The mother answered immediately.
“He got a different version of me.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No.”
The mother stood.
“It isn’t fair.”
The older boy laughed.
“Obviously.”
“You are allowed to be angry.”
“Thanks.”
“You are allowed to hate what I did.”
He looked directly at her.
“Do I have to forgive you?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
The mother continued.
“You don’t owe me anything because I gave birth to you.”
Silence.
“I would like a chance to know you.”
She swallowed.
“But that has to be your choice.”
The younger boy stepped forward.
The mother tried to stop him.
He slipped free.
Children.
He stood in front of the older boy.
“I want to know you.”
The older boy looked down.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re my brother.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means some things.”
“Like what?”
The younger boy thought.
“You have my nose.”
The older boy stared.
Then, despite everything, a laugh escaped him.
Tiny.
Broken.
Real.
The mother began crying harder.
The former nurse looked around nervously.
“We still need to move.”
The mother’s grief snapped back into suspicion.
“Why?”
The nurse pointed toward the necklace.
“The administrator who helped falsify the record died years ago.”
“So?”
“His son didn’t.”
The biological father.
The mother’s stomach turned.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said he may be watching.”
“I said someone may.”
“Who?”
The nurse hesitated.
“My sister contacted me before she died.”
The older boy looked up.
“She said a man came asking about the necklace.”
“What man?”
“She didn’t know.”
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
The older boy’s expression shifted.
His aunt had become increasingly paranoid around that time.
Changed shelters.
Moved them between cheap motels.
Stopped letting him attend a neighborhood youth program.
He had thought she was sick.
Maybe she had been afraid.
The nurse continued.
“She believed someone had traced the original hospital records.”
The mother asked, “Why now?”
“Because a private genealogy service digitized old adoption and birth records through a court project.”
That was plausible enough to be terrifying.
Fragmented systems becoming searchable.
Old lies meeting new databases.
The nurse looked at the boy.
“My sister died six weeks ago.”
He nodded.
“She made me promise I would find you.”
“You knew where I was.”
“I was watching.”
His face hardened.
“From a car?”
“Yes.”
“You watched me sleep outside?”
The nurse flinched.
“I was trying to arrange somewhere safe.”
“You brought sandwiches twice.”
“I know.”
“You could have taken me home.”