“What the fuck?” he says horrified. His voice barely a whisper.
I fall to my knees and weep loudly with my face in my hands. I hear the bed creak when he gets up and walks over to me. He gets down on his knees in front of me and holds me. He grabs my tear-stricken face between his hands and examines me like he’s looking at me for the first time. I look at him the same way. Then, after a minute, our bodies crash together again. I feel his body quaking beneath me as his own grief trembles through. We hold each other for minutes, hours, days. When we finally calm down, we sit next to each other.
“So…you’re...oh God. I’m...” he says, breathing heavily and wiping tears from his own face. “Your nightmares?”
I nod. “They’re about that night. Do you remember now?”
“No. I remember it was awful, but I don’t remember it. I do remember you though,” he says, caressing my face with the back of his hand. “My princess.”
I smile through my tears. “Your princess?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “I always thought you were a princess, but I never wanted to tell you that. I wanted you to act like a G.I. Joe with me.”
“I know,” I whisper, nodding my head. “I remember.”
“How’d you get this?” he asks, lifting up the doll.
“I went to your parents’ house.”
His mouth pops open. “How? Did you know who they were?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I think I had some suspicions for a while. Well, sort of...you know my friend, Aimee?” I wait until he nods, but he looks horrified. “She does these things that remind me of you sometimes, but I just figured it was a coincidence. Anyway, she’s...your sister.”
He gasps as if I’ve punched him in the stomach. “What?”
“I know. It’s a lot to take in. Trust me, when I was at her house today, I thought I would leave in a gurney.”
“Does she know?” he asks, still horrified.
“No,” I shake my head rapidly. “I didn’t want to tell her. I wanted to tell you first. I don’t even know how I would tell her.”
He raises his eyebrows and nods. “So my parents think I’m missing?”
“They think you’re dead,” I whisper.
“Oh, God,” he says hoarsely as tears stream down his face. I hold his face to my chest and stroke his hair as he weeps quietly, the same way he’s comforted me so often in the past.
We spend the rest of the night talking about what we remember and looking through my pictures.
“Do you think that’s the same place you took me to that time?” I ask him as we look at a picture of us in the farm.
He looks at me as he contemplates the possibility. “It might be. It’s completely destroyed now, so we would have never linked the two together. Let’s go tomorrow.”
“Okay, if you’re up for it.”
“I just don’t understand why they would put it under my name. And if my parents are alive...I don’t know. This is so confusing.” he says shaking his head slowly.
“I know,” I reply idly twirling a strand of hair around my finger. “Do you want to meet Aimee?”
He lets out a breath and shrugs. “I guess.”
“I can talk to her about it and explained what I remember. I know it’s going to be hard for her to believe, but she’s great and I know you’ll love her.”
“I just don’t understand how I don’t remember. I remember going to the farm. I remember wanting to play with you. I remember that stupid doll you used to bring along with you all the time. how can I not remember my own family?” he says in a wavering voice.
I give him a sad smile and hold him tighter, thankful that as crazy as this is, we have each other to lean on.
“How old is she?” he whispers later on when we’re laying in bed.
“She’s your twin,” I whisper back. He squeezes me tighter and buries his face in my neck.
I feel sunlight on my face and blink my eyes open slowly. I can’t even remember falling asleep last night. I look over and find Cole looking through the pictures again. My heart hurts for him, but there isn’t much I can do, other than help him and Aimee get to know each other again.
“Good morning,” I say huskily.
He turns his face and smiles at me. “Hey, baby.”
“How’d you sleep?”
“Good, actually. I always sleep good when you’re beside me,” he says as he lays down next to me and kisses my forehead. “I’m starting to remember things.”
“Really?” I ask surprised.
“Yeah. I remember Aimee and my mom. They used to go to Aimee’s piano lessons while I went with my dad to the farm, I guess that’s why she never went with us. I remember the night they took me, she had a cold and was sleeping with my parents.” I caress his face and feel my heart flutter as I look into his beautiful green eyes.
When Cole is in the shower, I heard Aubry get home and go to the living room. I see him and Aimee standing in the kitchen making themselves coffee and take a deep breath before greeting them. I ask them to sit down and start to tell them everything. Aubry already knew my story for the most part, so I’m mainly filling Aimee in on it, until I get to the part about Cole. I tell her how I got kidnapped as a child, and there was a boy named Nathan with me. I tell her how I met Cole at Maggie’s. She already knows a lot about our relationship because I’ve told her about him in the past. I told her that my freak out and throwing up at her house wasn’t because of the tuna I ate—but because I figured out that Nathan was Cole.
“What are you talking about, Blake?” Aimee asks horrified as Aubry sits there with his mouth hanging open.
“Your brother, Nathan, is alive. It’s...” I take a deep breath. “It’s Cole,” I say softly and wait for the news to sink in.
A plethora of emotions pass her face as she looks at me while she fidgets with the napkin she has in her hand until she tears it in little pieces. “No,” she sobs. “No. He’s dead. He’s dead. He was never found. Those people killed him.”
I sigh and take her hand in mine, looking into her brown eyes with a sad smile. “No, babe. He’s not dead. He’s alive, and he’s here, and if you don’t want to meet him today, it’s totally fine. We just found out yesterday, he’s still having a hard time with it himself.”
“No,” she says shaking her head. “I want to meet him. I have to. Oh my God,” she weeps as she launches herself into me for a hug. We hold each other tightly and Aubry gets up and holds us both in his arms. The three of us snap our heads up when we hear Cole approach us and Aubry lets us go and goes to him and goes him tightly.
“I’m so sorry, bro,” Aubry cries as he hugs Cole. Their chests both heave as they talk quietly to each other. I smile through the flow of tears that fall down my face as I watch them together. The two boys that have known each other since they were children and were raised brothers. My heart doesn’t hurt as I watch them, though. I know Aubry is glad that Cole is getting the answers he’s been searching for his whole life. Cole separates himself from Aubry and winks at me as he walks over to dry my tears before he looks at Aimee.