First Times

But part of her was eager to know more. Even if the information she was looking for was completely useless and irrelevant, she still wanted to have it.

Her mother put her fork aside, next to her still very full plate. On the TV, the news served as background noise.

"Alright," she said, her voice calm and soothing as always "What do you want to know?"

So, so many things. She decided to start with an easy one:

"What's her full name?"

"Sawyer" her dad was the one to respond "Veronica Sawyer."

"Ok..." she took a big bite out of her eggplant parmigiana, cherishing the mix of flavors in her mouth, from the saltiness of the cheese to the rich tomato sauce (dad was one hell of a cook) before continuing "How old was she when she had me?"

"Seventeen, I think..." dad said, looking at his wife for reassurance.

"Eighteen," she corrected "She was eighteen."

"Oh. Is that why she didn't want me? She just didn't want to be a teen mom?"

Janis' mom opened and closed her mouth a few times, like a fish out of water, struggling to find an answer to a seemingly easy question.

"Well..."

"We promised her the truth, Nora," Janis's father spoke up. She'd never seen him so serious before and that was enough to worry her.

Her mom looked at him, silent for a few seconds, seconds that felt like hours, before nodding quickly and switching her focus to Janis.

The older woman reached out for her daughter's hand and squeezed lightly, a small reassuring smile forming on her plum lips - the warm, kind smile she gave whenever Janis was upset or scared, like when she was nine and broke her leg, or when she came home crying almost every day after her fight with Regina in eight grade - the wrinkles around her dark eyes becoming more prominent.

"Pumpkin, what we're about to tell you might not be easy to hear..." she started, swallowing hard before proceeding "When you were born, your biological mother was serving a 35-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in Ohio."

Of all the things Janis was bracing herself to hear, that surely wasn't it. She was expecting a "Your mom didn't have enough money to raise a child" or a "She was a drug addict who couldn't take care of a kid" scenario. God, maybe even a "You were a really ugly baby so she decided to just give you away." But nothing could have prepared her to hear that. Suddenly the meal on her plate didn't look that appetizing anymore.

Janis wanted to get up and end the conversation right there. No more questions, no more messed up family secrets. But her inquisitiveness got the better of her.

"Thirty-five years...t-that's a long time..." she mumbled after realizing she was silent for more than a minute now, the words coming low and shaky out of her mouth "W-what did she do?"

"We don't know," her mom said quickly like the question was expected "that was confidential."

"But even if we did know, it wouldn't have made a difference," her dad chimed in. "You have nothing to do with whatever got her there, Jan."

Janis could only do so much as nod yes with her head, letting the silence reign once again. She looked down at her pale, shaky hands and started fidgeting with her nails -one of them broke that morning and was now shorter than all of the others; she also needed to paint them again, maybe use the cute dark blue nail polish Damian gave her for her birthday.

"I know it's a lot to take in, honey," said her mom, taking one stand of Janis' hair and curling it with her index finger " If you need some time by yourself, to process all of this..."