“Neighbors?” she asks, sounding dumbfounded. “We’ve heard of some interesting coincidences, but… neighbors. Wow.”
“Neighbors.” I leave it at that. For her sake.
The phone call ends then. There’s nothing left to ask.
I text Ginger an update: It’s him.
When she tries calling less than a minute later, I press Decline. I’m not ready to dissect all the gory details. Not yet.
Instead I practice the confession in my bedroom mirror—stare at myself, study what it will look like when I tell Max. My expression. The shape of my lips as I try to form impossible words. The words get harder every time I repeat them. Never easier.
I’m your sister. Half sister.
Your dad is my dad. My donor.
We have to fall out of love.
Max and I didn’t grow up together. We didn’t share our childhood. We didn’t take baths together, or cry about our nightmares, or bandage each other’s skinned knees. That was me and Noah. Noah is a brother to me. In every way but blood.
But it all comes down to blood, doesn’t it?
I would be allowed to fall in love with Noah.
I don’t have the same allowance with Max. My heart was wrong for ever letting that happen.
I need to end things. Today.
A letter—I’ll put all the truths and feelings into black-and-white for him to process. Write down the things that are too hard to say out loud.
I take out my journal from the drawer and start writing.
Page after page ends up scribbled over and crumpled on the floor. There are no perfect words. Jane Austen herself would have been at a loss for how to express these sentiments with any grace and delicacy. The truth is too ugly for grace. Too harsh for delicacy.
Two hours in, the morning is gone and I’m down to the last three pages of the journal. The final attempt. What will be, will be. Fate has intervened. This is it.
It all started with another letter, I write. And my own curiosity. I painstakingly copy Elliot’s note. I don’t leave anything out, not even the part about how certain he was he would never have kids. I don’t think I was meant to be a dad, but so it is. Max won’t disagree.
Copying is the easy part. Writing my own words after—breaking down the consequences of this first letter—is much trickier. It all feels like overstating the obvious: You are my half brother. This, us, must end. Immediately.
I say these things because I have to. But I say much more than that.
I write that it was all true. It was all real for me. Every kiss, glance, word. He is—or was—the only boy I’ve ever loved. More specifically, been in love with. Love and in love, the difference is a hungry, gaping canyon. Love is still okay. In love will never be okay again.
I remind him of the conversation we had earlier this summer about how quickly we became friends. That sometimes people just click. That moment on the hammock, the easy happiness—it feels like another era. I have aged centuries since then. But I smile as I write this, because the heart of our exchange is still true: Maybe we clicked because we’re two souls cut from some of the same cloth. But much more literally than we thought, or ever would have chosen.
When I’m done I fold the letter into careful thirds without rereading, because I need to be finished. I tuck it tightly inside my copy of Sense and Sensibility and carry it downstairs.
I make more coffee, graze on some nuts and dried fruit. I’m not hungry, but I need to fuel myself for the torture that lies ahead.
And then I pick up my phone to text Max. Push it all into motion. He’ll inevitably come by the house to see me at some point, but I need this to be over with. And better to do it before my moms are home and potentially in hearing range. It will be a separate—also unpleasant—conversation with them. After.
Are you free now? I type, and click send.
I go outside and lie down in the hammock. I toss the book—with my letter—onto the grass below me.
It’s a perfect afternoon. Too perfect. Maybe the bluest, clearest sky of the summer. Low humidity. Hot but not scorching. The perfectness is too at odds with the events of my day.
I’m staring at my phone, waiting for a response, when I hear the crunching of gravel. A car in our driveway. Damn. I should have had hours still before Mimmy and Mama got home. I’ll have to ferry Max away when he gets here, keep a straight face until we’re somewhere more private. The hill or the pond or my tree. I hate to destroy our happy memories in those places with this terrible one. But privacy is essential.
I’m feeling solid about this plan when I first see him rounding the corner of the house.
Not Mama or Mimmy. Not Max.
Noah.
He stops abruptly when he notices me watching. Lifts one hand up in a tentative wave.
I wave back, and he must take that as a sign that I won’t snap his head off for proceeding. He takes slow steps in my direction. It’s hard to keep my patience. A sloth would beat him in a landslide victory. When he’s a few feet away, he pauses. Hovers. Still uncertain if it’s okay to join me on the hammock.
“Hey,” I say, shifting to the top of the hammock and patting the empty space next to me.
“Hey.” He sits down carefully, making sure to leave enough space between us that we don’t risk skin brushing skin.
He won’t look at me. That much is obvious. But I study him. I try to decide if he looks different after this much time apart. We haven’t gone this long without seeing each other since I was a newborn and he was still in the womb. His hair is particularly unruly today—his golden-brown curls in clumps sticking out in odd directions, like a tufted bird. He’s
