30

Sabrina opened the front door. The house smelled stale. She needed to come back later this week and air it out.

Taking care of this place had been a low priority for the past week.

She paused in the foyer as her mother—the woman she’d always known to be her mother—walked around and looked at the place for the first time. Sabrina let her take the lead and followed her as she wandered through the rooms.

“So,” she said, “you think the fact that I look like Dad is just one of those things that happens in a lot of adoptive families?”

Her mother ran a hand over a brass elephant that Sabrina could remember from her youngest days. “I did.”

The implications of those two words were more than Sabrina’s mind wanted to deal with. She sat on the edge of a love seat. She was done. Done being nice. Done playing games. She waited until she had a good view of her mother’s face and then she spoke. “Tell me about Rosita.”

Her mother closed her eyes, almost in slow motion. She pinched her lips together. She took a deep breath and blew it out. But she still didn’t look in Sabrina’s direction. “I hated her.”

“Why?” Sabrina was almost certain she knew, but she didn’t want to guess. She was tired of wondering. “She was wonderful to me. I adored her. Why did you hate her? Why did you send her away?”

That got her an unexpected reaction. “How did you know I was the one who sent her away?”

“Dad was out of town and he knew how much I loved her. He would have at least let me say goodbye. And I heard you fighting later. I didn’t hear every word, but I knew he was angry.”

“He was angry.” Her mother said the words under her breath. “Yes, he was. But he knew I was right. He never should have brought her into our home. And there was no way I was going to sit by while she gave him another child.”

“Another . . . ?”

“She was pregnant.”

“I have a sibling?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

Sabrina tried to process everything she’d heard. She wasn’t used to feeling overwhelmed by information, but this time she was. Images from her childhood—her father talking to Rosita in the hall, her mother, well, her adoptive mother, berating her over her clothes, Rosita snuggling with her when she was afraid of a thunderstorm. She scanned through moment after moment, and all of them looked different in light of this new information.

A fresh ache engulfed her as she thought about all the anger she’d felt toward Rosita after she left. She’d been so hurt. So upset.

So wrong about everything.

Not that it was her fault, but had she missed some clues? Probably. But apparently even as an adult it was easier for her to suspect her parents of keeping Rosita as a slave than to imagine a completely different scenario.

Her heart hurt. Her mind whirled. And a sibling? She might have a brother or sister somewhere out there? What would that be like? Would she ever find them?

If she did, would they want to know her?

Maybe. Maybe not. Because she still hadn’t gotten to the one question she’d always wanted the answer to.

Sabrina looked out the window and for the first time in forever felt peace that now was the time to ask. “For the past decade, I’ve suspected you and Dad kept Rosita as a slave.”

Her mother laced her fingers in front of her and sighed. “I guess in a manner of speaking we did.”

She was admitting it?

“I still don’t know how your father met Rosita. And I don’t have proof, nor did he ever admit it to me, but it is my belief that he got her pregnant around the same time I got pregnant. I have no idea what he intended to do had our daughter lived, but when we lost her, he must have seen it as an opportunity to keep you in his life. And of course he would hire your own mother to take care of you.”

“He hired Rosita?”

“He did everything. I was so weak from blood loss and grief. He was the one who set up the adoption and hired Rosita. He said he was trying to make it as easy as possible for me. I actually believed him at the time.”

“This is messed up,” Sabrina said.

“It is,” her mother agreed. “Because as far as I know, my adoption of you was completely legal. I saw the paperwork where your birth mother signed over her parental rights to me. Assuming I’m correct in my theory of events, your father was technically your father twice. By birth and by adoption.”

Sabrina’s mind scrambled to pull together the threads of this crazy story and make them make sense.

“So Rosita signed over her parental rights to you, allowed you to adopt me, then came to work for you to take care of me?”

“Yes. And I don’t know what sort of pressure she was under that enticed her to do that. But once it was done, she was effectively a slave in our home. Because I’m certain she would never have willingly left you. Not when you were a baby.”

“But she left me when I was ten.”

Her mother dropped her head. “I didn’t give her much choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I threatened to have her deported. But since you were legally mine, you would have stayed with me no matter what. I knew she would have done anything to stay in the States. Even if it meant leaving you for a time. To be honest, I never expected her to go far. I figured your father would set her up somewhere, and when you turned eighteen she would come back into your life and the whole thing would be out in the open.”

“But she never came back.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Do you know where she is?” Sabrina held her breath.

“No. I haven’t seen her since the day she walked out the door. And if your father knew where she was or what happened to her, he took it to the grave.”

“Did you ever ask him?”

Her mother sat on the sofa across from her. “No. I didn’t. I threw myself into my work and tried to pretend none of it had ever happened. And I know you won’t believe this, but I am . . . sorry, Sabrina. Truly I am. I know this is a shock, and I know it’s a lot to come to terms with. I’ve had decades to deal with it and it still sometimes shakes me to my core.”

Sabrina couldn’t sit still any longer. “I need some air.” She ran out the door and into the yard. If she’d had anything of substance to eat this morning, she would have hurled it into the bushes. As it was, she paced around the front yard.

Rosita was her mother.

Her father was her father.

Her mother wasn’t her mother.

She may have a sibling.

Rosita left her.

And she never came back.