“I’m very sorry, but…”
She trailed off as she stared at the photo.
“That was taken nearly thirty years ago. My wife took it, of Collin and me. I’ve seen photos of your father at about the same age. They were twins. Not quite identical, but it’s very close, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand this.”
“How could you? I take it you haven’t done any DNA testing?”
“No.”
“They were born in Maine, in the house that’s been in the Poole family for over two hundred years.”
She had photos of her father at this age. She could see the differences—he’d worn his hair longer. He’d been a little taller, leaner, his chin more square.
But for those slight differences, she’d have sworn she was looking at her father.
“You’d better come in.”
“I appreciate it. I’m a Mainer, born and bred, but this wind cuts. You have his eyes. As I said, I’ve seen photos of your father, and I knew Collin very well. You have the same deep green eyes, from the Poole side of the family.”
Family seemed wrong. Family seemed impossible. “Let me take your coat.”
“Thank you.”
When he pulled off the cap, she saw the black of his eyebrows running through the silvery gray hair.
“I can make coffee.”
“I’d appreciate that. Just a drop of milk in mine.”
She felt numb. How could her father have had a brother—a twin—and not know it? How could her grandparents not have told him? How could they have separated brothers, taking only one as theirs?
And why hadn’t this uncle ever contacted her, or her father, if he’d known?
“You have questions.”
Mr. Doyle stood, studying photos she had on shelves along with pretty or interesting things that had caught her eye over the years.
“I’m going to try to answer them. Can we sit here, at the table? I also have some other things to show you, some papers.”
“All right.”
She set his coffee on the table, sat. “You said he died last month. Was he ill?”
“It’s kind of you to ask. I’ll try to explain that, too. First, I want to tell you Collin didn’t know he had a brother, not for many years. That was kept from him. He learned about your father shortly before your father’s death. From me. Genealogy is my hobby, a kind of passion really. I decided to research Collin’s as a gift. Do an extensive family tree, as it seemed there were missing pieces—or branches, we’ll say, on that tree.”
He opened his briefcase. “This is a picture of Collin’s father. Your father’s father. This was their mother.” He laid another photo on the table, smiled a little. “It was the sixties, after all.”
The woman—girl, really—had long, straight blond hair. She wore a colorful band around it, over her forehead. A pretty face, Sonya thought, heavy on the eyeliner around blue eyes. A thin build in a T-shirt and low-slung bell-bottom jeans. She held up a two-fingered peace sign with a hand studded with rings.
“Lilian Crest, though apparently she went by the name Clover when this was taken. She died giving birth to the twins. A home birth that went very wrong, it seems. And a storm that knocked out power and phone for two days. The house—the manor—is a bit remote. Not inaccessible by any means, but a few miles from the town of Poole’s Bay.”
“She’s so young.”
“Only nineteen when she died. She’d left home at seventeen. She and Charles took up residence in the manor. His parents, twin brother, and his sister made their home just outside of Poole’s Bay. At that time.”
“Twins run in the family.”
“They do. Charles was, by all accounts, devastated by her death, and I’m afraid wanted nothing to do with the children he blamed for it. He took his own life not long after. Before he did, his sister took Collin, and adopted him. Your father was placed with a foster family, and put up for private adoption. Out of state, you see. The Poole family insisted—from what I can read in the paperwork—the adoptive family have no information regarding his birth parents.”
“They didn’t know.” The relief there came in a flood. “My grandparents. They didn’t know Dad had a twin. They would have taken them both. They’re good people. Loving people.”
“I can’t tell you why the Pooles separated the children. I know that Patricia Poole, your father’s grandmother, was a very hard woman. I know that your father’s uncle, Lawrence, closed up the manor again after his brother’s death. and it stayed closed until Collin opened it when he turned eighteen. It came to him, you see. Legally when he turned eighteen, as his uncle died four years before without an heir.