Texting your mom mid-60th birthday speech after a guest p...

Conversation

1. Mom, the woman just posted a photo of you hugging a teenager.
2. What photo, I'm in the middle of my speech.
3. It has caption 'miss you, mom' and a location tag.
4. I don't know who posted anything, hand me my phone later.
5. It's from Claire Bennett—she's tagged in eight photos.
6. Claire who?
7. The teenage girl looks like you at thirty.
8. What are you insinuating?
9. I'm not insinuating, I'm seeing a second daughter in her arms.
10. Stop, not here, people are watching me cry.
11. They're clapping; she wrote 'miss you, mom' under the picture.
12. I— that's impossible, your father and I...
13. You said 'we' never hid anything.
14. We didn't know, I never told you because I was protecting you.
15. Protecting? Protecting me from what exactly?
16. From the truth about a bad summer when I was twenty.
17. My heart's racing, I'm about to stand up and ask.
18. Don't stand up, please, there's a reason she's private.
19. People are already scrolling comments, someone typed 'long lost'.
20. You don't understand the man in those old photos.
21. You mean the man who left before I was born?
22. Yes, he returned once, not to us but to her.
23. So she is my sister, and you hid her all these years?
24. I made her promise I would never bring her here.