Lily stopped moving.
She actually closed her eyes.
The handle turned.
I stood.
And when the door opened, my entire body went numb.
Paul stood in the doorway.
My husband.
Same height.
Same build.
Same face.
For one bewildering second, my brain simply refused to understand what I was seeing.
Why was Paul walking into my classroom for Lily’s parent conference?
Then the man frowned.
And I saw it.
His hair was shorter.
His nose bent slightly to one side from an old injury.
There was a hardness around his eyes that Paul didn’t have.
My heart began pounding.
Not Paul.
Daniel.
Paul’s identical twin brother.
A man I had not seen in almost eleven years.
Lily slowly stood.
“Dad.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Dad.
And then memories came rushing back.
Daniel had a daughter.
A little girl I had met years earlier, before the brothers’ feud divided the family.
