I did not go back to the dining room. I got my coat. I got my keys. I drove home to my apartment in the snow at 9 PM on Christmas Eve, and I sat on my couch with the lights off and I stared at the photograph of Nicholas that lived on my bookshelf — the one of him holding me as an infant. And I realized something that made my throat close up. It wasn't him. I had been lied to for so long that my brain had quietly refused to let me see what was right in front of me. The nose was wrong. The eyes were wrong. The shape of the forehead was wrong. I had been looking at pictures of my own face for thirty years — my own jawline, my own mouth, my own eye color — and none of it was his. I stood up. I walked to the bookshelf. I took the photograph off. And I flipped it over. There was writing on the back. In my mother's handwriting. It said: "Ellen and ???, Des Moines, 1993."