“Your father trusted me with a personal matter many years ago. He left instructions that after his death I was to tell you the circumstances. I had planned on talking to you the day the will was read, but I could tell you weren’t in the right place to hear this news.”
“What is it?” Reeve automatically laces his fingers in mine, and I rub reassuring circles with my thumb on the back of his hand.
“There is no easy way to disclose something like this, so please excuse me if I’m blunt.”
Reeve nods curtly, and I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“You are aware of the circumstances of your birth and your mother’s tragic passing, but you aren’t privy to the full facts.”
Reeve and I share a perplexed expression. “What facts?” I ask.
“Your mother died during childbirth, but it wasn’t giving birth to you.”
Shock splays across Reeve’s face, matching my own. “What do you mean?”
“You have a twin, Reeve. An identical twin brother.”
What in the actual fuck?I’m not sure what I was expecting him to say, but it sure as hell wasn’t that.
“What? No? I don’t…” Reeve splutters, clutching my hand tight. All the blood has drained from his face. “How is that possible? My father said nothing to me about a brother.” He looks into my eyes. “And your parents never said anything about my mother expecting twins.”
“Your parents didn’t know they were expecting twins, Reeve. One twin was hiding behind the other. It can happen with identical twins where the babies share the same amniotic sac. It’s extremely rare, and usually, later scans detect the second fetus, but this was almost twenty-seven years ago, and ultrasounds were not as advanced as they are now. There are examples all over the world where the parents didn’t find out it was twins until the delivery. That is what happened in this case.”
“What happened to my…twin. Did he die?” Reeve asks. I have jumped to the same conclusion.
Carson links his hands together on the table, fixing Reeve with a sympathetic look. “You were born first, and everything was fine. Your mother held you in her arms and smiled for a picture.”
“I know. I have it in a frame on the wall in our living room. It’s the only photo I have of me with my mother.”
I slide my arm around Reeve’s back, instinctively knowing he’s going to need it.
“Then they realized there was another baby, and that’s when the complications arose. Your mother died on the table, and they had to deliver your twin brother by caesarean section.”
“Oh God.” I clasp a hand over my mouth, and I can only imagine how traumatizing that must’ve been for Reeve’s father.
“What happened to my brother?” Reeve asks again, and I hear the impatience in his tone.
Carson clears your throat. “I have known your father my whole life, and I have never seen a man love a woman as much your father loved your mother.” His eyes soften as he glances at us. “You two remind me of them.”
“Carson,” Reeve grits out, and a muscle clenches in his jaw.
Screw protocol and societal norms. Getting up, I climb into Reeve’s lap, curling my arms around him, holding him close. His body is trembling with the shock of this revelation.
“Your father was holding you in his arms, crying over your mother’s lifeless body, when his other son’s cries rang out in the room.”
“He blamed him,” Reeve blurts in a daze. “He blamed my brother for my mother’s death.”
Carson nods sadly.
“He was only an innocent baby! It wasn’t his fault,” I cry, and any hint of sympathy I was just feeling for Simon flies out the window.
“He couldn’t bear to look at his son knowing it had cost him his wife, so he wanted to get rid of the baby,” Reeve surmises, staring off into space, and I fear this shock has plunged him back into a difficult place. Reeve lifts his head, and his pained eyes stare right through me. “He might as well have gotten rid of me too. This explains so much. Deep down, he must have blamed me too.”
I’m horror-stricken because in a twisted way that makes sense. Why did Simon hold his sons accountable for something they were not responsible for? Why didn’t he cling to them and shower them with love because they were the last gift from his wife? I will never understand.
“My understanding is the medical staff tried to make him see that,” Carson continues explaining, “but he was inconsolable and absolutely determined he wanted nothing to do with your twin. He told me all this many years later, and I don’t mind admitting I was in complete shock. It’s not my place to judge anyone, and I never said it, but your father went downhill in my estimation when he confided that in me. I had thought things were different between you and your father, and it pains me to hear they were not.”
“He didn’t want me either,” Reeve says, his voice dull and devoid of emotion.