She was laughing outside.
Completely unaware.
I zoomed in on the photograph.
Behind my mother’s shoulder was a hospital monitor.
On it was Paisley’s medical chart.
Under BIOLOGICAL MOTHER, there was a name.
Mine.
Under BIOLOGICAL FATHER, there was another name.
Trevor.
I stared.
That was impossible.
Trevor was my sister.
Then I saw the final line.
GENETIC RELATIONSHIP: 100%
Not mother.
Not father.
IDENTICAL TWIN.
I dropped the phone.
Because I finally understood the most horrifying truth of all.
Paisley wasn’t created from my DNA.
She wasn’t my clone.
She wasn’t my sister’s child.
She wasn’t part of my father’s experiment.
Paisley was my identical twin’s daughter.
And my identical twin—
the sister everyone had spent twenty years telling me was dead—
was standing somewhere in the world, alive.
Watching us.
Waiting.
And suddenly my daughter’s strange words from her birthday made perfect sense.
