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.Study Biology
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?”Get Marriage Tips
“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.Track Flights
ELLIOT.
MASON.
She stared at the handwritten labels.
“My sister sent this to me three months ago.”
“Three months?”
“Yes.”
“That photograph is why you started seeing Tyler again?”Shop Baby Gear
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.Plan Family Trips
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.”
