CHAPTER 1
FORGET ME NOT

Spring, 1962

“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will
grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two
years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower
and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather
delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh,
why can’t you remain like this forever!’ This was all that passed between
them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.
You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.” 1

He woke up to a sound coming from downstairs, something musical. Curious, he made his way down the old house’s creaking steps. On the stairs you could slip and fall; the two-and-a-half-year-old knew that full well. He was determined he wouldn’t let that happen a second time. Eventually he’d fall again, but not now. He remembered what could happen. Grasping the railing, he climbed slowly and carefully down to the first floor past the novelty plaque reminding all readers: Shhh! Baby Sleeping.

Though it was the middle of the night, the sweet lilting sound of a song had drawn the little boy from his bed and into the dimly lit dining room. Peeking between the curtain panels, the only light came from the streetlamps and found its way through the nearest window. On top of a China cabinet sat a round, aluminum music box, painted blue, playing “Waves of the Danube” waltz. Staring in the direction of the music, he didn’t go near. Everything was still and quiet aside from the repeating melody coming from the music box. He knew there was no way to reach it—he was still too small.

Looking around, he realized he was alone. Everyone else in the family was still upstairs asleep in their beds. He made his way back up the steep staircase and crawled underneath his covers until morning. It was his first memory.

May, 2017

Next to being confident in his smarts and quick wit, it’s having a vivid recollection that Dad prides himself in. He could rely on it. Remembering and knowing is how he’s built his life. It’s even how he taught himself music—by ear, by memorizing.

I haven’t been sleeping well. Lately, the words I say to him seem forced and hollow; I’m struggling to make eye contact when I’m around him, dreading that he knows I’m keeping a secret from him. Maybe he can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but he knows it’s something. If I wait much longer he
might start reading my mind. That I've kept quiet even a couple days, let alone for two months is a miracle.

But she lasted well past a measly two months. She kept silent for fifty years until finding rest in the Lord. It’s now my unexpected (and perhapsmy unavoidable) inheritance. The secret found me and claimed me as itscaretaker—whether I wanted the job or not.

Leave it alone, a thought had said. What good will it do him if he knows?

Maybe if I had just stopped, I could have let it go. I could have justkept it for her; like I had done with the knickknacks and Avon earrings and beads. I could just store the secret away in a sealed container. Her scrapbooks and postcards had met that time capsule-like fate along with the hundreds—maybe thousands—of photographs. The secret would be safe there. If someone else stumbles upon it in the future, so be it. Why should I be the one to open the door containing a giant family skeleton and get buried under a whole pile of miscellaneous bones that come tumbling
after? There had to be a reason my grandmother took it to the grave.

Stop making excuses, another thought said. You’re trying to find a different way out when there is no other way.

But there has to be, I pleaded.

If Dad is never told, will I regret it? Who am I to withhold his identity from him? He was named after a man who he believed was his father. As much damage as that man caused the family, it’s been the shared surname and the lineage that exists beyond him that we’ve come to embrace as our own. Until now, there had been no reason to believe otherwise.

He sits down at the head of the table, placing both hands in front of him, stretching his long fingers out over the slight gap where the table pulls apart to make space for the leaf. Sitting down in a chair next to his, I run my fingers over the hieroglyphics of my youth, proof of my sisters’ and my existence and of our elementary school math worksheets. The well-loved oak dining room table reveals the worn and faded spots of family life, which, despite the solid hardwood, feels oddly soft. This is the place where we have not only done homework, but eaten most every meal, dyed Easter eggs, decorated Christmas cookies, played board games, and blew out birthday candles year after year.

Reaching in my bag, I pull out a bottle of Mic Ultra and place it directly in front of him. He laughs and knows right away to be suspicious. His current reality is that he has three full siblings: the ones he’s always known. In a matter of minutes, he’ll know that’s not the case. Adding seven half-siblings makes the grand total ten. Ten half-siblings his entire life, and a thousand unanswered questions for my dead grandmother.

Even with that steel trap of a memory he’s depended on his whole life, he’ll look at all the proof and he’ll wonder why he can’t remember any of it.

1  J.M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911; Project Gutenberg, February 15, 2021), https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16/pg16-images.html.

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