Grandma Gerd gently shook my shoulders. “Frangi? Did you hear what I said?” I blinked rapidly. “It shouldn’t come as that much of a shock,” she continued. “You look nothing like either Leonardo or Althea. And you were a head taller than both of them at fourteen.” “But … not all children resemble their parents.” “True. But hasn’t it hit you whom you resemble most?” Wait. It couldn’t be. “Not …” “Excuse me, madam, we must go.” Bounmy’s strained voice seemed miles away. “You?” Grandma Gerd got up. “But, wait! You can’t go yet! How, when, why—” Grandma Gerd is my birth mother!? How could I not have seen it? Both five feet ten, lanky limbed, with bad vision. Did Grandma have dark hair before she went prematurely grey? And that photo in her Everything Book of her wearing a pouffy A-line dress—it wasn’t pouffy: She was pregnant with me! My brain somersaulted around in my skull. My dad was no longer my dad—he was my half brother! But then again, he was also adopted, so what did that make us?
