Two towns over. My sister grew up two towns over while my mother tucked me in with bedtime stories about a nice agency lady.

I asked the question I didn’t even want the answer to. “Did she ever reach out to you? Send anything?”

Janet shook her head slow. “She told my family to never contact her. I think she was scared the whole thing would come apart.”

I want to tell you I was just angry. And I was, a little. But honestly, mostly I felt sick at myself. Because in 42 years I never once asked a real question. I let the story sit because it was easy and it was comfortable and I didn’t want to know. And that, the not-wanting-to-know, that’s the exact thing she was counting on the whole time.

Diane is 78 now. She lives twenty minutes from me. I see her every Sunday. I’ve got the photo in my purse, the real one, the one with her own handwriting on the back calling herself a caregiver to two babies she swore up and down she never laid eyes on until I was three days old.

I’ve picked up the phone three times this week. I get as far as her name on the screen, and I put it back down. I keep trying to figure out what I’d even say. “I met my sister”? “Why did you only take one of us”?

Janet texts me every day now. Little things. A recipe. A photo of her dog. Last night she sent, “Glad I finally found you, little sister.” I cried at my own kitchen counter like a fool.

I still call Diane “Mom” out loud. I don’t know how to stop. But I haven’t gone Sunday yet.

The photo’s still in my purse. And I still can’t make myself dial.