Chapter 8: What the Twins Said
We told the twins that afternoon.
I had thought about waiting.
I had thought about finding the right moment, the right words, the right setting.
In the end I realized there was no right version of this.
There was only the truth, and the sooner it was spoken the sooner it could begin to be real.
They were in the living room.
Liam on the couch, feet up, scrolling his phone.
Eli at the table with a half-finished bowl of cereal he'd made at noon because it was a Saturday and he had always treated Saturdays as a separate category of day.
Daniel and I came in and sat down.
Rowan stood in the hallway just outside the door.
We had asked him if he wanted to be in the room.
He said he'd rather wait until after.
"Put the phone down," I said to Liam.
He looked at my face and put it down.
I told them.
I kept it simple.
I told them about the night Rowan had been taken to the hospital.
I told them about the note on the porch.
I told them about the phone call, the coffee shop, the documents.
I told them their grandmother had made a decision eighteen years ago that was not hers to make.
Eli's spoon was resting in his cereal bowl.
He hadn't moved it since the first minute.
Liam was staring at a point somewhere past my shoulder.
When I finished, neither of them spoke for a long moment.
Then Eli said, "He's here?
Right now?"
"He's in the hallway," Daniel said.
Liam stood up.
He walked to the hallway door and opened it.
Rowan was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and when the door opened he straightened up and the two of them stood there looking at each other.
Liam was quiet for a long time.
"You look like us," he finally said.
"I know," Rowan said.
Liam stepped back and opened the door wider.
"Come in, then."
Rowan came into the room.
Eli had stood up from the table.
The three of them stood in a loose triangle in the middle of the living room, not quite touching, not quite knowing what to do with their hands.
"This is so weird," Eli said.
"Yeah," Rowan said.
"Good weird or bad weird?"
Rowan looked around the room.
At the family photos on the wall.
At the worn patch on the arm of the couch.
At the cereal bowl on the table.
"I don't know yet," he said honestly.
"Good, I think."
Eli nodded.
"Okay." He picked up his cereal bowl.
"Are you hungry?
I can make more.
It's just cereal but—"
"Yeah," Rowan said.
"Actually, yeah."
They went to the kitchen together.
Daniel and I stayed in the living room.
Liam hadn't followed them.
He was standing by the window, looking out at the backyard where yesterday's birthday decorations were still half-taken-down, a string of lights still looped over the fence.
"Grandma knew this whole time," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
He was quiet.
Then: "I always thought she was your person.
Like, the one person who was always in your corner."
"I thought so too," I said.
He turned from the window.
His face was doing something complicated that he was trying to keep controlled, the way he had done since he was small.
"Are you okay?" he asked me.
That question — from my eighteen-year-old son, directed at me — undid something I had been holding carefully in place all morning.
"Not entirely," I said.
May you like
"Not yet."
He crossed the room and put his arms around me the way he hadn't done since he was maybe twelve, and I held on, and from the kitchen I could hear Eli explaining to Rowan where the bowls were kept, and the sound of the cabinet opening, and the ordinary noise of spoons.
