I sat with that for a second.

I said, “You thought that was better. You thought that was a better reason.”

He didn’t say anything.

I got up and I went to bed. I didn’t cry. I lay there listening to him move around the kitchen and clean up the dinner I made and the whole time I just kept thinking about that baptism announcement.

Elena and Marcus Navarro. Like they are a unit. Like they named themselves together.

I still don’t fully know what to do with any of it. I called my mother the next morning and I asked her about my father, about whether there was anything she never told me. She went quiet in a way that answered the question before she said a single word.

So. There’s apparently more to that part too.

Marcus is staying in the guest room for now. We haven’t told anyone. Some mornings I wake up and I feel like a completely different person than the woman who used to say she got lucky. Other mornings I make coffee and I just stand there and I don’t feel much of anything at all. I don’t know what I’m going to do about Marcus. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the woman with the size 5 and size 7 school uniforms who may or may not be related to me by blood.

I don’t know. I really don’t know.