My knees nearly buckled as my mother spoke, and Jacob held me in place.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay.”

That wasn’t true. I wasn’t okay, not at all.

“Please, can we go inside and talk about this?” Mom said, twisting her hands nervously.

I shook my head and swallowed. Hard. “No. I don’t want to talk about anything right now. Not with you. Not now.”

“Please, sweetie, let us explain.”

I was so sick of all the lies, so sick of hearing ‘let me explain’ from people. The last year of my life had been filled with deceit, and I didn’t want to stick around for one more second, especially in my current state of mind.

“No. I’m leaving. I shouldn’t have come,” I said weakly, but then my legs almost caved in completely.

“Come on,” Jacob said, holding me upright, left arm wrapped around my shoulders. “One step at a time. One word at a time. Let’s go and find out what they have to say. That’s why we’re here, remember?”

I nodded and let him guide me inside. Then I sat and stared at the blank TV, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes. “So I’m adopted, and you never told me,” I finally said once I could see that everyone had taken a seat.

Mom shook her head. “No, darling, you aren’t adopted. I gave birth to you. You’re our daughter. You’re just not…”

She trailed off. Dad took over finishing her sentence. “You’re not biologically my daughter,” he said. “But you’re still my daughter, a hundred percent. I want you to remember that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Then let us explain,” Mom said. “Nora, do you remember when I told you about how I dated a man before I met your father? A man who wasn’t so nice?”

I nodded, and she went on.

“He was abusive. Very abusive. He would hurt me over the smallest things, and I was too scared to leave. But one day I finally snapped and called the police when he punched me in the face over his dinner not being hot enough. When the police arrived, it turned out he was already wanted. He had a warrant out for his arrest for a string of armed robberies, and he’d been hiding by using only my name on the lease so no one knew where he lived. He killed a person during one of those robberies. So he went to prison for a long time.”

She took a deep breath before continuing. “As soon as he was arrested, I knew I had to change my life. I stopped speaking to all my friends—the ones who’d gotten me involved with a man like him in the first place. I moved to another city, quickly found another job. And then I met your father. We were only together for a few weeks when I found out I was already pregnant.”

“Three and a half months pregnant, to be specific,” Dad cut in.

Mom looked at him and nodded. “I assumed he’d leave me. But he didn’t,” she said softly. “He asked me to marry him instead.”

Dad squeezed her hand. “I loved your mother, Nora, and part of loving her meant also loving and accepting her baby, even if I wasn’t the biological father. And I did. I always loved you, every bit of you, from the moment you were born. Even before you were born. You weren’t mine, but you were mine.”

I stared at them both, barely able to believe what I was hearing. All these years, they’d kept this from me. Such an enormous secret.

“So you just thought you’d never tell me who my real father was?” I said, my voice rising with each word. “You just hoped I wouldn’t find out? That’s horrible! Just because he was a criminal doesn’t mean I didn’t deserve to know he existed!”

A tear ran down Mom’s cheek, but I didn’t move to grab a tissue from the box next to me on the coffee table.

“We thought we did the right thing. We discussed it for a long time, Nora, and we ended up going to tell your father about you while he was still in prison. He said… he said I should’ve had an abortion. Said he didn’t care or want you.”

That felt like a punch in the gut.

“We didn’t want you growing up feeling different, feeling unwanted. So we ended up deciding not to tell you. When you got older, we considered it again, and we went and tracked him down. Showed him pictures of you. He said the same thing. Didn’t want to know you. He never changed. He was in and out of prison his whole life, right up until he passed, and he never changed his mind about not wanting you.”

“He’s dead?”

“He passed away a couple of months ago,” Mom said, not meeting my eyes.

“So you never even gave me a chance to know about him before he died.”

“I’m sorry, Nora,” Mom replied, beginning to cry in earnest now. “We thought we were doing the right thing.”

“He knew how to find you,” Dad interjected. “When he was out of prison, he could’ve easily tracked you down and told you. But he didn’t.”

“Didn’t I still deserve a chance to meet him? Confront him?” I asked indignantly.

“Do you think confronting him would’ve changed anything? Do you think it would’ve made you feel any better?” Jacob said from beside me.

I whirled around to face him. “Please stay out of this, Jacob. This isn’t your business.”

I knew I was being a bitch to him—this was his business. It had become his business as soon as I told him what was going on. But right now I couldn’t worry about his feelings. I was too distraught over all my own problems. I was trapped in some sort of nightmare, trapped in a net of lies I couldn’t disentangle myself from no matter how much I squirmed and cried.

My parents were both silent now. I shook my head and abruptly stood up. “I can’t be here anymore,” I mumbled. “I need to get out.”

With that, I took off toward the back door of the house, and I ran.

I ran like hell.