Stories You Can’t Tell…

Hi there, I’m your illegitimate cousin. My great-grandmother was the woman your great-grandfather:

• Seduced?

• Raped?

• Paid?

One of the reasons you can’t tell the story is that you don’t really know the story. But even if you did, how do you tell your cousin? On either side!

At the same time, I can’t help thinking about it. We only have a few clues. But now DNA results have given me one more, and I wonder if even my great-grandmother knew who the father of her child was.

It was not the man she eventually married and raised her family with. The one my grandmother thought was her father for the first 65 years of her life.

And apparently it’s not that guy on her birth certificate either – the one we spent over a decade trying to figure out.

If she were alive today, and willing to talk about it, what would she say? Probably nothing. She was alive when we got the birth certificate. At the time she only said, “Honey, it would just break your heart.”

As if we can’t imagine a heart-breaking tale. I feel like I could write a whole novel just from the speculations that run through my mind.

Maybe more than one.