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Free’s expression is lighthearted, but her eyes darken. Maybe she’s caught in this time warp too. Maybe we’re both not ready to walk into this new world.

“What do you want to know?”

“Um.” I look down at the scarred tabletop.

“What happened to her? What happened between her and your… Is sperm donor too harsh?”

I shrug. “Seems accurate.”

Her raspy laugh invades my ears again. I kind of like it.

“Why she gave you up?”

“Uh…”

“How’d I find you?” Free’s eyebrow is arched high, as if she knows that’s my number one question.

My neck is hot. My ears burn. Every muscle in my throat constricts, preventing the raging yes from escaping my mouth. Finally, I whisper, “All of it.”

“All of it? Hmm.” She cups her chin in one hand. Free has more rings than fingers. She says, carefully, “Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeat, uncertain.

“But first, coffee.”

There’s something intensely bizarre aboutlistening to someone tell the history of a family that didn’t exist a month ago. It’s an out-of-body experience. Everything is muted except their voice. I’m breathing, but I’m not. My iced coffee is watered down, but I keep drinking, because my throat is too dry to talk.

The only thing that exists is Free’s voice and eyes and curls. She tells me about Ruby, our mother: her eyes, her voice, her art. Free talks about where she was born, where they lived.

“Decatur, where it’s greater, baby!” Free says with that infectious laughter, with an easiness, as if she’s not exposing her bare bones to her newly-discovered brother.Half-brother.

Free talks with her hands. Everything is dramatic, overwhelming as Times Square. She fills in the gaps about what happened before I was born. Where Ruby worked: line cook during the day, art gallery custodian in the evening. How Free stayed with a different neighbor every night. All the Christmases they spent at Waffle House, then the movies. Ruby was an only child. Her parents—my unknown grandparents—are dead.

“Were you lonely?” I ask, shyly. I haven’t found her line between curious and nosy.

“Boy, I was popular!” She slurps down iced coffee. She takes it with vanilla and cream, almost like mine. “I was always over at a friend’s house, playing superheroes and climbing trees. You couldn’t keep me out the pool in the summers.”

I think about how Willow loves to swim, too. And then this fuzzy guilt plops on my chest. Should I be thinking about Willow? Is that wrong? To have all these fond, high-definition memories of my adopted sister and relate them to pale, faded memories borrowed from my birth sister? I don’t know.

“Was she happy?”

Free’s eyes finally leave mine. “Sometimes. When she was painting, she was in the clouds. When we did meaningless things, like run barefoot in the grass. Most days, whenever she didn’t…”

Her words trail off, and I don’t question the rest. I know I shouldn’t. Not yet. Not until Free is ready to tell the story.

“She loved too easily,” says Free. Lips pursed, she stirs ice around her cup with the straw. “Way too easy. I suppose that’s how your—”

I clear my throat.

“That man,” she says with a bite to her voice, “had such a lasting impact on her.”

It’s me who’s quiet, this time. I’m not ready to talk about him. Not yet. “Who was her favorite painter?”

“Vermeer. Hals. Ruysch.” Free rolls her eyes. “That woman loved her Dutch Golden Age.”

“Favorite movie?”

“She loved old-school stuff.Imitation of Life.”