I was forty minutes deep in the DMV line when the woman in front of me turned around, and I forgot how to breathe.

It wasn’t a “she looks like me” thing. I want to be clear about that.

People say that all the time and they mean you’ve got the same haircut or the same nose. This was not that. This was my face. On someone else. Standing two feet away holding a renewal form just like I was.

She saw me staring and she did the nervous thing people do. Little laugh. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You look exactly like me.” Her voice even cracked the same way mine does when I’m embarrassed. I just said, “I know.” Because what else was there.

Let me back up a second, because I need you to get who I was that morning. Boring. That’s who. I’m Carol. I’m thirty-eight. I work part time doing the books for a heating and cooling company. I knew I was adopted my whole life, my mom never hid it, she told me I came home at three days old and that I was the best decision she ever made. I never dug into it. Honestly I never wanted to. My mom is my mom. End of story, I figured.

The one weird thing in my life, and I swear this is true, is that for about nine years I went to the same hairdresser, Diane, over on Bragg Boulevard. And every single time, somebody in that salon would say it. “You two could be sisters.” Diane would roll her eyes and say, “Everybody’s got a twin somewhere.” We’d laugh. I never thought about it again until that DMV line. Hold onto that. I didn’t know yet why it mattered.

So there we are. Two grown women blocking the line, just looking at each other. Same height. Same build. She had a mole under her left eye. I have a mole under my left eye. I looked down at her hands without even thinking and her pinky was crooked, bent in at the top exact same as mine. My grandma used to call mine my “hitchhiker finger.” I felt my whole arm go cold.

“What’s your birthday,” I said. I didn’t even say it nice. It just came out flat.

She blinked. “October fourth.”

“What year.”