He nodded slowly.
“But was I in her tummy?”
I felt Vanessa inhale.
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes moved to her.
Vanessa covered her mouth.
Mason studied her for a long moment.
“You had twins?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“So Elliot is my brother?”
She nodded.
“Your twin brother.”
Mason blinked.
He picked up another fry.
Then put it down.
“Does he like airplanes?”
A sound escaped Vanessa that was half laugh, half sob.
“He loves trains.”
Mason frowned.
“That’s weird.”
Vanessa laughed again.
This time I did too.
It wasn’t funny.
It was completely, wonderfully ordinary.
And for one tiny moment, the giant impossible mystery around us shrank enough for a seven-year-old to understand.
A brother.
A kid who liked trains.
Someone five years old—
Wait.
I stopped.
“Vanessa.”
She looked at me.
“You said twins.”
“Yes.”
“Mason is seven.”
Her expression changed.
“Elliot
is five.”
We stared at each other.
The restaurant noise faded.
“No,” she whispered.
I pulled out my phone and reopened the airline email.
ELLIOT COLE.
AGE FIVE.
I had assumed the benefits file was accurate.
Why wouldn’t I?
Vanessa reached into her bag and removed her wallet.
She pulled out a small school photograph.
A smiling boy with sandy hair stared at the camera.
“He turns six next month.”
I looked at Mason.
Then at the photograph.
The resemblance was obvious.
The same eyes.
The same chin.
The same small notch in one eyebrow.
But twins could not be born almost two years apart.
Vanessa whispered, “Tyler told me Elliot was born two years after the twins.”
My stomach twisted.
“What?”
She looked pale.
“He said the pregnancy with the twins was too traumatic. We broke up for good afterward. Then a few years later we briefly got back
together.”
“Elliot is not the baby in that hospital photograph?”
“No.”
Mason stopped eating.
“So who is?”
Neither of us answered.
Vanessa grabbed the old photograph from her purse again.
She placed it between us.
Two newborn boys.
ELLIOT.
MASON.
She stared at the handwritten labels.
“My sister sent this to me three months ago.”
