Chapter 11 - The Part I Had to Admit About Myself
For two weeks I avoided both Diane and Logan.
I spoke to Rebecca twice.
Briefly.
Carefully.
I expected instant connection.
There wasn’t one.
She was a stranger who knew my birthday.
A stranger who remembered the hospital where I was born.
A stranger who cried when I mentioned that I hated peas as a child because apparently she had too.
Sometimes those similarities comforted me.
Sometimes they made me angry.
I began seeing a therapist who specialized in adult adoption and family identity.
During our third session, she asked a question I hated.
“What do you lose if Diane becomes entirely the villain?”
I almost walked out.
Then I understood.
Diane had lied to me.
Controlled information about my life.
Humiliated me.
Favored Logan.
Used fear to justify twenty years of secrecy.
All true.
But Diane had also sat beside my hospital bed when I had pneumonia at eight.
She learned to braid my hair badly because I begged her.
She worked extra hours when Mark’s company downsized.
She mailed care packages every month during my freshman year.
If I erased those things, I would be doing a smaller version of what she had done to Rebecca.
Turning a complicated person into one convenient story.
My anger did not disappear.
It became more precise.
Diane had not stolen twenty-four empty years.
She had been my mother during them.
That was exactly why the betrayal hurt.
Meanwhile, Rebecca made a choice that earned more trust than any speech could have.
She told me not to visit Richmond yet.
“Make sure you're coming because you want to,” she said. “Not because you're running from Diane.”
I thanked her.
After the call, I cried again.
Diane had spent years insisting Rebecca would take me if given the chance.
The woman herself was telling me to slow down.
Then Aunt Karen called.
Diane had begun telling relatives that Rebecca had “reappeared during an emotionally vulnerable time.”
The wording made me furious.
Even now, she was shaping the narrative.
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Truth alone would not create accountability.
If I said nothing, Diane would build another version of events before I had finished understanding the first.
