunatic at this point, but I don’t care. We’ll see if she really won’t judge me, like she said.
She listens without showing much emotion as I go over every detail from the first sighting of the woman to what just happened at the preschool. I slump back against the chair when I’m done, exhausted from rehashing everything. Now I have to prepare myself for my mom to join the club of people who don’t believe me.
Her expression is blank and she’s staring into space, hardly even blinking.
It’s my turn to ask if she’s okay.
She turns to me, almost as if she’s surprised to see me in front of her.
My breath hitches. “Mom, you’re scaring me.”
Her face drains of color. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something we should’ve told you a long time ago.”
ChapterTwenty-Five
Time stands still as I wait for my mom to continue. In pure desperation, I try to fill in the blanks. I must have a sister they never told me about. She has to be a sociopath like Michael, and that’s why they never mentioned her. Maybe they gave up their rights to her and then had me as one last-ditch effort to see if they could have a normal child.
That’s the only thing that makes any sense. It explains why someone who looks and sounds like me is trying to destroy my life. She must have escaped her facility, and now she wants to take me down.
It all makes sense now. That’s why Peter and Emily have both said she has too much in common with me to just be a doppelgänger. It’s one thing for a complete stranger to resemble me, but to be the same height and build, plus talk like me and have similar mannerisms?
She has to be a sister. There’s a ten-year age gap between Michael and me, so it makes sense they would’ve had her in that time. My parents must’ve had a kid every five years, stopping after me.
My entire body feels like liquid, and I can’t hold myself up. I’m glad for this huge plush outdoor chair my mom picked out.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
Mom jolts. “What?”
“My sister.”
“Sister?” She shakes her head, as if to clear it. “I don’t know what to tell you about your lookalike.”
My stomach sinks. I don’t have a sister? That explainedeverything. “Then what do you need to tell me? Spit it out! I can’t take the anticipation.”
“We should’ve told you a long time ago,” she says again.
“Tell me what?”
She holds my gaze. “You were adopted.”
Everything around me disappears. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t process anything. Did she really just say they adopted me?
“Angelina?”
It takes me a moment to pull myself together, but I manage to sit up straight and take a few breaths. “Let me get this straight. I’m an adult with four kids, and you’re just now telling me that I’m adopted?”
She frowns. “We never meant to keep it a secret from you.”
“I’m forty-three!”
“Dad and I wanted to tell you, but there never seemed to be a right time to bring it up.”
