My heart stopped.
“Twins?” I whispered.
“You and Rosie,” he said.
Evelyn stepped forward.
“Samuel intended to use both babies in his research. Laura begged me to take one.”
Rosie’s hand tightened around mine.
“I took Rosie,” Evelyn said. “Richard and I raised her as ours. Laura kept Claire for several months, but Samuel became violent. She brought Claire to us too.”
“So we are sisters,” Rosie whispered.
“Full sisters,” Evelyn said.
The room blurred through my tears.
All my life, biology had been used as a weapon against us.
Rosie was supposedly different from me.
I was supposedly not Evelyn’s daughter.
Richard was supposedly not my father.
Every revelation had threatened to divide our family into categories of real and false.
But the deepest secret did the opposite.
Rosie and I had shared the same womb.
Before the lies.
Before the altered records.
Before one sister was treated as fragile and the other as responsible.
Before the world decided what Rosie could never have and what I must always protect.
We had begun together.
