Other bequests—a carnelian bowl, antique pearl earrings—to a Corrine Whitmer Doyle. Probably the friend’s wife, Sonya thought.

  Separate bequests to Oliver Henry Doyle II, and to a Paula Mortimore Doyle. Another painting, some jewelry.

  More yet to Oliver Henry Doyle III. Son? A Louisville Slugger, signed by Mickey Mantle, eight Matchbox cars, circa 1975. To an Anna Rose Doyle, a pearl necklace.

  Various monetary bequests, forty-five of his fifty-percent interest in the shipping company.

  And to her shock, antique diamond-and-sapphire earrings to Winter Rogan MacTavish, her mother.

  When she reached the end, she pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  How was she supposed to think? How could she absorb any of this?

  He’d left everything else to her—including a house and its land—eight-point-three acres’ worth. All its contents (inventory listed in a separate document), a trust to maintain said house, property, and contents.

  Life insurance policy, brokerage accounts, investments, and more she just couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  But rolling over all of it, her father had a brother. A twin. He’d had family he’d never known.

  And so had she.

  She grabbed her phone.

  “Cleo, I need you to go to Mom’s with me. Now.”

  “What happened? Is she all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. Something’s happened, but I’ll explain on the way. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Please.”

  “Give me fifteen. Jesus, Sonya, you sound like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Maybe I have. Fifteen.”

  She dragged on boots, her coat—reminded herself of the cold and swung on a scarf, yanked on a wool cap. In five minutes, she was out the door, packets in hand.

  Her mother needed to know, and not by a phone call. And she needed Cleo to talk her through it.

  And hell, she guessed she’d need that lawyer.

  * * *

  She doubted she was coherent during the drive. God knew she didn’t feel coherent. Cleo’s reaction, as expected, hit shock, amazement, suspicion, curiosity, and some outrage.

  “What kind of heartless excuse for a human separates brothers like that? You know your grandparents would have taken both babies.”

  “Exactly what I said. God, why is there always so much traffic?”

  “And what you’re saying tells me the grandmother, her daughter, on the Poole side, they could’ve kept both. They had the means.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why they did it, or hid it. I definitely got the sense from Mr. Doyle that the family hid it all, the real parentage, the twins. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I wonder if your dad knew. I don’t mean knew-knew. But felt. Like they say twins can. And, oh, his poor brother, losing his bride, his love, on their wedding day. But think about it, Sonya. He was an artist, like your dad. They had that bond, even though they never knew.

  “Where the hell is Poole’s Bay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s find out.” Cleo pulled out her phone, Googled. “Okay, pretty small, one of those juts of land along the Maine coast. It’s probably beautiful, scenic.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t make any sense, Cleo.”

  “Sure it does. This Collin Poole didn’t know about your dad, until he did. He did some due diligence, made plans to contact him. And your dad died. That’s another blow.”

  She reached over, gave Sonya’s hand a squeeze. “Think of it. You’ve just found out you have a brother, a twin brother your family kept from you. But before you can reach out to him, he’s gone. That’s devastating. But he must’ve felt the bond, so he left his brother’s only child his home, his—well, pretty much everything from what you’ve told me.”

  “But why didn’t he contact Mom, or me?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t face it, face the possibility of another emotional blow. What if you’d told him to stick it, or you’d been all, Fine, what’s in it for me?”

  “I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “I know that, Son, but maybe he was just too emotionally fragile to handle it. It seems like, in the end, he tried to do the right thing. He didn’t have to. You’d never have known. Or, if you did the DNA thing and found out, he still owed you nothing really.”

  “Here’s why I called you.” Some of the tightness in her chest loosened. “Why I needed you to come with me.”

  “When you’ve talked to your mom, when you’re smoothed out some, you need to find out all you can about him. And about all of it.”

  “So I need that lawyer.”

  “You do. Let me Google the other one. Oliver Henry Doyle II, you said. Poole’s Bay, Maine. Okay, okay, here we go. He’s fifty-seven—”

  “Really? I put him ten years younger even when he took the flap cap off and I saw a lot of black, like his eyebrows, in with the gray.”

  “Looks like his father established the firm like fifty years ago, so that’s a lot. Married, two kids. Son, Oliver III, is thirty-two, daughter, Anna, twenty-eight, so our age. Everything seems solid and aboveboard. And I like that this Mr. Doyle told you to get a lawyer.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” Cleo added. “You end up with a house on the Maine coast. You live there a few years—you can work anywhere, right?”

  “You think I should—”

  “I think you should seriously think about it. Hell, Sonya, it’s an adventure, and you’re due. And you’d find out more about your ancestry. Your grandparents are always going to be your grandparents. Nothing changes that. This is just more, and a chance to clear your decks, and find out that more.”

  Sonya pulled into her mother’s drive. “I have a life here, a home here. You and Mom are here. I’m trying to establish my business.”

  “Working backward, you’re just as capable of establishing your business there as here. Your mom and I are always going to be there for you, and Maine’s not a distant planet. You have a duplex, which I know very well has always been a stepping stone for you, and right now, your life here is work.”

  She gave Sonya’s hand another squeeze. “But stay or go, let’s find out what there is to find out. And step one to all of it is telling your mom.”

  They found Winter putting another log on the fire.

  “Well, look at this! I was just thinking about making do with a grilled cheese for dinner, now it’s a party.”

  Then she got a good look at her daughter’s face. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Not wrong, but we need to sit down and talk.”

  “You’re scaring me, baby.”

  “I don’t mean to, and there’s nothing scary. But let’s sit down.”

  Sonya took off her coat, her hat. “A man came to see me today. A lawyer, from Maine.”

  “A lawyer? Are you in trouble?”

  “No, Mom. Stop.” After putting the packets on the coffee table, Sonya took Winter’s hands, drew her down to sit on the sofa.

  “Dad had a twin brother.”

  “What? No, he didn’t. Honey, this has to be some sort of con because—”

  “Nan and Grandpa didn’t know, and I’ll get to all that. But Dad had a twin. Their birth mother died when they were born, and their birth father couldn’t handle it. He ended up committing suicide.”

  “Sonya—”

  “Just hear me out on this part, please. The family separated them—I don’t know why. The aunt took one, and they put the other—Dad—up for adoption. A private adoption. You know Nan and Grandpa adopted Dad privately, and weren’t given any information on the birth parents. The brother, Dad’s brother, didn’t know any of this, any more than Dad knew. The brother—his name was Collin Poole—found out right before Dad died, and never had the chance to connect.”

  “What does this man want from you, Sonya?”

  “Nothing. He died last month. The lawyer came to see me because Collin Poole left me, well, pretty much everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He made me his heir—in his will. There’s a house in Maine, a small percentage of the family business that’s been around a couple hundred years. There’s everything in the house, there’s a trust to maintain the house, and financial accounts. He left you antique diamond-and-sapphire earrings.”

  “What?”

  “I think—I guess—he wanted to leave his brother’s wife something, a family heirloom. The lawyer, Mr. Doyle, and Collin Poole were friends, since they were boys. Collin never had children—his wife died—and so I’m his brother’s only child. His niece.”

  She took out the photo Oliver had shown her. “This is Mr. Doyle and Collin Poole.”

  “Oh God. God! Are you sure this is real?”

  “It’s starting to feel that way.”

  “I need to—” Winter stood up, walked to the window, to the fireplace, back again.

  “Your father had dreams sometimes. Recurring. One was he looked in the mirror, but the face looking back wasn’t quite his. And the man looking back was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear. He’d had them most of his life. A boy looking in the mirror at a boy with his face—almost his face.

  “Sometimes he’d draw the dream and show me. This is the face.”

  “A twin bond,” Cleo murmured.

  “Always the same mirror. Full-length, freestanding, ornate frame. And this face looking back at him. Not dressed like him, but always the same age.”

  Eyes damp, she looked at Sonya. “If we’d had a boy, he wanted to name our first son Collin.”

  “Do you think he knew, somehow?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what to think. I know he would’ve loved having a brother. I wish he’d had a chance to know.”

  “Do we tell Nan and Grandpa?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, they have a right to know. They loved Drew so much, and he loved them.” She sat back, closed her eyes a moment. “You say his brother died last month.”

  “Before Christmas, Mr. Doyle said. I didn’t think to ask how.”

  “And he left you a house?”

  “In Maine, on the coast near some little place. Poole’s Bay. The Pooles started a shipbuilding company, and built the house—or the original house. Mr. Doyle said they’d expanded it over the years. He called it the manor. He said there were photos. I didn’t look yet. I read the will, then I got Cleo to come here.”

  She opened the second packet. “Maybe in here, because the other one looks to have mainly legal stuff. The will, the trust, life insurance, appraisals.”

  She pulled out papers. “More of that here, too. God, it’s a lot. And here, in this folder. Whoa, wow!”

  She gaped at the photos of the house on the cliffs. The cobbled brown stone of many shades, the contrast of deep blue cladding, the twin turrets flanking either side with their conical tops, with a kind of half turret centered. Chimneys rose from the roof, which held a railed platform.

  A widow’s walk.

  The bare branches of a weeping tree seemed to shiver above a white blanket of snow.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Cleo said over Sonya’s shoulder. “Gothic spooky gorgeous. Victorian Gothic. Here’s one of the back. Has to be more modern additions, but fully in keeping with the Gothic gorgeous. The cladded bump out here, with that line of windows and the conical top to connect the look of the turrets. A deck over what looks like a flat-roofed addition. I love they mixed arched windows and tall square-edged ones. There’s nothing ordinary.

  “I’m going to have to use this someday. I just need a book to illustrate that works.”

  “Your dad drew this house.”

  “Mom?”

  “I don’t know if he painted it. I never saw it if he did. But he drew this house. Wait.”

  She stood and rushed upstairs.

  “Okay, first the face in the mirror, and now this? Sense memories, blood memory. Something.” Cleo laid a hand on Sonya’s shoulder. “I’m going to open a bottle of wine. I’ll order Chinese. I think we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  By the time Winter came back, Cleo had the wine opened, three glasses poured, and the order placed.

  “There may be more,” Winter began. “I found it in these two sketchbooks, but there may be more.”

  She laid the open sketchbooks on the table, picked up one of the glasses.

  “The first time I saw one of the sketches, I asked him where he’d seen the house. Because it’s fabulous. He told me in dreams. He dreamed of it. He dreamed of it, and he’d hear the waves crashing, feel the wind.”

  She took a long sip.

  “We laughed about it. He’d tell me he’d had the dream house dream, but this time there was a woman in a white dress on the widow’s walk, or this time there’d been a party, with women in long gowns and men in old-fashioned suits strolling around the yard. He might see a man, the man from the mirror, standing at a window looking down at him.”

  Sonya looked at the sketchbooks again, at the photos of the house.

  “How can this be?”

  Winter sat. “What do you want to do?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe Dad saw the house as a child, and it imprinted. It made an impression. But for him to dream of it, to draw it—and more than once—it meant something to him. He never had the chance to find out. I do.

  “I need a lawyer.”

  “You know my boss will help you with this.”

  “I do, and I’m going to dump this in his lap. I want to go through Dad’s sketchbooks, see if I can find more drawings of the house, and look for the sketches he made of the mirror.”

  “You’re going to Maine.” Cleo said it matter-of-factly. “Unless Winter’s very smart boss advises against it, and gives you solid reasons, you’re going. And you’ll want to,” she added, “because your dad had this visceral connection. Because that house is you, Son, right down to the ground. Last? Because you’re just going to need to know.”

  She picked up her father’s sketch pad. “I do need to know.”

  “I’m going to call Marshall.”

  “Oh, Mom, you don’t have to call the boss at home. There’s no hurry.”

  “I think you’ll sleep better tonight knowing he’s on top of this. I know I will. Go on up, both of you, see what you can find. I’ll let you know when dinner gets here.”

  Her father had converted the attic into what he affectionately called his garret. Sonya remembered climbing those steep, narrow steps, coming into the space, the light, the smell of paints and oils and solvents. She remembered how he’d looked standing at an easel—battered jeans, a sweatshirt in the winter, a T-shirt in the summer. The mop of dark blond hair shining in the light from the windows, the light shooting down from the skylights.

  And the focus in his green eyes that inevitably turned to a smile when he turned to her.

  Let’s set you up, monkey, and see what you’ve got.

  He’d never turned her away, never told her he was too busy. And he’d taught her, as patiently as he’d taught his high school students, how to use space, color, the absence of color, how to add texture and dimension, light, shadow.

  After his death—months and months after, when they could face it—she’d helped her mother store or give away his paints and tools, box up his sketchbooks.

  Some of his canvases had gone to galleries, and eventually sold. Others, unfinished, were still stacked against the wall.

  “I’ve always loved coming up here.” Cleo slid an arm around Sonya’s waist. “I never met him, but coming up here always makes me feel like I did.”

  “I know.” Sonya tipped her head toward Cleo’s. “When I look back, I think how much patience, how much simple good-heartedness he had to make time for me. Not just giving me time, but giving me his interest.

  “When I was about ten, I showed him a drawing. For a poster for a school project. After he looked at it, he looked at me. So serious. So, so serious I thought, oh, it’s a silly drawing, just dumb and silly. Then he told me to come back on Saturday. He’d get the poster board, and I could use the studio.

  “And that was the moment—when he looked at me, when he said that to me—I knew I was going to be an artist. Not just play at it, or have a little fun. He changed my life that day.”

  Shaking her head, she brushed a hand over the easel that still stood under the skylight.

  “He didn’t have enough time. His art was just starting to move, but he didn’t have enough time.”

  She moved over to one of the storage boxes that held his sketch pads. “Mom and I didn’t go through all of these. Later, we talked about doing that but never did. What would we do with them? We’d never throw them out. We wouldn’t sell them even if we could. She’s never used this space, not even for storage.”

  “Some loves are forever.”

  They sat on the floor, each with a pile of sketchbooks. As she paged through, Sonya understood the full meaning of poignant. It hurt, and it warmed, it brushed the dust off old sorrows even as it lifted new joy.

  “He was so good. Look, it’s Mom holding me when I was a baby. Both of us curled up sleeping.”

  “Here’s another one of you—what were you, about six or seven?—having a tea party in your room. Wearing a tiara! I need a tiara.”

  She set the book aside, picked another.

  “Oh! Sonya! Look.”

  A dream sketch, Sonya thought. Not the manor. The mirror.

  Her father, in those battered jeans, a paint-splattered sweatshirt. He held a paintbrush in one hand, his palette in the other.

  In the glass, the reflection—the man, the brother—stood in rough boots, a plaid shirt loose over a tee. He, too, held a brush and palette.

  Her father wore his hair back in a stub of a tail, as he did when he’d gone too long without a trim. Collin, for surely it was, wore his above the collar of the shirt.

  Animals snarled and flew on the thick frame of the cheval glass. Wolves, fangs sharp; a hawk, wings spread, talons curled; a buck, with antlers tipped like razors; a coiled cobra; a two-headed dragon; a bear rearing up on its back legs; a cougar on the spring.

  “He saw this, Sonya. It’s so detailed. And, Jesus, that mirror is creepy. There’s more in here. The same mirror, but they’re wearing different clothes—and … different ages. Some younger, some older.”