“You see it, don’t you?” Candi asked, breathless now. “The similarity. I noticed it the first time I saw you at the counter. That’s how I knew it was true.”
Alarm became a near-panic. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about—”
“We’re sisters.”
Alexis heard the words, but their meaning was so ridiculous that her brain blocked them from registering. She puffed out a small, desperate laugh. “I’m sorry, what?”
Candi’s face took on the soft sympathy that Alexis was used to projecting at other women, and when she spoke, Candi’s voice now carried the same keep-it-light quality that Alexis had just employed against her. “You never knew your father, did you?”
Alexis stood so abruptly that she shook her desk and sent her pencil cup spilling across the floor. “I’m sorry. Y-You’re mistaken. I don’t have any siblings.”
“None that you’ve ever met.”
“That’s absurd.”
Except it wasn’t. Not entirely. Candi was right; Alexis had never known her father. So the chances that the mystery man had gone on to produce other children after abandoning her mother were high. She’d wondered about it—him—from time to time over the years, but she’d never pursued it because why bother? What good would it do to know? He’d never been part of her life and never would. Her mother had been enough.
“My father’s name is Elliott Vanderpool,” Candi said.
Alexis backed up until her desk chair collided with the wall.
“You know that name, don’t you?”
“No,” Alexis lied, stepping over the rungs of the chair. Her shoelace caught, and she stumbled. She grabbed the edge of her desk to steady herself.
“He’s your father too,” Candi said.
“No, I—I don’t think that’s possible,” Alexis said in a voice she barely recognized. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. It’s a mistake.”
“I know this is a shock.”
A shock? Alexis would have laughed at the understatement of the century if she could process any other emotion besides numbness. She wanted to run away—not just from Candi but from the rising panic in the back of her mind telling her to escape. But her feet wouldn’t move. She was rooted as firmly as the creeping vine out front. At least the vine had something to cling to.
“I have the DNA to prove it,” Candi said.
Alexis focused her gaze. “How do you have my DNA?”
“You took one of those ancestry test things a couple of years ago.”
Oh, God. Alexis covered her mouth with her hand and turned around. It had been an impulsive act. A weak moment while her mother was sick. A fleeting urge to connect with her roots before her one and only anchor to the Earth was gone. But when the results came back, she learned nothing she hadn’t already known—that she was one hundred percent Eastern European and zero percent descended from anyone historically significant. She’d shoved the results in a drawer and never looked at them again.
“I took one too,” Candi was saying from somewhere far away. “And you came back as a possible sibling match.”
Alexis searched her brain for words. “Those tests can be wrong.”
“Alexis, our eyes are the same.” Candi’s shoes scuffed closer as she stood. “You have a brother too. His name is Cayden. And two nieces, Grace and Hannah. And a sister-in-law named Jenny. And an aunt and uncle—”
“Stop,” Alexis choked. Air became poison in her lungs. She tried to exhale but couldn’t.
“There’s something else,” Candi said, tone fading from gently reassuring to preemptively apologetic.
Alexis forced herself to look at Candi, whose features had settled again into the shy hesitance. “Our father is sick.”
Alexis barely had time to react to the phrase our father before she registered the two words that followed it. “How—what kind of sick?”
“Kidney failure.”
For the second time, Alexis reeled backward as if Candi had slapped her. The back of her legs hit the chair, and she sank into it.
“He was in a bad car accident a few years ago, and it destroyed his kidneys,” Candi said, voice shaking. “He’s been on dialysis, but his kidney function is not coming back. He needs a transplant.”
“So you sought me out because . . .” Alexis couldn’t even finish the sentence. Sardonic laughter became the period on the unfinished thought.
“You could be a match,” Candi whispered.
Alexis squeezed her eyes shut. How was this happening?
“If you’re a match, you could save him. He’s been on the donor list for two years.”
Alexis wanted to cover her ears and yell La-la-la-la. She didn’t want to care. Not about him. Not about Candi.
“I know this is a shock—”
Alexis opened her eyes. “How long have you known about me?”
Candi’s hesitance was an answer all on its own.
Alexis’s tone hardened. “How long?”
“I found out three years ago.”
Three years. Alexis exhaled an entire lifetime’s worth of unanswered questions, only to inhale another lifetime’s worth of new ones. Did that mean he had known about her for three years too? Or had he always known about her? Either way, he had obviously not cared enough to reach out himself.
“He wouldn’t let me contact you before,” Candi said, as if reading Alexis’s mind.
So he had known about her, at least for that long. Alexis rose slowly. “Maybe you should have respected his wishes.”
“I can’t. We’re running out of time. He’s at the top of the donor list, but he’s been there twice before, and each time something went wrong with the donor. If he doesn’t get a kidney soon—”
“How soon?” Alexis heard herself ask.
“A few months. We don’t really know.”
Empathy warred with self-preservation. And if that wasn’t the story of her entire life, she didn’t know what was.
“I know what I’m asking is a big deal,” Candi said. “To give a kidney to a total stranger.”
Alexis puffed out a joyless laugh and shook her head.
