Karen thought of Tom now the way she had once thought of her husband, with blind endearment. The two men were so similar, it was impossible to delude herself into thinking her life would be much different if she were to swap one for the other; still, sometimes she thought about DNA and wondered—if she had met Tom first, if they had fallen in love and gotten married, if they had conceived at the exact same time, would they have had the same children?

Karen had not expected these particular girls to come out of her. They were far more silent than she had anticipated. They contented themselves by lying in piles throughout the house and whispering to each other. Even as babies they’d been that way. Karen remembered taking them to the playground shortly after they’d learned to walk. She’d expected them to run around wildly, to chase after them, but they stood sucking the collars of their tiny coats, watching the other children with big eyes. Karen picked up a large stick and ran it along the metal fence that encased the playground, making loud clanging sounds. She shouted, she climbed the jungle gym, sat down atop the metal slide and banged her boots against it, the noise ringing out across the park, making the other mothers turn and stare. She grinned, to show the girls it was okay. They stood below her, looking up in fear, clinging to each other.

She’d taken the girls to doctors, but instead of agreeing with her that there could be something wrong, the doctors had smiled, delighted that they could drink water from heavy glass tumblers without spilling, that they could write their names already at the age of three, that when prompted delicately, they could utter eloquent full-sentence responses to a few basic questions—albeit their voices were so quiet the doctors had to lean down and sit very still in order to hear.

My first thought was Isn’t this a little obvious? A woman considers swapping out her husband? Couldn’t she come up with anything else?

Tom and Ralph sat next to each other on the couch and Karen, in an armchair across the coffee table, studied the brothers as they spoke. Ralph shaved his beard occasionally; his chin and cheeks were still visible below the scruff. Tom’s beard was neat and trimmed, but also thick, he hadn’t shaved for years. Their voices were a little different; Ralph’s a little lower and scratchier, perhaps affected or from smoking. There was a slight difference in their height, though you couldn’t tell when they were sitting down. Her own twins were also slightly distinctive in stature. The doctor had told her it was because they’d shared a placenta, and the nutrients had gone to one before the other.