The woman said she was Verna’s sister. I thought she’d misunderstood me, so I asked her to repeat it. She gave me Verna’s maiden name, the name of the street where she grew up, and the nickname nobody had used for her since she was a teenager. Then she said Verna had called her every month for years and had told her that I was the only person who knew about their arrangement. I asked what arrangement she meant, and she went quiet.
I drove to Kingsport the next morning. She lived in a little brick house and had a box of Verna’s things in the closet. Inside were letters, photographs, and a copy of the same body-donation enrollment I’d just seen at the funeral home. But the signature wasn’t Verna’s. It was mine. The woman said Verna had brought the papers to her in 2016 and told her I’d signed everything because I was handling her affairs. I told her I’d never seen those papers in my life. Then she opened an envelope and showed me a photograph taken that same year. Verna was standing beside the woman in the kitchen, holding the signed form.
I asked why Verna had never told me about her. She said Verna had tried several times, but I’d always been told the calls were from someone asking for money, so I stopped putting them through. Then she handed me one last letter, still sealed, with my name written on the front in Verna’s handwriting. I opened it in the car. There were only three sentences. She said she’d been keeping something from me because she was afraid I’d leave her if I knew the truth. And the last sentence said, “The woman you call my sister is actually your mother.”
