“I’ve been looking for my biological family my entire life,” his message read. “I was adopted in June of 1981. I was born at Mercy Hospital in Toledo. I don’t know anything about my birth parents.”

My chest felt cold. I was born on June 14, 1981, at Mercy Hospital. Same city. Same hospital. Same day.

I drove over to my parents’ house the next morning. I did not call ahead. I walked in through the back door, finding my mother folding laundry in the living room and my father reading the local paper.

I set my phone on the wooden table, showing them the message from Thomas. I pointed to his picture, which looked so much like mine it felt like looking into a slightly warped mirror.

My mother dropped the basket she was holding. A pair of my father’s work socks tumbled onto the carpet. She did not say a word to me. She did not even look at my father. She just turned around, walked down the hallway, and locked her bedroom door.

A second later, I heard the sound of her crying. It was a heavy, muffled sound that seemed to come from deep inside her chest.

My father did not go after her. He just stared at the wall for a long moment, then reached into the cabinet for a bottle of whiskey he only kept for holidays. He poured a glass, sat down, and told me the truth about what happened in the summer of 1981.

“We were twenty two years old, Mark,” my father said, his voice barely a whisper. “I had just been laid off from the plant, and we were living in a trailer on the edge of town.

We didn’t have fifty dollars to our name when your mother went into labor.”

He took a long sip of his drink. The ice rattled against the glass.

“The delivery was hard,” he continued. “Your mother was heavily medicated, and I was sitting in the waiting room terrified. The doctor, Dr. Aris, came out and told me there was a complication. He said we had twin boys, but the second baby had a severe congenital defect.”

My father looked down at his hands, his knuckles white.

“The doctor told me the second baby wouldn’t survive the month. He said the medical bills to keep him comfortable would be thousands of dollars, and that the state would take our trailer if we couldn’t pay. He said he could handle it for us. He said there was a private state ward that took in babies like him, but we had to sign the relinquishment papers immediately so they could transfer him.”