⸻
“Where has Foster been?” I asked. “All these years. He’s been living with me the entire time.”
⸻
“He’s been living with both of us,” Renata said. “Splitting his time. Business trips, he told you, I imagine. He told me the same thing, honestly, about visiting an aging aunt three states away.”
⸻
I sat down slowly in the chair beside her, working through eight years of a marriage that had apparently existed alongside an entirely parallel life I’d never once suspected.
⸻
“Silas,” I said, looking over at the boy who shared my son’s exact face, “do you know any of this?”
⸻
He shook his head slowly. “Mom just told me my other family lived far away. I didn’t know I had a brother until Milo’s last name matched the story she told me once, by accident, a few months ago.”
⸻
“That’s how the fights started,” I said, understanding finally settling into place. “He recognized something.”
