Our Dad

Tina felt sick.  Since she’d found out that the man she called Dad wasn’t her father she couldn’t eat nor sleep.  She couldn’t talk to her mother about it, and her twin sister Kate would be devastated.
Tina had found their birth certificates while going through her mother’s desk looking for a stapler.  There had been a large envelope marked Private and she couldn’t resist opening it.  She froze when she read an unknown name in the box headed ‘Father’.
If she asked her mother she would have to confess to prying into her confidential stuff.  If she told Kate she’d probably freak out. 
Eventually she could keep the secret no longer. 
‘Come outside, Kate, I’ve got something to tell you,’ Tina pulled her sister into the garden on Saturday afternoon when her mother had gone shopping and Dad was watching a match on TV.
‘I know you won’t believe it, but Dad isn’t our real father.  I’m sorry, but it’s true.  I’ve seen proof.’  
Kate, older by fifteen minutes, put her arm around Tina.  ‘I know,’ she said.  ‘We were going to tell you soon.’
‘You’re telling me you knew all along?’
‘Well, no,’ replied Kate. ‘Not all along exactly.  About six months ago I found our birth certificates in Mum’s desk and asked her about it.  Mum was married before but she and our father split up when we were babies.  She married Dad and we took his name, and he’s been our real dad for the last fifteen years.’
Tina was hurt.  ‘I can’t believe you and Mum didn’t tell me; I’m not a baby.  Tell her I know, but don’t say I was going through her desk.’
‘OK,’ Kate agreed.
A knot released from Tina’s stomach and she laughed.  ‘Come on, let’s make Brownies, I’m starving!’

(c) Elaine Peters