I was never close to my mom. She always kept me at arm’s length, and when I got older, I returned the favor. So after she passed, I didn’t feel grief so much as a vague emptiness—and the burden of deciding what to do with the house she left behind.
Truthfully, I knew next to nothing about my family. My mom never talked about her past. So when she died, it felt like a curtain had closed for good—leaving just me and Cassandra, my wife.
It was Cassandra who insisted we keep the old photo album we found tucked away in Mom’s attic. I told her it was pointless—just a dusty relic from a life I’d never really been part of.
But one day, while I was helping her carry her bag, the album slipped out and spilled open. A single photo fell to the floor. I picked it up without thinking—and froze.
There I was, maybe five years old. My mother beside me. And another boy. Same age. Same build. Same face.
I felt something shift inside my chest—like a string pulled too tight, snapping loose.
I turned the photo over. On the back, in my mother’s handwriting, were five words that changed everything:
“Ben and Ronnie, 1986.”
That was the moment I knew: I had to find out who Ronnie was—and why no one ever told me he existed.
I started with Google. Every combination I could think of—Ronnie 1986 twin brother, Ronnie [Mom’s full name], Ronnie [our old neighborhood]—but nothing useful came up. No records. No hits. Just silence.
So I called the only person who might know something: Darla, Mom’s old friend who lived two blocks over when I was a kid. I hadn’t spoken to her in years.
When I asked her about Ronnie, she went quiet.
“Oh honey,” she said finally, her voice distant. “You and Ronnie were like magnets. Always together. But your mom… she didn’t want anyone asking questions. Told me not to bring him up again.”
“What happened to him?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.
She sighed. “All I know is one day, he was just… gone. You stopped talking about him. Your mom acted like he never existed.”
I sat there stunned.
Then Cassandra, ever the voice I didn’t know I needed, said, “What if he’s your twin?”
I laughed. At first. But something about it felt too strange to ignore.
So we started digging. I found the name of the clinic where I was born—St. Alder’s. It had closed down years ago, but some records were moved to the county archives.
We made the drive.
A man named Harris, old enough to remember when carbon copies were the norm, met us at the desk. “We don’t usually let people back here,” he said, “but your mom—Judith Tolwin? Yeah, that name’s in the books.”
We followed him to a dusty cabinet and flipped through brittle yellowed records until we found it:
Judith Tolwin. April 13, 1986.
Male infant born. Name: Benjamin.
Male infant born. Name: Ronald.
Twins.
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