My Blood's Secret

“Hey dad, what’s up?”

“I wanted to talk about your sister.” He was speaking fast, and I could almost smell the alcohol on his breath through the phone-line.

“Oh, okay. What’s happened?” A dozen different scenarios raced through my head, but he sounded angry not upset. She’d done something, not had something happen to her.

“Stop telling her to get a blood test. Her baby will be fine.”

“But- isn’t it worth checking? If she’s a carrier for sickle cell-”

“She isn’t. Your mother wasn’t a carrier, and neither am I.”

All I could hear was the static of the line.

“But… then how could I have been a carrier?” All the tests, all the checks, all the worry I'd had when I first fell pregnant came rushing back at that moment, followed by a void. It had to have come from somewhere. “What… what do you mean dad?”

“Your father was the carrier. Not me. I- Goodbye.”

All I was left with was the bleep of him hanging up and my world crumbling around me.

The rest of that day passed in a haze. I went through the motions and did everything that was required, but I couldn’t think straight. Every time I stopped my thoughts drifted to the conversation, to the few minutes that utterly destroyed my life. My phone rang more than once from my sister, but I refused to answer it. What would I say? What was there to say?

It was two days later before I was starting to process what had happened. I’d dropped Jacob off at nursery and had a few hours to kill. The plan had been to find a coffee shop, somewhere neutral where I could gather my thoughts. Before I knew it though my feet had brought me to the graveyard, and I was stood in front of Mum’s gravestone.

“Hey Mum.” For a time I just stood there, breathing in the cool air, wishing it could blow everything away. Reading the dates on Mum’s headstone I couldn’t help but remember her wedding anniversary to Dad- no. Not Dad. To David. They’d celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary just before she’d died four years ago. I’d only turned thirty last year.

“What happened Mum? Why… why am I here?” For my whole life Mum had been my touchstone, the person I’d most aspired to be like. She’d always been so strong and so fiercely independent, even while the cancer tore through her body. And now…

“Why didn’t you tell me?” That was what haunted me the most. Mum had known she was dying, and she still hadn’t confessed. Was that when she’d confessed to Dad- to David? I racked my brain trying to remember how he’d acted throughout her illness, but he’d never been anything but supportive of me. He’d never had a favourite, he’d never shown any preference between me and Sara. If he’d taken one of us out for our birthday, he was always sure to make sure the other one got the same treatment on her birthday.

And yet…

The tone of his voice during that conversation still haunted me. It was so cold, so heartless. He was a good man, who I’d only ever seen getting angry, properly swearing-whenever-they’re-mentioned kind of angry, at two people in my whole life. He’d always gone above and beyond to help his friends, and got annoyed when people quoted the Bible at him while he did so.

“We should help me because we’re kind, not because we’re scared of judgement,” he’d say.

But he'd judged me. That was what his voice held that day; judgement. I hadn’t known that a crime had been done, and yet my very existence was a grievous sin against him that he blamed me for.

I didn’t know what I was expecting to happen at Mum’s grave. Understanding ideally, acceptance perhaps, forgiveness maybe, though what for I couldn’t be sure.

What I wasn’t expecting was for my fath- for David to turn up.

“Oh,” he said when he saw me.

“Hi. What are you doing?”

He gestured at the grave with the bunch of flowers he was carrying. “I’ve been up here every day since… since that call.” I’d been too distracted to even notice the fresh flowers on her grave, and that sent a pang of guilt through me. What else had I neglected these past few days?

There was an awkward silence between us for a while, until at last he asked if he could join me.

“I should be going now anyway. I need to get Jacob from nursery.” I started to walk away, keeping my eyes down as I did.

“Stay a while?” he asked when I was a few rows away. “Please?”

As I looked at the man stood before my mother’s grave, it wasn’t the man who’d raised me. It was the man who’d stood there four years ago grieving the loss of the woman he loved. It was the man who’d never quite been the same since, no matter how brave a face he put on for his family.

How could I say no to him?

Side by side we stood, each of us lost in our own thoughts, both wishing a sign or some fresh words of wisdom would appear on the headstone. All it said though was ‘A mother and a wife, much loved by everyone, now safe with our Lord’. Nothing pertinent to the dilemma she’d left us in.

“How-” David started, though he had to cough and swallow a few times before he could finish. “How’ve you been?”

“I don’t know. I… I thought I knew her. I didn’t think she’d do something like to me. To us. I didn’t think she’d have let it gone unsaid either.”

“She thought about telling you. At the end, when she knew her time was coming.”

“So you did know? Before then?”

“I’ve always know. Since before you were born.”

“But-” That made both of them liars. They’d raised me and Sara as sisters, yet we were nothing but half-sisters. Half-sisters? Does that really change anything?

“She told me not long after it happened. It was rough, I’m not going to lie about that. But I loved her, and she loved me. She made her peace with God, and together we got through it.”

“And you kept me? Treated me as your own?” I watched his profile as he thought, and for the first time I noticed how deep the lines were around his eyes.

“I thought it would be different with Sara. That I’d feel something more for her, some deeper connection with her. But do you know what? It wasn’t. I felt the same affection for both of you, even though I knew you weren’t my flesh and blood. You weren’t my child, but you were my daughter.”

After so many days of loneliness that was too much. Before I knew what was happening I was in torrents of tears, bawling more than I had the day of funeral. But he was there, hugging me close as if nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said when the worst of my tears were over. “I’d forgiven her all those years ago, but having it brought up again… it gave me a fresh chance to be angry at you. But that wasn’t fair. You have nothing to be forgiven for.”

The words I’m sorry died on my lips. Mum wouldn’t have wanted that. You don’t apologise if you’re not sorry, and I had nothing to be sorry for.

“I really should go and get Jacob now,” I said when I at last pulled free of him, laughing as I wiped the tears away.

“Come on then. I’ll come with you.”

With a last nod to Mum we headed out. I could tell he wanted to say something, but I let David- Dad- get to it in his own time.

“Do you want to find him? Your real father?”

“No. You’re my real father.” I hoped that my grin hide the nervous excitement in my stomach.

Despite what I’d said, I still found myself pulling out Mum’s old journals that night. She’d been careful about keeping records of her life, documenting major events and family struggles. I’d flicked past my wedding and Sara’s graduation, back to our high school days. Each page I turned made my fingers shake a little more, yet I was drawn on by something irresistible. It was like seeing the jaws of a shark, but needing to see how far back the teeth went.

That journal started with Sara’s birth, so I dug out the older one and for a moment just held it in my hands. My mother had never gotten around to telling me herself; the words in this book were the closest I would ever get to knowing why she’d betrayed her husband and hidden the truth from me. The closest I’d get to knowing how much she regretted me.

Before I knew it the book was open. The pages had been worn thin and were soft with age. Words in her careful cursive script flicked by, the odd one jumping out at me.

Home. Born. Love. Forgive. Hurt.

I couldn’t separate a single page any more, my fingers too uncoordinated to do anything other than fumble the book. With a shuddering breath I slammed the book shut and rested my forehead against.

No. I couldn’t do this, not yet. The pain was still too fresh, too raw. And the fact I could talk to Dad about it, but not Mum? What if it changed how I saw him? I didn’t think I could bear that.

There was one thing I needed to know though, and I was afraid it would break David's heart if I asked him. I just hoped that I wouldn’t learn too much else at the same time.

The page I wanted was easy to find. It was the one stained with tears, the edges still crinkled after all these years. The writing here was faded even worse than in the rest of the diary, which was both a help and a hindrance. My eyes skimmed across the words as I tried to keep my mind blank to the pain that was conveyed on the page. Somewhere here there had to be-

Andrew Tucker.

I stared at the name to ingrain it into my mind then shut the book firmly and packed it away again.

All I’d wanted was his name, but now I knew it I didn’t feel any urge to pursue it further. Could he be a better father than David had been? Maybe, but it was far too late in all our lives to find out. Knowing him now wouldn’t change the past I’d had, but it could damage my future.

All I’d needed was the knowledge that I could look him up if I ever wanted to. While she’d taken the affair to the grave, she hadn’t taken his name with her as well.