I took the photo. The young man in the picture was undoubtedly my father, Robert, looking handsome and smiling broadly. But the young woman standing next to him, laughing with her arm wrapped tightly around his waist, wasn’t a stranger.

It was my mother’s younger sister, Aunt Clara. Aunt Clara was the family mystery. I had been told my entire life that she had moved to California in the mid-seventies and cut off all contact with us.

My mother had always forbidden us from speaking her name, claiming she was selfish and ungrateful. Now, the terrible truth fell into place. My father hadn’t just had an affair. He had fathered a child with his own wife’s sister.

“She never went to California because she wanted to,” Patrice said, tears spilling over her lower lids. “My mother was sent away because she was pregnant. Your mother made sure of it. She told her she would ruin the family.”

A cold, hard anger took over my body. I looked at Patrice, my newly discovered sister, and saw the decades of loneliness she had endured, growing up without a father. I took her hand. “Get your coat,” I said.

We drove back to Toledo in silence. When we arrived at my parents’ brick ranch house, I didn’t knock. I pushed the front door open and walked straight into the dining room. My parents were sitting at the table.

My mother looked up, ready to scream at me again, but her voice died in her throat. She saw Patrice standing right behind me. The color completely drained from her face. She gripped the table, her hands shaking.

Nobody said anything for a second, and honestly, that felt worse. My father looked down at his hands, unable to meet our eyes. “Who paid for Aunt Clara to leave, Mom?” I asked, my voice flat.

My mother looked at Patrice, then at me, and finally broke down into jagged, ugly sobs. “We had to protect the family,” she wept. “What would the neighbors have said? Clara agreed to it!”