I’m as shocked by the question as she is. It’s not what I’d intended. Her breath comes in a weak shiver, and I brace myself for Mom volume. But when she starts to talk, it’s soft, like a bedtime story. “We never wanted you to know … ” “What? That I was the replacement?” “Evan, that’s preposterous.” “Evan Take Two?” “It wasn’t like that.” “Baby Do-over?” Bingo. She’s ticked. “It is nearly three o’clock in the morning, and you have no right barging in here to accuse me.” Standing by the bedroom door like a hostile Walmart greeter, she waits for me to leave. When I don’t, she sighs. “I am not having this conversation.” I sit on the edge of her bed and say, “Yeah. I think you are.” “We didn’t raise you to be so disrespectful.” I’ve had it. “What has being respectful ever done for me? Made me invisible? Easier to deceive?” “What are you talking about?” “Do you not get that it matters to me — that you and Dad lied to me all these years, never told me I had a brother?
