“Juliet,” my mother said, “is your sister.

Your half-sister.

She is your father’s daughter.”

The words did not make sense at first.

They arrived in my ears and simply failed to arrange themselves into meaning, the way a sentence in a language you half-know will sometimes refuse to resolve.

I heard each word.

I understood none of them together.

The mind does a curious thing when it is handed a fact too large to hold.