We did not grow up together at first.
Noah added:
But now we know.
That was it.
No courtroom details.
No Adrian.
No explanation designed to make adults comfortable.
Just:
We did not grow up together at first.
But now we know.
I cried when I saw it.
Noah sighed.
“You always cry.”
Lucas said:
“She does.”
I looked at both of them.
Same eyes.
Same irritating smile.
Different childhoods.
Different surnames.
Different mothers.
One beginning stolen from all of us.
But not the ending.
Adrian once told himself that if I never knew Lucas had lived, eventually it would be as if the second baby had never existed.
He was wrong.
Lucas existed every day.
In Rachel’s kitchen.
At school.
At birthday parties.
In photographs I never saw.
In the world.
The truth did not create him.
It only returned him to the part of his story that had been erased.
