Secret Service

She told me on her deathbed.

"Honey," she said to me, her voice weak with age, her gray paper hands resting on mine, "your father wasn't human."

"What?" I said. My voice shuddered.  

"He didn't die in a spacecraft crash, like I told you." She paused, took shallow breaths. Her heart was failing, but I waited anxiously for her to finish, squeezing her skeleton-thin fingers impatiently. 

"Your father was an alien," she said. 

I blinked. "But that would mean--"

"Yes," she finished. 

I cleared my throat. "Aliens can't be president."

She smiled. "Don't tell anyone then, Mr. President."