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She grew up a tomboy in suburban Chicago, a fan of Hot Wheels, baseball cards and Blackhawks hockey. So when her two brothers tossed a football in the family’s half-acre backyard one day, Amy insisted on playing. They said no, she begged, and one of them whipped the ball at her so hard that it sent her to the ground in tears.

“Our other sister was a real girl,” one of the boys blurted out.

The comment left Amy, about 8 at the time, dumbfounded. There was no other sister, or so she thought.

She raced inside, found her mother smoking at the kitchen table, and told her what her brother Bobby had said.