The Fortuity Duet

by Rochelle Paige

  My mom rushed towards me. “But now he’s standing right here, so stop yelling at him and let him tell us what’s wrong.”

  When she reached out to give me a hug, I took a step back and shook my head. “I have some questions.”

  My mom looked devastated that I wouldn’t let her hug me. She stood perfectly still, her hands still stretched towards me as her skin paled and tears filled her eyes. “About what, honey?”

  “Declan.”

  All it took was the mention of my dead twin’s name for the tears in my mom’s eyes to overflow and spill down her cheeks. He’d been gone for five years, and we hardly ever talked about him because the pain was so overwhelming. For all of us. But the time had finally come for me to get the answers that I should have demanded after the accident.

  My dad moved to my mom’s side. He wrapped his arm around her and led her over to the couch in the living room off the foyer. Mom patted the cushion next to her, and I sat down. When she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly, I could tell she was trying to gather herself. Dad dropped down on the opposite side of her and took hold of her other hand.

  “When I woke up after the crash, an entire month had passed.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. My eyes started to sting, and I pressed my fingers against them. “As devastated as I was when you told me that Declan had died in the accident, I was so relieved that he hadn’t suffered. Even if it meant that I missed his burial and couldn’t visit his grave until after I’d fully recovered from my own injuries.”

  “We know, son.” My dad reached over and gripped my arm. “If we had known you were going to wake up when you did, we wouldn’t have buried him without you. It’s something we regretted, and we’re so sorry.”

  His easy apology only made what I had to say next that much harder. “No, I understand why you did it that way. There was no way of knowing when I would wake up, and you couldn’t wait forever. But because everything was so fucked up, I never really asked any questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” my dad asked.

  “Ones I should have asked back then,” I mumbled.

  “You were recovering,” my mom excused me. “You had just woken up from a coma and had your own serious injuries to contend with.”

  “But he was my twin!” I railed. “And I didn’t even ask you any questions about his death. We never really talked about him once I got out of the hospital. It was like this huge piece of me was torn from the world and I just let it go without a second thought. I let him go.”

  “You didn’t,” my mom argued. “Not really. You changed so much after the accident. Declan was always the serious one and you were such a jokester. He never put off until tomorrow what could be done today, and you always waited until the very last minute. Although you were identical twins, you each had such different personalities. Then he was gone, and you weren’t yourself anymore. It was more than just recovering from your own injuries, which were severe on their own. But the loss of Declan, it changed you.”

  “Your mom is right,” Dad agreed. “I don’t know when the last time was that I heard you tell a joke.”

  “And I never had to push you to get your homework done when you went back to school.”

  Dad nodded. “You even made sure all your college stuff was sent in early.”

  I realized they were right. When I woke up after the accident, I felt like I had to make up for Declan’s loss in some way. “Maybe in a way, I was trying to live both our lives.”

  “And as hard as it was for us to stand by and watch, we knew that you were using gambling as your outlet for when it got to be too much.”

  “We understood because we were angry at the world too,” my mom added. “A parent should never have to live through the death of a child. The stages of grief are relentless and every day you feel like a piece of you is missing.”

  Rationally, I knew their loss was as big as mine. Maybe even bigger because even though Declan was my twin, he was their son. But knowing about their pain and understanding how in the hell Faith could’ve ended up with his kidney inside her a month after he was supposed to have died were two different things. “That’s why I’m struggling so much with this. He was my identical twin. We’d been together from the moment of conception and for every day of our lives until that damn accident. Only to find out years later that you guys lied to me about how he died. When he died. It’s killing me.”

  “Oh my God,” my mom cried, burying her face in my dad’s chest. “He knows.”

  “That Declan didn’t die until a month after the crash? Yeah, I know.”

  My dad’s gaze locked with mine, and I was surprised to see what I thought might be relief in his eyes. “How’d you find out?”

  I pulled the letters out of the front pocket of my jeans, smoothed them out, and handed them to him. “Faith stumbled across the truth when she reached out to her donor family to say thank you. The transplant center offered to forward her letter to them, and they sent it to you.”

  “What?” My mom’s head jerked up, and she yanked the letters from my dad’s hands. Her reaction answered any questions I’d had about her possibly knowing about Faith’s connection to Declan and that being the reason why she’d reached out to her in the first place. “Faith’s kidney came from Declan? That’s what your argument was about? No wonder she was so distant with us when we tried to talk to her on Thursday.”

  “She must be the patient the surgeon was talking about when—”

  “You’re right. She has to be,” my mom interrupted my dad as she glanced down at the letters. “There was a doctor who came in to talk to us about donating Declan’s organs. He explained how the process worked and how many lives we could save if we agreed. But we struggled with the decision because it meant saying goodbye to your brother. And then he made it personal.”

  My dad continued the story when my mom couldn’t go on because she started to sob. “He told us about a young girl they’d been treating who was likely to never get a transplant because she was too much of a risk. She didn’t have any family to help her after the surgery, and the odds of her making a full recovery were slim. He said that her only chance was a direct donation, but there wasn’t anyone in her life who cared enough to make that kind of sacrifice.”

  “When we agreed to allow Declan to be a donor,” my mom sniffled. “It was under the condition that she was one of the recipients if they were a match. If your brother was going to save lives with his death, we felt that he would have wanted one of them to be someone who wouldn’t have had that chance without him. You know how he always loved to root for the underdog.”

  They were right. If Declan had been alive to make the decision, he would’ve wanted to save someone like Faith. I could understand and respect their decision to donate his organs, and their story explained how Faith had gotten her kidney when she’d thought it was impossible. But there was still one detail that didn’t make sense to me. “But how was that even possible? You guys told me he died in the crash. Faith’s transplant was a month after that. The only way his kidney is inside her is if you guys lied to me. But why would you do that about something as important as Declan’s death?”

  My parents shared a long look, and my dad nodded before my mom turned to me again. “The doctors had warned us that your recovery was going to be incredibly difficult. We’d been preparing ourselves for that, and then you woke up and your only concern was Declan. Not yourself, even though you were hooked up to so many machines and had to have been in pain. You were desperate for us to tell you about Declan.”

  “Because I needed to know what happened to him. He was my twin. I deserved the truth!”

  “I’m sorry we lied to you, Dillon. But we didn’t feel like we had much of a choice because we didn’t think you could handle the truth.” I shook my head at my dad’s confession, refusing to believe it. He hurriedly explained more about why they made the decision they had. “The psychiatrist we talked to said it was likely that you would struggle with survivor
guilt. We expected it to be worse because of the circumstances surrounding the accident, and we were right. You blamed yourself, no matter how often we told you it wasn’t your fault.

  “We had just lost Declan, and we were desperate to make sure we didn’t lose you too,” my mom cried. “So we told you what you needed to hear to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  “It would have devastated you even more to know that he spent a month in a hospital bed next to you but didn’t survive. You had a hard enough time dealing with his loss when you thought he died in the crash.”

  I couldn’t deny the truth in my dad’s words. Not when the one thing I’d held onto for so long was the fact that Declan hadn’t suffered. It destroyed me to know that wasn’t the case, but it would’ve been worse if I’d known it back then.

  I dropped my head and stared at my hands while I tried to come to terms with the actual truth and not the story my parents had fabricated in their attempt to protect me. “It’s going to take me a while to wrap my head around the fact that you guys lied to me for so long.”

  My mom stifled another sob and choked out my name.

  “Later, Elaine. Let him come to terms with this first,” my dad murmured softly.

  My head jerked up and I searched both their faces, trying to figure out what he could be talking about. “Later for what?”

  “To push you on how you’re dealing with Faith being the recipient of Declan’s kidney. How she’s holding up since we backed off when it seemed like we were the last people she wanted to talk to about your fight. You know how your mom likes to meddle, but now isn’t the time. Not while you’re dealing with what we’ve already told you. It’s enough for the time being. Anything else can wait.”

  “It’s not meddling to worry about how he and Faith are handling—”

  She paused as though she couldn’t figure out the right word to use, and I filled in the gap. “Our strange connection?”

  She sighed and nodded her head. “I can see how you’d feel like this changes everything between the two of you.”

  Shit. That wasn’t the kind of meddling I’d been expecting from her. I’d been hoping for words of wisdom that would help me come to terms with the fact that Faith had Declan’s kidney. Not understanding and agreement.

  7

  Dillon

  “Dillon, no.” My mom leaned forward and placed her palms against my cheeks. “Wipe that sad look off your face. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just that knowing Declan’s death played a part in saving the life of the girl you fell in love with helps bring me a little peace.”

  I searched her face and didn’t see any sign that she wasn’t thrilled about the discovery that had rocked my world. “I don’t understand. You’re okay with Faith having Declan’s kidney? It doesn’t bother you at all?”

  “Quite the opposite. I like to think that your brother would have grown up to be the kind of man who would have stepped in front of a bullet if it meant saving the lives of his nieces and nephews,” she explained. “Although he never had the chance to make that kind of decision, if you and Faith have children together some day then he still managed to come to their rescue. I hope like hell your children never face that kind of danger, but I take comfort in knowing they’re going to be born because of Declan’s sacrifice nonetheless.”

  Hearing her put it like that hit me hard. In the time since Faith had shared her shocking discovery with me, I’d been focused on how it had affected me and my past. I hadn’t stopped to think about the how our lives would’ve been different if my parents hadn’t made the decision they had five years ago. “If Faith had died”—I could barely get the words out because I couldn’t imagine a world without Faith in it—“I still might have fallen in love with someone and had children someday.”

  “It wouldn’t have been the same,” she chided, shaking her head. “You might not have known what you were missing, but you’re living the life you were meant to with the woman you were destined to love. I knew she was the girl for you from the very first moment I saw the two of you together. I just didn’t know it was possible because Declan gave her the gift of life.”

  I’d been one-hundred percent certain about Faith and my feelings for her from the get-go, but knowing her connection to Declan had filled me with doubts. “Do you really think so?”

  “I do, honey.”

  I finally gave voice to the root of my fears. “What if the reason we fit together so well isn’t because she’s the woman for me? What if I’m drawn to her because a part of Declan lives inside her?”

  My mom cocked her head and looked at me with surprise in her eyes. “Do you really think the reason you love Faith is because of the bond you had with Declan? That everything you feel for her is based on the kidney that saved her life?”

  “I don’t know!” I huffed out, frustrated and confused by everything I was feeling. “How else would you explain how quickly I fell in love with Faith? No other woman ever made me feel even a fraction of what she did from the moment I laid eyes on her. If it wasn’t because of Declan, then what was it?”

  “Love isn’t logical,” my dad answered. “There’s no explanation for why we fall in love with the person we’re meant to be with. If you’re lucky, it just happens. Like it did for me with your mom and for you with Faith.”

  “But how do I know she’s really the one, and I wasn’t wrong about why I fell for her in the first place?” I pushed.

  “Close your eyes.” She used the ‘mom’ voice, so I found my eyes drifting shut before I even thought about it. “Think back to the way you felt when you first saw Faith. She knocked you flat on your ass if what you later told your dad was true.”

  My eyes popped open and I swiveled my head to glare at my dad. “You told her that?”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yet, but I tell your mom everything.”

  “Keep them shut because I’m not done yet,” Mom chided, waiting for me to close my eyes again before she continued. “Think about the time you’ve spent with Faith in your life. About how happy she’s made you.”

  Even with as horrible as things were between us right now, I couldn’t help but smile as I did as my mom asked. Up until she found out Declan was her donor, things had been amazing between us.

  “Now picture your future without Faith in it,” she finished, shocking the hell out of me with the harshness of her tone.

  My mind blanked at the very idea of spending the rest of my days without her. “I can’t.” I opened my eyes to find my mom staring at me with tears in her eyes even as she smiled at me.

  “Do you know what I thought when I found out you and Faith were dating?” she asked.

  “Thank God my baby boy is finally settling down?” It was a feeble attempt to use humor to try to stop myself from crying along with her.

  “That too,” she agreed. “But I couldn’t help but feel that it was so fitting you’d fall for a girl named Faith.”

  I shook my head, not understanding. “Why?”

  “When I was pregnant with you boys, your dad and I went round and round over what to name you both,” she answered with a slight smile. “I wanted names that sounded good together and started with the same letter, but your dad wanted names that you could grow into. Something strong to signify the men you’d become later in life.”

  “I think you won that battle,” I said, thinking about how well our names had fit together.

  “No, we compromised,” she corrected. “We picked names that had everything we both wanted. Your brother’s name meant full of goodness.”

  I smiled sadly thinking it had been an apt way to describe my twin. “And mine?”

  “If I’d had my way you would have been a Donovan, but I couldn’t argue when your dad suggested Dillon because it means faithful.”

  Whoa. “It does?”

  “Yes, my baby boy. It certainly does. From the very start, it seemed to me like you two were destined to be together. And I was right. You’ve built a life
with Faith. One that’s filled with the kind of love most people dream of having and never find for themselves. Isn’t having a future with her something that’s worth fighting for?”

  I felt like a weight had lifted, and I could finally breathe for the first time since Faith shared her bombshell with me. “It is. But I wish she’d never written that goddamn letter in the first place and opened this can of worms.”

  “This letter that had you so scared and angry? It’s a godsend to me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Every time I look at the grandbabies you and Faith give me someday, I’ll know they’re here because of Declan.”

  “A day far in the future,” my dad added. “Since you two are young and have plenty of time to think about kids. For now, you need to focus on your career while Faith works on her master’s degree.”

  My mom elbowed my dad in the side. “It’s never too early to think about giving me grandbabies.”

  I wasn’t willing to go there with her. Not now, and God only knew how far in the future. Plus, there was something else I needed to confirm before I figured out what I was going to do next. “What about when you look at Faith?”

  “I’ll see the same thing I’ve always seen,” she reassured me. “The woman who loves my son as much as he loves her. I just wish I’d known that was what you guys were fighting about so I could have reassured her about that. I figured it was something small, and you two would move past it. I never expected it to be this big.”

  My dad nodded in agreement and asked, “I think the better question to ask is what do you see when you look at her now?”

  “I’d actually have to be near her to do that,” I mumbled.

  My mom jumped off the couch and stared down at me. “What do you mean by that? You live together for goodness sakes!”

  I hated admitting it because I knew I hadn’t handled the news well, but I wasn’t going to lie to them. There had been enough of that between us already. “I haven’t been home since she told me.”