"A Greek man. Cold eyes. Younger than the work he was doing. He paid me. He paid the doctor who signed the papers. He paid the orderly who walked you out the back door of St. Catherine's. He paid for everything. And he made me make the paperwork right before sunrise."
"His name."
She holds my gaze. The kind of long second a woman holds it when she has spent her entire adult life not saying a thing and is about to say it.
"Kostas Stavros."
The name lands.
I have heard the surname this week, on the wrist of a man I killed in a warehouse.
I do not need to hear it twice.
"Your parents," she says. "I do not know much. I know they were Italian. The woman who carried you was beautiful and frightened. The man whose name was on the chart in the delivery room was not the same man who came to take you. I did not ask questions. The Greek paid enough that I did not."
"You feel guilty?"
"Every day. I'm not telling you this because I'm sorry. I'm telling you because I'll be dead by sunrise. And I have one piece of information that belongs to you, not the Greek. If I die without giving it to you, the Greek wins forever."
"What information?"
She opens the drawer of her bedside table. Her hand is shaking. She takes out a small key on a thin chain.
I take it. It is small. Brass. Warm.
"Safety deposit box. Eighty-three. The Apple Bank on Fordham Road. I put it there the night Frank Donovan died. I was scared the Greek would come for me. I did not want him to find what I had kept."
"What's in it?"
"The application your mother filled out the night you were born. By hand. In the delivery room. She wrote your name in her own hand."
"And the Greek?"
"Made me file a second application with different information. I filed the second. I kept the first."
"Why?"
"Because there were two of you."
I do not move.
"Twin boys. Fraternal. Different faces, same hour. Your brother lived. The Greek did not want him. He wanted you. The doctor signed a death certificate that said you died of heart complications in the night. The Greek paid the doctor, and thedoctor paid me and the orderly and the night clerk, and we all made it true on paper."
She opens her eyes.
"I watched your mother grieve you the next morning. I held her hand while she cried. I have not slept a whole night since."
I cannot speak.
"Your real names were on the application. Both of them. I have made myself forget them. They are in the box. Whatever was true the night you were born is in the box. Go in the morning. They open at 9. Tell them my name. Corporate is expecting you."
"My brother."
"Lived."
"Where?"
"I do not know. I never went looking. The not-looking was the price."
