he looked down at it.
“Does he do this?” Luke suddenly asked.
He lifted one eyebrow, the left one, in a familiar crooked arch.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“All the time.”
Luke gave a stunned little laugh.
“My wife hates when I do that.
Says I look like I’m questioning everything she says.”
“Daniel does it when he already knows you’re lying.”
Luke looked out the window.
“I have a wife.
Sarah.
Two daughters.”
I almost missed my exit.
Daniel had spent years learning to live with the fact that we couldn’t have children.
Somewhere less than two hours away, a man who might be his brother had built the family Daniel never knew existed.
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Nine and six.”
He smiled despite himself.
“Maddie builds things out of scrap wood.
Drives Sarah crazy because she steals pieces from my workshop.”
My throat tightened.
“Daniel makes furniture.”
Luke turned slowly toward me.
“I make cabinets.”
Neither of us spoke for the next several miles.
When we reached the hospital, I called Daniel’s transplant coordinator from the parking garage before going upstairs.
I chose my words carefully.
“I may have found a biological brother.
Possibly a twin.”
There was a long pause.
“Emily, are you certain?”
“No.
But they look almost identical, they have the same date of birth, and there is an old hospital document indicating two male infants.
I have the man with me.
He’s willing to be tested.”
The tone on the other end changed immediately.
The coordinator began making calls.
Within an hour, Luke was answering medical questions, signing consent forms, and giving blood for urgent compatibility testing.
A second set of samples was ordered to help establish whether he and Daniel were biologically related.
I stood beside him while labels were placed on tubes.
He watched each one as though his entire lost history were being divided into glass vials.
“Do we tell him?” Luke asked.
I looked through the ICU doors.
Daniel was sleeping.
“Not yet.”
Luke frowned.
“Why?”
“Because until we know something, all I can give him is a stranger who looks like him and another reason to hope.”
Luke nodded slowly.
“You protect him.”
“I try.”
“He must be a good man.”
I looked at my husband through the glass.
“The best one I know.”
Luke stayed at the hospital that night.
He slept badly in a waiting-room chair and refused twice when I told him he could go home.
Near midnight, Sarah arrived.
Luke had called her from the hallway.
I watched her walk toward him carrying an overnight bag, confusion and fear written across her face.
Then she saw Daniel through the ICU window.
She stopped so suddenly that the bag slipped from her shoulder.
“Luke?”
“That’s him,” Luke said.
Sarah stared through the glass.
Then she looked at her husband standing beside her.
“Oh my God.”
Luke showed her the photograph and the hospital record from the metal box.
Sarah read everything twice.
“Your mother knew,” she said quietly.
Luke’s jaw tightened.
“It looks that way.”
For the first time, anger entered his voice.
Until then, shock had carried him forward.
Now the questions were arriving.
Why had the twins been separated?
Why had Luke been raised by their biological mother while
