Not in a friend way. Their fingers were laced. His thumb was on her knuckle, the same way he holds my hand in church. I had walked through that room a hundred times last November and never noticed.

And the worst part, honestly, the part I keep coming back to, is that I was the one who took the picture. I remember saying “smile, you two.” I remember it. I made them pose.

I sat at the kitchen table for I don’t know how long. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. The school called at one point because Hannah needed to be picked up early. I told them I was on my way. I didn’t move for another twenty minutes.

I kept doing the math in my head. Rebecca was forty-six. So was I. She was born at the same hospital the same year. Which meant David, when he was a teenager, had a daughter. And he knew. He had to have known.

You don’t bring an “old family friend” to your wife’s Thanksgiving by accident.

And Rebecca knew too. She sat at my table. She ate my food. She watched my daughter push peas around a plate, my daughter, who is also her sister.

The thing is, her daughter is nine. Ours is eight. That means when Hannah got diagnosed, somewhere in this same hospital there was already another little girl with the same chart. And nobody put it together because Rebecca’s last name is the same as ours. Which means at some point David gave it to her. On a form, on a record, somewhere. He helped her. I don’t know how, and right now I don’t want to.

I picked Hannah up from school. I told her my eyes were red because I had a headache. She believed me because she’s eight and she still believes me.

I haven’t told David yet. He’s going to come home tonight and ask what’s for dinner, and I am going to look at him, and I don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.

I don’t know what to do about the transplant either. Rebecca is a match for her own daughter. She isn’t on Hannah’s list. The hospital isn’t going to call her and ask. And I can’t be the one who asks. I can’t sit across from this woman and beg her for a kidney for the sister she already knew about.

But Hannah is eight. Hannah is on month eleven. Hannah doesn’t care whose hand was in whose at Thanksgiving.

I keep looking at the photo. I have it on the kitchen table still. I should put it away before David gets home.

I’m not going to.

I want him to walk in and see it sitting there, right next to his car keys, right where he always drops them. I want to watch his face when he realizes which envelope I opened.

That’s the only part of today I get to choose.