"I loved him. He said he'd leave her. He never did." She stirred her coffee without drinking it. "When I got pregnant with you, I gave him an ultimatum. He chose to keep both families."
"He commuted," Patricia added bitterly. "Three days with us in Boston. Four days with them in New York. Business trips, he said. I believed him for twenty years."
"When did you find out?"
"Emma's sixteenth birthday. I found a second phone in his jacket. Photos of another daughter. You." She looked at me with something that wasn't quite anger. "You look just like him."
I felt sick.
"So you both knew. For years. And you just... shared him?"
"We tried to leave," my mother said. "Multiple times. He always found a way to pull us back."
"He was manipulative," Patricia agreed. "Charming. He made you feel like the only woman in the world. Until you remembered you weren't."