She pauses. “How many what?”
“Grandchildren. How many do you want?”
Surprise crosses her face. “Two would be nice. Twins, maybe. Like you and your brother.”
The room goes quiet.
My mother never talks about my twin. Not since I was a teenager and told her to stop bringing up someone I never knew. But now she’s looking at me with something sad and hopeful.
“Ma—”
“I know you do not like talking about him. But sometimes I think about what it would have been like if he had lived. If you had grown up together.”
“I had you. And Da, before he died.”
“That is not the same. A twin is different.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Do you ever think about him?” she asks.
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“How can I miss someone I never met?”
“I do not know. But I do. Every day.” The pain in her voice is raw.
“It would be nice if he were alive,” I say, because she’s waiting. “I think about that sometimes.”
It makes her smile. “You would have liked him. He looked just like you.”
“How do you know? He was two days old.”
“A mother knows.”
I stay for three more days. We fall into our usual rhythm. Breakfast together, she tends the garden while I fix things around the cottage, dinners where she asks neutral questions and I give neutral answers.
It’s peaceful here. So far removed from my real life that it feels like another world.
But eventually, I have to go back.
On my last morning, my mother walks me to the car and hugs me tightly. “Be careful,” she says.
“I’m always careful.”
“No. You are always reckless. There is a difference.”
She’s right about that too.
I drive back to Shannon with the windows down, letting the cold Irish air clear my head.
The search for Aurelia will continue. I will find her eventually.
But for now, I have to be patient.
Even if patience is killing me.
