Not just sister.
Her next words finished me.
“Your twin sister.”
The ballroom erupted in whispers.
I heard none of them.
Because suddenly eighteen years of my life rearranged themselves.
Same birthday.
Same birthmark.
Same weird tongue trick.
Grandma staring at Chloe in hallways.
The photograph.
The pendant.
Chloe telling me to ask someone who mattered to prom.
“Did you know?” I asked her.
“Only three days.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I tried.”
“At prom?”
“I didn’t know how!”
I turned to Grandma.
“You knew.”
It wasn’t a question.
Her shoulders shook.
“Yes.”
For the first time in my life, I looked at my grandmother and felt something I’d never expected to feel toward her.
Betrayal.
Pure and vicious.
“You knew I had a sister?”
“Yes.”
“For eighteen years?”
“Yes.”
“And you let me think we were alone?”
“Noah—”
“You let me say you were the only family I had.”
“I wanted to tell you every day.”
“But you didn’t!”
The room had become unbearable.
Phones were lowered now.
Even Blake looked stunned.
Grandma reached for me.
I stepped away.
Her hand fell.
That hurt.
I was too angry to care.
I walked out.
I ended up behind the hotel, beside a loading dock that smelled like wet concrete and restaurant grease.
Rain had started.
Fine mist.
I stood beneath an awning and tried to breathe.
Eighteen years.
A twin.
A sister who had attended the same school.
A girl I’d known for four years.
I thought about every birthday.
Every Christmas.
Every time I’d told Grandma I wished our family were bigger.
Every time she’d said, “We have each other.”
She had known.
The back door opened.
I didn’t turn.
“Go away.”
“It isn’t Grandma.”
Chloe.
“Then definitely go away.”
She didn’t.
She stood several feet from me.
Rain tapped against the metal awning.
“I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You’ve said that.”
“I found out three days ago.”
“Congratulations.”
“Noah.”
“Did your parents know?”
“Yes.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Fantastic. Everybody knew except me.”
“They didn’t know you were here.”
I finally turned.
“What?”
“My birth mother didn’t put your name in the letter.”
“Then how—”
“She wrote that my twin brother was being raised by his grandmother, Doris Bell.”
I stared at her.
“My parents knew my biological grandmother’s name, but she asked them not to make contact.”
“Why?”
Chloe’s eyes filled again.
“That part is complicated.”
“Tonight seems great for complicated.”
The door opened again.
Grandma came outside.
Helen and David Mercer followed.
I almost left.
Grandma stopped.
“Please.”
Her voice sounded smaller than I’d ever heard it.
“Five minutes.”
I folded my arms.
She sat on an overturned crate because her knees were shaking.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then she said:
“Your mother knew she might die.”
The anger inside me stumbled.
“What?”
“Emily had a heart condition.”
Grandma’s eyes lowered.
“She’d been born with it. Pregnancy made it dangerous.”
“You never told me that.”
“I told you childbirth killed her. It did.”
“But she knew?”
“She knew there was a chance.”
Rain fell harder.
Grandma continued.
“She was seventeen when she became pregnant.”
“Who was my father?”
Pain crossed her face.
“I don’t know.”
I laughed once.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She never told me.”
“Why?”
“She said he didn’t want children. That’s all.”
I looked away.
“Keep going.”
“She found out she was carrying twins at twenty-two weeks.”
Grandma rubbed her hands together.
“We had nothing. Your grandfather had died. I was cleaning hotel rooms. Emily was finishing school from home.”
Her voice cracked.
“She was terrified.”
Helen Mercer stepped closer.
Grandma nodded toward her.
“Helen was a nurse then.”
I looked at Chloe’s adoptive mother.
She nodded.
“I worked in obstetrics.”
Grandma continued.
“Emily met her during appointments.”
Helen wiped her face.
“Your mother was remarkable.”
I almost snapped at her, then stopped.
Grandma said, “Emily made a decision.”
