Hi, my name is Claire and I’m 14 years old. I live in a house with my mother and sister. My father left us just when I was born, and I still don’t know why. His name was hardly even mentioned throughout the years. We live in a small town where all the people know each other. I am the second child in the family, and I was born almost 15 years after my sister. My mother is a young woman, because she gave birth to her first child at a very young age. She is a journalist and has traveled extensively over the years. When she was away, my older sister Adriana took care of me. For me, the age difference was always quite normal.
My sister is 30 years old and works as a primary school teacher in our town. Often, she and her boyfriend Dave would pick me up from school and all my classmates would comment on how young my mother was. I always laughed at that telling them it was no wonder we looked alike since she was my sister.
Long story short, let me tell you how I found out who my real mother is. It all happened exactly two weeks ago. Back then my mother was on a business trip, and my sister was on a few days camp with the students. She asked Dave to spend those days with me, so I won’t feel lonely. And because Dave was the perfect guy and a very good man, he agreed. It was obvious that he loved my sister and that he would do anything for her. He’d even spend time with her teenage sister. So, we were watching Netflix when he suddenly got up. He went to the hallway, slipped into his coat pocket and returned. He showed me a ring. I was so happy I started crying happy tears. He had been planning to propose to my sister for several weeks now, but he wanted to do it in the best possible way. Not knowing how to do it, he asked me for my help and advice. Knowing my sister, I knew she would be the happiest if he proposed to her in a modest and in the most intimate atmosphere. Dave agreed, even though he insisted we should arrange something more interesting. That’s how we came up with a plan. I suggested we look for photographs from old albums when Adriana was a little girl. Photographs from the day she was born, to the day she graduated and so on. I screamed, “Let’s make a video of all those photographs and write a romantic text that will end with - Will you marry me?”. Dave agreed and we shared our tasks. I sat down at the desk in my room and suggested to Dave to go to my sister’s room and find the photo albums. That was the first time I saw Dave jumping around like a child even though he was 31. Everything we planned had to be done by the next morning, because my sister was coming home.