We faintly hear Ella’s response as Auntie Joyce shuts the window and rises from her seat.
She’s much shorter than I expected, no more than five foot four. Her housecoat almost touches the floor. She shakes it off her shoulders, leaving her in a lightweight sweater and linen pants.
Micah offers the crook of his elbow to her and she takes it, using him as support at the front door when she slips on her comfortable shoes.
We walk through the neighborhood, Auntie Joyce regaling us with stories about the generations of Gatens that have come up in this town. She points out the houses of several of her relatives along her street. I wonder how Tanya felt about having most of her family within walking distance growing up.
She stops outside of another ranch-style home, this one made of brown brick with a table and two chairs on the porch.
“I know this place,” I say, more to myself than Micah or Auntie Joyce. “Micah, can I see the postcard?”
He pulls out his wallet and hands me the card, which he had folded to fit.
There it is. The exterior is a bit weathered now compared to the photo, but there’s no mistaking that this is the same house from the postcard.
Auntie Joyce leaves Micah’s side to join me. A smile creeps onto her lips. “This place has had two new roofs since this photo was taken.” She walks up the steps and throws the door open without announcing her presence.
I can’t imagine, in this day and age, feeling safe enough to leave your doors unlocked. But I suppose those are the perks of having more Gatens in this town than anyone else.
“John! Dee!” she yells into the ether.
A screaming toddler runs toward us, a clean diaper mushed between her fingers. A man with reddish-brown skin, no shirt, and black shorts runs out after her.
“Come here, you stinker!”
The little girl laughs harder as she pushes her little legs as fast as they can go. He catches her before she makes it to wherever she decided the goalpost was.
“Gotcha!” He blows a raspberry into her belly, her giggles echoing throughout the house. “Hey, Auntie. What’s up?”
“She stage a prison break again?” Auntie Joyce says, tickling the toddler’s foot.
“I think I’m gonna have to start handcuffing her to the changing table.” He looks behind Auntie Joyce with a raised eyebrow at Micah and me. “Everything good?”
Auntie Joyce introduces us to John Gaten, one of her great-nephews. This is the house Tanya grew up in, but now John lives here with his wife, Dee, and their three kids. Apparently, this is the Gaten way. Homes don’t go up for sale, they simply pass around ownership through the generations.
“I never thought I’d meet anybody from Tanya’s other life,” he says in awe.
Tanya’s worlds are colliding, and though she kept us apart in life, I think she’d be happy to see us finally coming together.
“Dee’s at work and the other kids are at daycare, but you’ll meet them later, I hope.”
He takes us on a tour of the house, and my imagination runs wild thinking of how the house looked when Tanya lived here.
John opens the door to one of the bedrooms where toys cover every inch of the floor and even the two beds on both sides of the room.
“Was this Tanya’s room?” I ask.
“I don’t really remember. I think it was Andrew’s room, though,” John responds.
“Who’s Andrew?” Micah asks, stealing the words out of my mouth.
Auntie Joyce and John look between each other. Auntie Joyce is the one to rip off the Band-Aid. “He was Tanya’s twin brother.”
My heart sinks.
Twin brother.
Since when did Tanya have a twin brother? Stupid question, because the answer is since birth, but it’s unfathomable. I assumed she had at least one sibling. She always said kids, plural, when she talked about her mom. But because she never said anything else about them, I always assumed they were estranged. I didn’t realize she shared a womb with said sibling and that he died.
