Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.Īfter my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone.