Family Secrets

You just never know when a family secret is going to come out. Me and my husband will be married 28 years this coming October. In all this time, my husband has always been the youngest of 4 sons. Or so we thought. While attending our nephew's engagement party last Saturday, our son dropped a bombshell on us. Out of the blue he says that if he ever has a secret he will tell it to Rich's oldest (or so we thought!) brother because "that guy REALLY knows how to keep a secret!" I was intrigued and it didn't take much coaxing for him to tell us what he was talking about. Apparently, my son told us, that my husband has a 68 year old brother named George, who lives in California. Holy Crap! This is better than Dallas or Knot's Landing!! This is real life! AND it turns out that Rich's cousins & other relatives like two of his brothers, knew too. One said he knew for about 15 years, for sure, but had suspected something since childhood. Now ... I thought this brother said that their oldest (or so we thought!) brother knew for four years. I said "He knew this for 4 years and never mentioned it?" His brother then said "Not 4 years -- 40 years!" I almost died right there! So now me and my kids are obsessed with trying to find their newly discovered (or so WE thought!) half-uncle George. My husband never knew any of this, or that his father had been married before marrying Rich's Mom and had a son and got divorced. Too much! We all will be following up on this. When we were leaving the party that night, I asked Rich's former oldest brother about why we never heard about George Haan and this is what he said to me "That's a story for another time." Really? He's known for 40 years and is 62 years old himself, my husband will be 56 in October. Seriously...how much longer do we have to wait for this story? Their father passed away in September 1993 and their mom passed away in November 2011 without ever telling them. Why not? My mother-in-law even had the divorce papers in her belongings. How can people keep such secrets? I hope to find out much more. WOW!