“Princess?” Dad asked behind my closed door.
I closed my eyes. “Yeah?”
“May I come in?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Sure, yeah. Yeah, you can—you can come in. I owe you an apology anyway.”
“No, you don’t,” he said as the door creaked open.
The smell of breakfast wafted through the air. “Mom cooking?”
He brandished a full plate from behind his back, complete with a large glass of orange juice. “She insisted I bring you something to eat.”
“Ihavelost weight.”
His stare quickly studied my crooked form. “I suppose you have.”
I patted the bed next to me. “Just leave it on the nightstand. I’ll eat when I’m ready.”
“Of course.”
He quickly came into the room and shuffled the food onto my nightstand. Then, he perched beside me.
“You’re right to be mad at us,” he said.
I nodded mindlessly as I stared at my black glitter laced vision board. “I know.”
“And, if you’re looking for an explanation as to why we did what we did, then I—”
I cleared my throat and clutched my towel tighter. “I already know the reason, right?”
His heavy sigh told me all I needed to know. “Your mother and I were unequipped to deal with the issues your sister had when she was first born. We were just starting out ourselves, and your biological mother? She—”
My gaze fell to the floor. “She what?”
He snickered. “I honestly don’t think she knew she was having twins.”
I wrinkled my nose. “How the hell do you not know you’re having twins?”
“She was young, Brielle. Twenty, if I remember correctly.”
“Nineteen,” Mom’s disembodied voice said from the hallway.
I swallowed hard. “Nineteen? What—what happened to her?”
Mom swiveled into the room and leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest. “What happens to most girls that age that have adoptions so young. She was taken advantage of by someone she trusted.”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“But,” Mom said as she came over and sat on my other side, “it doesn’t excuse the fact that we never told you about her.”
I peered over at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Mom? Why keep something so personal and so monumental from me? Her and I, we could’ve—”
“Could have what?” she asked plainly.
I shook my head softly and stared out into the hallway. “I don’t know, linked up or something.”
“Were we not enough family for you?” Mom asked.
