“Mom,” I sobbed, resting my forehead against the cold glass of the steering wheel. “The doctor says the baby’s blood type doesn’t match Mark’s. He says it’s impossible. But I swear to you, Mom, I’ve never been with anyone else.

I don’t understand what’s happening. My blood is A, and Mark is O.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I expected her to gasping, to tell me the lab made a mistake, to defend my honor. But she didn’t. I could hear her breathing, slow and heavy.

“Mom?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“Some things are better left alone, Clara,” she whispered. Her voice sounded incredibly old, and completely hollow.

“What do you mean?” I demanded, my panic rising. “What does that mean, Mom?”

“Don’t dig into this,” she said. And then, she hung up.

I stared at the screen of my phone. I called her back, but it went straight to voicemail. I didn’t even think. I started the car, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove the 45 minutes to her house. The drive is a blur. I remember the windshield wipers beating a steady rhythm against the light rain, and I remember feeling a cold, sick weight settling deep in my stomach.

When I pulled into her driveway, her old sedan was parked there. I walked up to the porch and pounded on the door. It took her a long time to answer. When she finally opened it, she looked like she had aged ten years. Her eyes were red, her gray hair was messy, and she was holding a yellow envelope.

She didn’t invite me in. She just walked back to the kitchen, leaving the door open.

I followed her inside. On the wooden kitchen table, next to her half-empty cup of chamomile tea, was my childhood baby book. The one with the faded blue ribbon that she had kept in her cedar chest for thirty years.

“Sit down, Clara,” she said, not looking at me. She sat down and slid the yellow envelope across the table.

My hands shook as I opened the metal clasp. Inside was a birth certificate. It looked old, the paper slightly yellowed at the edges. But as I read the words, my breath caught in my throat. This wasn’t the birth certificate from my baby book. This was from a small hospital in southern Ohio.

And under the line for “Mother,” it didn’t say Evelyn Davis. It said Sarah Jean Vance.

“Who is Sarah?” I asked, my voice barely a squeak.

My mother put her face in her hands and began to cry. It was a horrible, weeping sound. “She was your biological mother, Clara. She was my cousin. She died three hours after you were born. She didn’t have anyone else, so your father and I took you. We brought you home, and we never told a soul. We wanted you to be ours. Just ours.”