“She took us in,” I said. “When Elena left us.”
Noah flinched slightly at our biological mother’s name, then looked back out at the grey autumn sky.
“Elena left because she did not want us,” Noah said. “Clara reminds us of that every year.”
I did not have an answer for him, because we both knew the story by heart. We had been left with nothing but our names and a quiet anger that we never spoke about in front of Clara.
“We were four years old when Clara told us the story for the first time,” I said to him. “We sat on the rug in the living room, and she told us our real mother had walked out because she wanted a different life.”
Noah did not look up, but his shoulders went rigid.
“I remember,” he said.
“And now we are supposed to just ignore her sixty-first birthday because she asked for money?”
