Dear Prudence,
As far as my children know, we’re estranged from the relatives on my dad’s side (true, if misleading), and I have no close living relatives on my mother’s side (lie). My kids have started talking about doing an ancestry test, and I’m worried sick about what the consequences might be.
My incredible dad is not biologically related to me. He was a lifelong friend of my mother’s and was always family to us. My mother died when I was young, and I went to live with my mother’s relatives. They were profoundly abusive. My dad was a single openly gay man with no blood ties—he couldn’t get legal custody. I ran away, got to him, and begged him to take me away. So he did.
We moved states, and I took his last name. It’s always been a secret. My husband knows that I briefly lived with abusive relatives after my mother’s death, but no more than that. When my husband and I first met, I was still terrified about my dad being charged with kidnapping, and then after a while, it didn’t seem relevant. Now I don’t know how to explain that I’ve been concealing this from him for 20 years.
If our kids do an ancestry test, I’m worried they’ll find relatives that don’t fit my supposed family tree. I don’t want to explain the worst part of my childhood to them; I don’t want them to have any contact with the relatives who abused me; and most of all, I don’t want this to change their relationship with their grandfather.
My dad has cancer. He’s got a good chance of pulling through, but a good chance isn’t a certainty, and he’s sick and going through treatments. My dad was, and is, the best father I can imagine. He risked so much and made so many sacrifices to keep me safe. I know what he’d tell me—he has always told me that he doesn’t regret his choices, and that he will always support me if I want to talk openly about how he came to be my dad. But I want to protect him from this if I possibly can, the way he’s always protected me. Can you think of anything I can tell my kids to head this horrible idea off?