Everything inside me came apart at once. I let out a laugh with nothing in it.

“This is insane,” I said, staring at her like she’d just demolished the world.

“I didn’t recognize you when we met,” she said, rushing now, desperate to make me hear it. “I only saw a kind, intelligent young man who deserved better than what he’d been given.

I got close to you before I noticed the resemblance.”

She admitted that months later she’d had someone look into it quietly. And that eight months before the wedding, she’d confirmed it. I was her biological son.

“Eight months ago? And you still married me?” My voice climbed no matter what I did to it.