“Three months?”
“Yes.”
“That photograph is why you started seeing Tyler again?”
Her silence answered me.
I felt the pieces rearranging.
“You weren’t having an affair for years.”
“No.”
“How long?”
“Four months.”
I closed my eyes.
That did not excuse Tyler.
But it changed the shape of the deception.
“He told me you were already separated,” Vanessa said.
I nodded slowly.
“Of course he did.”
“He said the divorce paperwork was nearly finished.”
“Of course he did.”
“And he told me he had discovered something after his father died.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“He
said his father left records.”
“What kind of records?”
“Hospital records. Adoption documents. Letters.”
My pulse quickened.
“Did you see them?”
“No. Tyler said they were locked away because they implicated people who were still alive.”
“Convenient.”
“I know that now.”
She looked at the photograph.
“He told me Mason had been my second twin.”
I stared at her.
“But Mason and I have different birthdays.”
“I know.”
“How did he explain that?”
“He said the hospital altered the dates.”
I nearly laughed.
“Apparently Tyler’s solution to every inconsistency is that someone altered paperwork.”
Mason raised his hand slightly.
Both of us looked at him.
“Can I say something?”
“Yes.”
“I think Dad lies a lot.”
Vanessa and I looked at each other.
Then I reached across the table and squeezed Mason’s hand.
“I think you may be right.”
—
The attorney my sister found arrived forty minutes later.
Her name
