Another Sunday, Claire brought sandwiches cut into neat little squares. I brought mine cut into triangles. Without a word passing between them, the boys just swapped halves and kept eating.
They figured each other out faster than any of the adults around them managed to.
Eventually Ethan stopped complaining that Owen was annoying. Owen stopped forcing the word “brother” into every other sentence, because he didn’t need to force it anymore. Claire and I learned, slowly, to trade school updates and doctor appointments and hard memories without pretending any of it was simple.
Months later, my mother hung a new family photo in her hallway. Derek isn’t in it. Claire and I stand on opposite sides of the twins, each of us holding one of their hands.
My mother stepped back, looked at it for a long moment, and said, “This is how it’s going to be now.”
