Breaking the Ice Read Online Free

bolder, almost three-dimensional.

    You have a sister.

    How had her parents kept this from her? All her life she’d thought she was an only child, the progeny of two people who preached honor and truth and the importance of family. As a child, she’d wanted a sibling playmate so much she’d created an imaginary one, a little sister she called Emily. Her parents had patiently indulged her fantasy, tucking Emily in beside her at night and setting an extra place at the table for her at mealtimes, never hinting that a real Emily existed somewhere.
    The sudden knowledge of their duplicity made her question everything she thought she knew of them and left her feeling more alone and adrift than ever.
    She read the words a dozen times, then began to sob again, great wails of anguish that shattered the silence and seemed to echo off the walls. She couldn’t read the rest for a long while.

    Five years before I met and married your father, I became pregnant. I was only sixteen, still a child myself and naïve about such things, but I fancied myself in love with a boy at school named James O’Hara.
    After talking with Jim’s parents, mine sent me immediately to a home for unwed mothers to have the child and convinced me that it was best for both me and for the baby to give it up for adoption as soon as it was born. It was what girls did then, especially those from Catholic families. I knew from my brief glimpse of her that I’d had a daughter, born healthy and with curly red hair, like her father. Then the nuns took her away.
    I regretted that decision many times and wondered what happened to my baby, but as the years passed, I came to accept that my parents’ decision had been the right one.
    When I met your father, I struggled for a long time over whether to tell him about the baby I’d had. I wanted to, but I worried that he would think less of me for what I did, and my parents urged me to keep my “youthful indiscretion,” as they called it, a secret. Once I’d made the decision to do so, there seemed to be no going back. How could I tell him after a year of marriage? Or five? Or ten? Besides, I had no way of knowing what had happened to the baby, so I could think of no good reason to confess to your father what I’d done.
    It was not until he was gone, and my mother deathly ill with cancer, that she told me she had known all along who raised my baby and where she was. She and my father gave my daughter to a couple they knew, Richard and Joan Van Rooy. The Van Rooys were unable to have children of their own, but desperately wanted one.
    Unknown to my father, my mother asked only two things of this couple in return: that they move to another state but keep in touch over the years. They agreed and sent my mother photographs of the child growing up, pictures of her birthday parties and prom dates, vacations. She threw them away as soon as she received them, afraid that either my father or I would discover the evidence.
    When she knew she was dying, she finally told me the truth.
    Your sister’s name is Maggie. She grew up in Alaska and married a man named Lars Rasmussen. They are living in an apartment in Fairbanks. As far as my mother knew, Maggie’s adoptive parents never told her the truth about her parentage, so she, too, does not know that she has a sister.
    I hope you can find her, so you can finally have the sister you always wanted. If you do, please tell Maggie I thought of her often and wished I’d had the chance to tell her I’m sorry, and that I love her.
    All my love to you, my darling. Be strong.
    Mom

    So many secrets. So many lies.
    Maggie Rasmussen. If she’d been born when her mother was sixteen, that meant she was forty or thereabouts, some four years older than Karla.
    She wasn’t alone. She still had family . Despite the lifelong deception, she felt as though someone had just thrown a life preserver into her churning sea of despair. What was this secret sister like? Would she welcome this news?