Summary

Dani calls her mother's best friend, Charlotte, and asks if she knew that her father was not her biological parent. Charlotte says she had no idea and tells Dani: "Your father is still your father" (41). Dani feels like this is a cliche and asks "Would I ever again feel that my father was my father?" (42).

Dani reflects on what she tells her memoir-writing students: "there is no such thing as absolute truth — only the truth that is singularly [your] own" (44). She wrestles with the facts, her dead parents, and the truth of her experience as a child and a member of her family. She writes: "There had been something amiss. We didn't add up. And not because I wasn't my father's child but because I — and possibly one or both of my parents — had never known" (44).

Dani breaks the news to...