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And how did no one notice how similar the pair looked when standing next to one another?
“Did you know, Ava,” Sheila’s voice broke through my reverie. She’d cleared her plate and had another glass of her expensive merlot poured for her as she gazed at me, “that twins run in the McDonough family?”
That explained Seamus and Kiernan.
She waved her hand dismissively before answering her own question. “Of course not,” she chuckled mirthlessly. “Your mother never told you anything about your family, did she?”
“I’m starting to see why,” I muttered.
“Your grandfather…” She paused for a moment, her eyes flitting up to the ceilings as she rethought what she was about to say. “The man you believe to be your grandfather, Seamus, was a twin as well. In fact, you were the first child born to the McDonough clan in over a hundred years who wasn’t a twin.”
My eyes darted up to Remus.
I hadn’t missed the truth bomb Sheila had dropped. It was nuclear. Seamus McDonough hadn’t been my grandfather. He hadn’t been mother’s father.
Not her biological one, at least.
One thing didn’t fit, however.
“There was no record of Seamus McDonough ever having a twin,” I reminded them. No hospital records. No pictures. Nothing. It wasn’t that I doubted the sincerity of Sheila’s words. It was clear as day that the man who sat before me was Seamus’s twin. A doppelgänger, even the best one, wouldn’t have been able to fool my father. Plus, doppelgängers were similar but rarely, if ever, exact carbon copies.
Remus sneered at my words and pushed his unfinished plate away. “Of course not.” He wiped his mouth with the linen napkin. “They fixed everything so we didn’t exist. If we did, it meant a power struggle between two heirs, and they couldn’t have that. Not again.”
Huh?
The confusion must have shown on my face. “The McDonoughs have a dark, dirty secret,” Sheila sneered. “For a little over a hundred years, they killed the second-born twin of every McDonough leader.”
Even Oppenheimer couldn’t have constructed a bigger bomb than the one Sheila just unleashed on me.
“As time grew, however, they realized that those forgotten twins could be utilized in different manners. Just like my poor Marianne.” Sympathy played gracefully across Sheila’s face. It was fake, though. The words didn’t match the expression appropriately. It didn’t reflect in her eyes or in her posture. Unfortunately, Marianne was eating it up like a starving child.
“My mother wasn’t a twin.”
Someone would have known this fact. Someone would have told me if my mother had a twin running around in the world.
“Not in the traditional sense, no,” Sheila explained. “Marianne and your mother were fraternal twins. Up until they were born, there had only ever been identical twins born.”
“If they weren’t identical,” I asked. “Why give Marianne up? Just because she was second-born?”
This family was growing more messed up by the second.
“I never gave my child away!” Sheila screamed, her face contorting in anger, hand clenched tightly around her wineglass. Remus leaned in and patted her on her arm, calming her with a few whispered words. Once she was settled, she continued. “Your great-grandmother came to me that day with Seamus and took her from my arms. I begged. Pleaded. But they said it had to be this way. That twins, identical or not, would never be allowed to grow together. They. Stole. Her. From. Me.”
“You see, the McDonoughs have a rule about succession,” Remus interjected, allowing Sheila to pull herself together. “There can’t be any contestation for the throne.”
“That makes no sense.” I shook my head. “One twin would always be older, even if only by a few minutes. That makes them the firstborn and secure in their right to inherit.”
Remus smiled sadly, and for a moment, he was almost human to me. His green eyes were burdened with sorrow and rejection. I could only imagine how it must have felt to be the forgotten brother. The unloved brother. The brother who was cast out and tossed aside.
“I can see you haven’t done much research into your heritage.” He shook his head in disappointment. “The McDonough roots can be traced back as far as the fifth century. They were one of the most powerful clans in Ireland and shaped a lot of how the country developed over time. The first set of twins to be recorded was in 1458, and for a hundred years, there never appeared to be a problem.”
“Until you looked beneath the surface,” Marianne spat bitterly from her seat.
“Yes,” Remus nodded in agreement. “Viability of both fetuses back then was slim. Usually only one survived childbirth. In the rare cases, when both twins survived, there never seemed to be any issues in succession of clan power, until you discover that at least one twin died under mysterious circumstances 90 percent of the time.”
“Most circumstances appeared to be accidental,” Marianne chimed in. “Other times, they were murdered by a rival clan or in a dark alley somewhere.”
“Always the second-born?” I was curious and unable to stop myself from wanting to learn more.
