“From where?” I asked.
“A small town in the Midwest,” she said. “The hospital’s gone now. My parents always told me I was ‘chosen,’ but anytime I asked about my birth family, they shut it down.”
I swallowed hard.
“My sister disappeared from a small town in the Midwest,” I said slowly. “We lived near a forest. Months later, the police told my parents they’d found her body. But I never saw anything. No funeral. And they refused to talk about it.”
We stared at each other.
“What year were you born?” she asked.
I told her.
Then she told me hers.
Five years apart.
“We’re not twins,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not—”
“Connected,” she finished.
She took a deep breath.
“I’ve always felt like something was missing,” she said. “Like there’s a locked room in my life I’m not allowed to open.”
“My whole life has felt like that room,” I said quietly. “Do you want to open it?”
She let out a shaky laugh.
“I’m terrified,” she admitted.
“So am I,” I said. “But I’m more afraid of never knowing.”
She nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try.”
We exchanged numbers.
For illustrative purposes only
Back at my hotel, I couldn’t stop replaying every moment my parents had shut me down.
Then I remembered the dusty box in my closet—the one filled with their old papers that I had never dared to open.
Maybe they hadn’t told me the truth out loud.
