That was ten months ago. I see Matthew twice a year now. He has a wife named Patrice who makes a lemon cake I will be sad about when he dies. I have two half-siblings I did not know existed — a brother Connor who is twenty-five, and a sister Iris who is twenty-two. We are, against every odd imaginable, becoming a family. I also still speak to my mother. Three times a week. She cries during every phone call. She says she is sorry. She says she did what she thought was right. I do not believe she did what she thought was right — I believe she did what was easiest, and then she built a prison out of the lie and locked herself inside it for twenty-seven years. But she is my mother. She raised me alone. She also stole my father from me for my entire childhood. And I am still trying, every day, to figure out if those two truths can live in the same woman. So tell me honestly — can a lie told for three decades be forgiven, or is this something I should never let her come back from?

* Story inspired by real-life situations. Names and details have been changed for privacy.