Promises Are Made To Keep (On Hold)

Promise to Try To Understand

I dropped the picture. I can't believe this. This can't be true. This is not happening. I'm dreaming.

"Jamie, what's wrong?" Nathan asked getting worried, "Is something wrong?"

I looked up at him. Nathan is my brother. I had a twin brother my whole life and never even knew it. More importantly, I had a dead father for the past eleven years and didn't even know it. What the hell was my mom thinking?

Then the most painful thought came to my head. Was my mom really even my mom? My eyes began to water. I tried to hold them back but I couldn't.

I ran to my room and started searching. I went through every single drawer until I found it. The one thing that would confirm that this is true. I heard Nathan come into my room but I didn't stop searching the photo album. "Are you okay?" He asked, "What are you looking for?"

"This." I said when I found it. He took the picture from my hands and looked at it. The expression on his face said everything. He couldn't believe it either.

In Nathan's left hand is the picture his dad gave him. In his right hand is the picture that was in my photo album. What's so exciting about those pictures? You might ask. Well, both of them are of me.

I stood up and took both pictures out of Nathan's hands. Then I went downstairs. I found Aunt Elizabeth in the kitchen holding Elliot while stirring something in a pot on the stove.

"Aunt Elizabeth?"

She jumped and dropped the spoon on the floor. Something that looked like tomato sauce splattered on the floor.

"Jamie," she said, "don't sneak up on me like that. I could have dropped Elliot."

I didn't apologize. I was too upset to say sorry to something that didn't happen. I set the pictures down on the counter. "Can you explain this to me?"

She picked the spoon up off the floor then came over and looked at the pictures. She furrowed her eyebrows. "They're baby pictures of you." She said, "Why?"

"They're not just pictures of me. This one," I pointed to Nathan's picture, "Nathan got from his dad. And this one," I pointed to mine, "was in my photo album."

Aunt Elizabeth's face had no signs of surprise on it. I cant believe this. "You knew?" It was more of a statement than a question.

She looked up at me and didn't say anything. I shook my head. This is unbelievable.

I didn't know that Nathan followed me until he spoke. "You knew this whole time, didn't you?" Still she didn't answer. "You knew ever since she was pregnant with us."

"Why didn't you tell us?" I asked.

She sighed, "I'm sorry but-"

I cut her off. "Sorry doesn't solve this. You should have told us a long time ago."

"It wasn't my business to tell." She said raising her voice. She's not the one who's supposed to be upset.

"But Mom and Dad died, so who was supposed to tell us?" I said, "We deserved to know that we are twins. He deserved to know who his Mom was. I deserved to know that my Dad wasn't really my Dad. And Jake," I thought about him, "He's only my half brother."

"I'm so sorry, Jamie, but I couldn't tell you. I promised your mother I wouldn't." Aunt Elizabeth said, "And when she died, I couldn't bring myself to break my promise to her."

I was about so say something but stopped when I saw her crying. I realized that Jake and I weren't the only ones hurting because of Mom's death. Aunt Elizabeth lost her last sister when I lost my Mom.