The photograph from the pumpkin patch hangs in my kitchen now, beside one taken years later.

In the new picture Wyatt and Austin stand on either side of me, both laughing because Peter had made some dreadful joke just as Elaine pressed the shutter.

Sometimes visitors ask whether the boys are twins.

I tell them they were born on the same night, seven minutes apart.

If they ask why the boys have different surnames, I say our family has a long story, and I leave it there unless the boys want more said.

There are days I still think about the woman I was at eighteen, lying in a hospital bed and believing she had failed a child she never had a chance to raise.