Help! I Did Some Digging Into My Ancestry. What I Found Will Break My Fragile Mom’s Heart.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)

I received one of those DNA kits as an early Christmas present. What I discovered when I researched my profile online has completely upended everything I thought I knew about my family.

It turns out that I have two half-siblings (twins) through my father who are not much older than my brother and me. When I confronted my father, he admitted to having a brief affair with their mother before he and my mother were able to resolve their marital difficulties. He’s had no contact with my half-siblings except seeing them once when they were a year old. Things are solid between my parents now, and he begged me not to reveal what I learned to her or my brother. At a minimum, I think I should at least tell my brother in case he ever decides to do a DNA test, as I did, but I’m torn about saying anything to my mother, as she just completed her final round of chemotherapy for breast cancer. What should I do here?

You have to sit down and really think about what you know about your mom, whether she would choose to accept this reality, how it would affect her emotionally, and whether she would leave your dad and live out the rest of her cancer-free life with someone more honest. If you think she’d be surprised but not totally destabilized, or if she would pack up her bags and rent a cottage with her best friend and live out the retirement of her fantasies, tell her.

If you conclude that she would refuse to believe you, or be devastated (or worse: be devastated and stay with your father), I don’t think it would make sense to tell her. Yes, the truth is usually best, but sometimes the truth is just sad and painful and makes life harder.

My daughters have been phone banking, calling Arizona and Michigan and so on to get out the vote. I didn’t want to do that but I felt guilty. Then I read an article in Slate about using the dating app Hinge to get out the vote. That sounded like fun to me, so I set up an account. I figured that there were few people my age (about 70) on Hinge, so I used a pic that was 40(!) years old and pretended to be young, single, and child-free. My state was also in the bag as far as electoral votes were concerned, so I decided to “live” in another state. Anyway, you could say I was catfishing, but I figured it was for a good cause—no one would get hurt, thus, no harm, no foul. However, I found a match…