Story 7:
Growing up, my dad traveled for work at least once a month. He’d be gone for 3–5 days. Came back with keychains from airports, foreign snacks, all that.
At 17, I applied for a passport. I needed his birth certificate for the paperwork. That’s when I noticed the name didn’t match the one he used on flights. I asked my mom. She panicked.
Turns out, he didn’t travel for work. He went to visit his other kids. He had a second family in the same state. They knew about us. We didn’t know about them.
He passed a few years later. Both sets of children sat in the same row at the funeral, pretending we weren’t all holding the same grief.
