Smita emerges from the kitchen. For the moment, she’s silent, observing; taking it in.
“Were you adopted?” Peter asks, looking at Roger.
There’s a wealth of information in that question. Roger unpacks it without thinking, finding the nuance, finding the things Peter wouldn’t be able to say without a few beers and a lot of time to dwell. First and foremost, however, is the thing that must be addressed before it becomes the elephant in the room: the question that defines everything.
“Yes, sir, I was,” says Roger. “Dodger and I have compared adoptions. We were born on the same day, both placed with sealed records. I’ve had no contact with my birth family, and honestly, I haven’t been tempted to go looking for it. I love my folks. It’s just, well . . .” He looks to Dodger and shrugs.
She picks up the thread. Still the better liar, even if she’s not as preternaturally convincing as he is; sometimes it’s not the words, it’s the way they’re used. “We met at chess camp. Remember?”
Heather’s eyes widen. “The pen pal you wanted us to go to Cambridge to meet. Dodger, honey, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I told her not to come,” says Roger. “I was a kid. I was scared. Here was this girl saying she thought we might have the same birth parents, and the kids at school used to make fun of me because I wasn’t wanted. But I was wanted. Being adopted meant I knew my parents loved me more than anything. They’d chosen me out of all the kids in the world. I was afraid if I saw Dodger again and she really was my sister, like she said, that things would change. Our birth parents would appear out of nowhere and take us away from the people who loved us.”
Erin says nothing. This isn’t her conversation, and he’s closer to the truth than he knows, whether by chance or because he harbors vague memories of other, older timelines where that exact thing had happened. If the cuckoos came together too early, they were separated. The pattern never varied. Its echoes still hang over them all.
“I thought if he was really my brother, like I’d thought he was, he’d love me too much to tell me to stay away,” says Dodger, picking up the thread of the lie with ease. They would have been terrifying if they had actually grown up together. They’re more than a little terrifying now. “So I didn’t talk about it. We met again when I did that chess tour, the one that went to Massachusetts. We lost touch after I . . . hurt myself.”
She looks down, cheeks burning red, as if the patio floor can absolve her of the sins of her past. She doesn’t say anything about lying when she allowed them to think that Roger had been the one to hold the knife; she doesn’t need to. The confession is in her silence.
Peter and Heather exchange a look. When they turn back to the trio, they’re both smiling, her sadly, him seeming somewhat strained.
“Thanksgiving is for family,” she says. “Let’s eat.”
That night, with Erin and Smita on the floor of Dodger’s room and Roger in the guest room, Heather turns toward her husband in the bed and asks, “Do you really think she just happened to turn around and stumble over her twin brother?”
The word “twin” has entered the conversation without fanfare. It makes too much sense to be omitted: they were born on the same day. They have the same eyes, the same underlying bone structure, the same tense, uncompromising posture. Dodger shows it in the tightly wound way she stands, the way she reacts to the slightest sound. Roger seems more relaxed, but he’s just as aware; he simply masks it better.
“It looks that way,” says Peter.
Heather shakes her head. “And then there’s the names. Thank God those poor children didn’t grow up together. Can you imagine?”
“I wonder if his parents got the same ‘you can’t change your child’s name’ rider on their adoption,” says Peter.
“Some people shouldn’t be allowed to name their own children.”
“No,” he agrees.
Heather is quiet for a time before she says, “I suppose I should feel tricked, like she snuck him past the borders to make sure we couldn’t push him away. But really, I’m relieved. She has a brother. She has someone her own age who understands the way her mind works. How can that be