“Okay… so what isn’t simple?”
“Claire isn’t your full sister,” he says at last. “She is your half sister.”
I frown. “Half… how?”
“The man who raised Lucas,” my father says, “had a relationship outside his marriage years ago. It was a mistake that hurt a lot of people. Your mother was involved. Claire came from that.”
The words land in pieces.
I stare at him.
“You’re telling me that Claire’s biological father is Lucas’s father?”
He nods, slowly.
“So Claire and Lucas are—”
“Half siblings,” he finishes quietly. “They share a father.”
The room tilts. I grip the edge of my chair.
I think of family dinners where my mother seemed tense if Lucas’s parents were mentioned. I think of how she always changed the subject if talk turned to the past, to the time before I was born, to the early years of their marriage. At the time, I thought she was just tired of certain stories.
“When did you find out?” I ask.
“I suspected when Claire was little,” he admits. “There were things that didn’t add up. Your mother was distant. There were phone calls she didn’t explain. But I pushed it down. I told myself not to think about it.”
Years later, he tells me, he found proof. Messages. Dates. Details that lined up too perfectly. He confronted my mother, and she broke down and admitted everything. She told him that Lucas’s father had promised to stay away, that no one else would ever know, that it would be better for everyone if the truth disappeared.
“Your mother begged me not to tell anyone,” he says. “She was afraid of losing you. Afraid of the world judging Claire for something that was never her fault. I was angry, but I looked at both of you and… I agreed to keep it quiet. I thought I could live with it.”
He lets out a long breath.
“I was wrong.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
“And Lucas?” I ask. “How does he fit into this? When did he find out?”
“Recently,” my father says. “His mother reached out. She had found some old papers and started asking questions. Then someone sent Lucas a packet of test results, photos, dates. He put the pieces together, and it led him straight to us.”
I can picture Lucas opening that envelope. I can picture him reading the details and realizing that the woman standing beside me at the altar, the woman he believed was just his fiancée’s sister, was in fact related to him by blood.
“He came to talk to me a few weeks ago,” my father continues. “He was upset. He said he couldn’t pretend this didn’t exist. He wanted the truth out in the open, especially for Claire’s sake. I told him this night was about you. I told him not to do anything impulsive.”
My father looks away, ashamed.
“He said he would wait. I thought he understood. I thought he would find another moment.”
I let out a shaky breath.
“And instead, he stood up at our wedding,” I say, “and decided to turn it into the moment.”
My father nods.
“He thought, if he forced it into the light, we would have no choice but to confirm it. He thought Claire deserved to know. He was right about that part. But the way he did it… he did not think about how it would tear through you.”
The edges of my vision blur.
Lucas’s strange toast. The way Claire shook. The way my mother couldn’t meet my eyes. It all re-arranges itself into a different picture.
The love triangle I thought I saw in that ballroom was never real.
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