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Sonia followed and looked back at me from the hallway as Allison raced ahead of her. “Good going, asshole.” Her words didn’t penetrate. She could have shot me in the chest at that moment and it might not have mattered.
About a half hour passed and I needed to do something. I hadn’t moved from the same spot I was standing in when she left. I got out my phone and texted her.
Allison, please don’t be scared of
me. I have so much more I need to tell
you. I know you’re not ready to talk
to me. It was never my intention to
keep this from you for so long.
Please, let me know when you are
ready and I promise to explain
everything, if you’ll hear me out.
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She never responded and I hadn’t expected her to. As sick as I felt seeing her leave like that, an eerie bittersweet calm came over me that night as I realized that everything I feared had finally happened and it couldn’t get any worse from here.
The dread of this day had been eating away at me for months and now, for better or worse, the secret was out. Granted, I hadn’t gotten to explain it to her the way I anticipated, but the main facts were out. She would need time to process everything before I would stand a chance of talking to her again and I had to accept that.
The next day, trumpets sounded because…I shaved. It was definitely a longtime coming.
Something else that was a longtime coming
happened:
I finally
confessed
everything to my mother and she cried more than I had ever seen in my entire life, telling 528/727
me that she always felt something was off with me during those months, years ago when Caleb moved out to Chicago to stay with me. She had wrongly suspected it was drugs and that Caleb was keeping it secret.
But of course, at the time, both of us denied that there had been anything wrong.
“Cedric, honey…why did you feel like you couldn’t tell me all of this? All of these years you were keeping the fact that your first love died, from me and Dad?”
“I was ashamed. There are so many parts to what happened that I felt would devastate you back then, given how hard things were with Callie on top of things at that time.
I am so sorry, Ma.”
My mother and I held each other tight as Callie’s iPad made noises next to us in the living room.
“Cedric, this is all so hard to believe.
How am I supposed to handle seeing Allison now…if she comes back to work? That poor 529/727
girl must be so shocked and confused. Tell me again, why you never told her the truth about her sister that very first day?” I ran my hands through my hair, took in a deep breath and exhaled. “That’s the million dollar question isn’t it? I wouldn’t be here in this predicament right now if I had done that, that’s for sure. Mom. That’s something I can’t explain to you. She just had me under a spell from the moment I first laid eyes on her and I didn’t want it to end. It sounds cliché, but I really think I experienced love at first sight. I wanted to be with her and wanted her to see me for me. I knew it would have ended the second I told her the truth. I was selfish, I know.” My mother pulled me in for a hug.
“Selfish, yes, but I know you didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“No, Mom…no, that’s the last thing I wanted, believe me.”
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“I think you need to write her a letter, son.”
“A letter?”
“Yes. She is not going to want to face you for a while, honey. And you won’t be able to explain it the way you want to in person.
There’s too much to the story and from what you told me, you really didn’t do a good job of articulating everything to her face to face.”
“No, I didn’t. I froze,” I said.
“Exactly. So, I want you to stay here with us today. Have a nice dinner, spend time with your sister, and clear your head.
Then, I want you to go home and sit down and focus on what you need to say to her.
Can you do that?”
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
“No, you don’t.”
That night, I spent a calm evening with my mother and sister, grateful to have such a wonderful family.
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After an early dinner of spaghetti and meatballs and a couple of glasses of red wine, I felt more relaxed and took Callie for a walk around the neighborhood. Holding my sister’s hand, I felt for the first time like everything would somehow turn out okay. A lot of that had to do with the weight that was lifted after telling my mother.
At one point, Callie, stopped and was pulling me to go across the street.
“No, Callie, this way,” I said.
Callie was pulling me harder toward the street.
“Allison,” she said.
My heart pounded when I heard her say the name and then I realized Callie was pointing to a girl walking across the street with long dark hair. I soon realized it wasn’t Allison, but just the few seconds I thought it might be her, were enough to show me how intense it would be when I laid eyes on her again.
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Would she even show up here to work with Callie next week? I don’t know how she could. If she does, at least my mother knows everything now.
She knows more than Allison does, in fact.
Not for long. I needed to get home and start working on that letter. I needed to pour my heart out to her, even if it’s the first and last time.
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CHAPTER 32
ALLISON
Mercury, your Ruler, goes retrograde today, Gemini, so you might be quite reflect-ive. This presents a wonderful opportunity for great spiritual growth and deepening peace.
It had been a few days since Cedric’s revelation and I had asked for the week off from both jobs, citing a family emergency. I guess this could qualify as that.
I sat in my apartment alone listening to the sounds of children playing outside. It was Spring vacation week in Boston and the streets were filled with kids. The warm air blew through my window screen and the sounds of birds chirping helped me relax.
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Amanda.
I have been sitting on the couch, staring at Amanda’s picture, still in disbelief. In the photo, she’s alone and leaning up against a tree. The sounds outside seem to add to the scene in the picture and I try to imagine her coming to life. In the photo, Amanda is smiling lovingly at the photographer. It was obvious who she was looking at and I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
She was dead.
I didn’t even know she existed and she was dead. I would never know her.
But Cedric did.
Cedric knew more about my past than I did and that unnerved me.
Cedric was my sister’s boyfriend… my sister’s boyfriend. It still didn’t fully register.
There is so much more I need to know. Why was he the one looking for me anyway? Did my sister even know about me before she 537/727
died? I have so many questions. And why did he try to find me now?
There were so many questions left un-answered, but I wasn’t able to face him the other day a second longer once he told me the truth.
When I had first found the photo, it hadn’t even occurred to me for one second that it wasn’t me, even though I hadn’t remembered taking that picture. The shock I felt upon hearing that this was actually a photo of my twin was indescribable.
A twin.
This was like a bad Lifetime movie come true. It didn’t make sense at first, but the more I thought about it…it was certainly plausible: I never knew anything about my birth mother or the circumstances of my birth.
My mother always said she had no information either. I know that to be the truth, because my mother would have never kept 538/727