I Carried a Baby for My Twin Brother. When He Saw His Newborn Daughter, He Said He Could Not Take Her Home

Outside, Phoenix was cooling into a clear evening.

Mason climbed into the back seat and asked whether we could come back tomorrow.

I told him we’d see.

We drove past familiar streets, the grocery store where Lucas and I used to buy candy with allowance money, the little park where our mother taught us to ride bicycles, the turnoff to the hospital where Hope had arrived.

I remembered the delivery room lights and Lucas’s pale face.

I remembered the sentence that had stopped time: I cannot take her home.