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where the salt air breezes held no memories.
    He remembered Daniel shouting for him to come upstairs, remembered the confused expression on his twin’s face as he’d sifted through the stack of photographs. When Patrick had climbed the ladder into the attic, Daniel looked stunned. Silently, he held out the pictures, his hand trembling.
    “Look at them,” he commanded, when Patrick’s gaze stayed on him rather than the photos.
    “Looks like some old pictures,” Patrick had said, barely sparing them a glance, far more concerned about his brother’s odd expression.
    “ Look at them,” his brother had repeated impatiently.
    The sense of urgency had finally gotten through toPatrick, and he’d studied the first picture. It was of a toddler with coal-black hair and a happy smile racing toward the camera at full throttle. He was a blur of motion. Patrick had blinked at the image, thoroughly confused about what Daniel had seen that had him so obviously upset. “What? Do you think it’s Dad?”
    Daniel shook his head. “Look again. That’s Dad in the background.”
    “Okay,” Patrick said slowly, still not sure what Daniel was getting at. “Then it has to be one of us.”
    “I don’t think so. Look at the rest of the pictures.”
    Slowly, Patrick had worked his way through the photos, several dozen in all, apparently spanning a period of years. His mom was in some of them, his father in more. But there were happy, smiling boys in each one. That first toddler, then another who was his spitting image, then three, and finally five, two of them babies, evidently twins.
    Patrick’s hand shook as he studied the last set of pictures. Finally, almost as distressed and definitely as confused as Daniel, he dragged his gaze away and stared at his brother. “My God, what do you think it means? Those babies, do you think that’s you and me?”
    “Who else could it be?” Daniel had asked. “There are no other twins on either side of the family, at least none that we know of. Come to think of it, though, what do we really know about our family? Have you ever heard one word about our grandparents, about any aunts or uncles?”
    “No.”
    “That should have told us something. It’s as if we’re some insular little group that sprang on the world with absolutely no connections to anyone else on earth.”
    “Don’t you think you’re being overly dramatic?” Patrick asked.
    “Look at the damn pictures and tell me again that I’m being too dramatic,” Daniel shouted back at him.
    Patrick’s gaze had automatically gone to the top photo, the one of five little dark-haired boys. “Who do you suppose they are?”
    “I don’t even want to think about it,” Daniel said, clearly shaken to his core by the implications.
    “We have to ask Mom and Dad. You know that,” Patrick told him, feeling sick. “We can’t leave it alone.”
    “Why not? Obviously, it’s something they don’t want to talk about,” Daniel argued, far too eager to stick his head right back in the sand.
    It had always been that way. Patrick liked to confront things, to lay all the cards on the table, no matter what the consequences. Daniel liked peace at any cost. He’d been the perfect team captain on their high school football squad, because he had no ego, because he could smooth over the competitive streaks and keep the team functioning as a unit.
    “It doesn’t matter what they want,” Patrick had all but shouted, as angered now as Daniel had been a moment earlier. “If those boys are related to us, if they’re our brothers, we have a right to know. We need to know what happened to them. Did they die? Why haven’t we ever heard about them? Kids don’t just vanish into thin air.”
    “Maybe they’re cousins or something,” Daniel said, seeking a less volatile explanation. It was as if he couldn’t bear to even consider the hard questions, much less the answers.
    “Then why haven’t we seen them in years?” Patrickwasn’t about to