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“Let me start at the beginning. I gotta tell you when I arrived and first saw Jasmine Journee. I called myself all kinds of fools.”

“Why?”

“Cause she looks so much like me.”

Emmanuel shook his head. Confusion blanketed his features. He’d seen photographs of the Journee woman. She didn’t look like his Ivy.

“Of course, she looks like me.”

“I’ve seen pictures. Other than your race, sex, and height. I just don’t see it.”

“Umm, we’ll explore that later.” Ivy dismissed his assertion like he was out to lunch.

“Then I saw a picture of her son. It looks like she stole pictures of Oliver.”

Emmanuel never thought to ask what the child looked like. After all, he knew the boy wasn’t his. Now he could kick himself. His blinder had caused them so much time.Maybe.Maybe it was for the best. Without an explanation, that revelation could have made things so much worse.

She tucked her legs beneath her. “I know this is a lot, but at least now we are getting answers. Like, oh! I’m pretty sure you’re of Italian descent.”

Ivy explained how she came to her theory. Shit! Hadn’t he been asked or told that he was Italian for most of his life? There was so much more about himself that he probably didn’t know.

Ivy reached over and patted his leg and drew him from his thoughts. “I know it’s a lot.”

A thought struck him. “So, this woman knew I wasn’t her child’s father?”

“Here’s the thing. I think she really thinks that you are his father?—”

“But what about my twin?”

“This is the hard part. I think he knows about you. Let’s say this guy’s name is Leo. I think he wanted her to believe he was… you.”

When Emmanuel thought he couldn’t handle anymore… oh look, there was more. This wasn’t an accident. Or a betrayal by the Journee woman. No, some brother he didn’t know set him up.

“Fuck!” He swore viciously. “Do you know who he is?”

“No.” Ivy shook her head. “I wanted to have all the puzzle pieces together before I told you, but I hit a wall. I don’t know how to find him. Plus, I just couldn’t keep this from you anymore.”

“If you couldn’t find this twin… How are you so convinced that he exists?”

“See umm… Just bear in mind I have already done it. So, you can’t be upset with me all over again.”

He would reserve his judgment until she told him what else she had done. “Doc?”

“When your mom told me about the adoption and asked me to tell you about it.”

Emmanuel still wasn’t sure how he felt about his Mom tasking Ivy with such a monumental task.

“I asked her to give me all the paperwork accompanying the adoption.”

Of course. His absolutely brilliant wife would gather all the facts. Ivy swallowed. “Then I visited your dad’s attorney.”

“You went to visit Chester Ellison? Isn’t he retired?”

“Yes. I visited him at his retirement home. One nurse might have thought I was one of his doctors.”

Emmanuel didn’t know if to laugh at the ‘misunderstanding’. He certainly had a good idea of how they might have come to that conclusion.

“I told him I was there to talk to him about the Scott adoption. The first thing he said was, ‘I’m sorry. That girl should have had her own attorney’.Then he said, ‘I shouldn’t have made her split up the twins. Those boys should have been raised together’.”

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