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“Oh my God,” I gasp.
“My grandmother said he went by Billy back then,” Henry says.
My throat goes dry. I can barely form words.
“My mom was in a relationship with William Cadell, Jr., and they had a baby together?” I say in disbelief.
“You didn’t know about your mom and him?” he asks with a raised brow.
She isn’t who you think she is.
“No,” I say, struggling to take this news in.
“I know I said it was too early to wake up my grandmother, but if she knew Irene Mayer’s daughter was here, she’d want me to wake her up—at any hour.”
I stand beside Henry as he knocks on his grandmother’s apartment door.
“Grandma, it’s Henry,” he calls.
I lean on the hallway wall to steady myself, my mind spinning.
If Mom had been in a relationship with William Cadell, Jr., how could she have later treated Margot Cadell, his cousin? That would’ve been a dual relationship, which is unethical for therapists to engage in. Maybe Margotwasn’ther patient. Maybe they were just friends.
And William Cadell, Jr. is Cristina’s father, which means Sally is a half-sister to both Cristina and me. Why didn’t Cristina tell me about her? Does she not know?
“Grandma,” Henry says as he keeps knocking. “I’m here with Irene Mayer’s daughter.”
Finally, a sign of life. We hear shuffling, before the woman from the cover of the photo album opens the door. Her jet-black hair is now white, and she’s dressed in a white nightgown with small pink roses. As soon as she sees me, her eyes fill with tears, and she pulls me in close for a hug.
“I’m Carla,” she says with her arms wrapped tightly around my waist.
“I’m Beatrice,” I say, returning the hug.
She pulls out of the embrace and stares at me. “Sally’s sister.”
I swallow. “I just found out about Sally today. I’m wondering if you can tell me more about her.”
Carla threads her arm in mine and pulls me inside the apartment. She leads me to the kitchen, with Henry following us from behind. The three of us sit around a small blue Formica kitchen table. An old-fashioned, clear, glass-domed cake holder with a partially eaten yellow cake lies in the middle.
“Would you like a slice of lemon cake?” Carla offers.
“No thanks,” I say. “Henry kindly pulled out your old photo albums from the garage so I could look through them. That’s how I learned about my mom’s relationship with William Cadell Jr.”
“Billy and Irene lived here together,” Carla explains. “They met at Tisch. Your mom was studying to be an actress, and Billy was studying to become a director until his father made him transfer to Stern, the business school at NYU. He could never get out from underneath his dad’s thumb. When William Sr. found out your mom was pregnant, he threatened to cut Billy off unless your mom had an abortion.”
“It doesn’t look like she did from the pictures,” I say.
“Irene refused to. She told me she had lost her parents in high school and wanted a family of her own. I felt so badly for her. She was all of eighteen and going up against this rich, powerful family alone, who didn’t want her to have their son’s baby. When William Sr.’s threats against Billy didn’t work to get her to terminate her pregnancy, he threatened to fight her for custody if she had Sally. He said they’d use the fact she had struggled with addiction—TriCPharma drugs—theirdrugs—to ensure she’d never get to be Sally’s mom, even though he knew she’d gotten clean because she wanted to give Sally the best chance possible.”
I sit quietly, thinking about Mom, a scared eighteen-year-old who’d lost both of her parents young, desperately wanting a family of her own, going up against this criminal family who was willing to stop her at all costs.
“She was willing to take the risk?” I ask.
“Yes, I think she hoped Billy’s dad would eventually come to his senses and realize that her being in Sally’s life was more important than whatever grudge he had against his son for having a child out of wedlock and in college.”
“So she had Sally?”
Carla nods.
