Behind them the front door opened.
"Mama."
Lila was standing in the doorway in her socks. She had been crying, or was about to; her chin was doing the thing. She was looking past Nora at Tom.
"Lila, honey, go back inside, please."
"I want to see him."
"Lila—"
"I want to see him," Lila said, louder, and her voice went up and cracked, "I want to SEE him, you never let me see ANYBODY," and she pushed past Nora's legs onto the cold porch in her socks and stopped two feet from Tom and stared up at him with her fists clenched at her sides.
Tom didn't move. He didn't crouch. He stood exactly where he was and let himself be looked at.
"Are you Papa?" Lila said.
The street was very quiet. Somewhere down the hill a leaf blower started and stopped.
"No," Tom said. "I'm not. I'm sorry, Lila. I'm his brother."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I'm sure."
"How do you know?"
He seemed to really think about it. "Because I remember being me," he said finally. "My whole life. I remember being a little kid and being me, and your papa was always the other one. He was always right next to me. But he was the other one."
Lila's face crumpled and then, with enormous effort, uncrumpled. "Did he ever pretend to be you?"
Something happened at the corner of Tom's mouth. "Once," he said. "In third grade. We switched shirts and switched desks to fool our teacher."
"Did it work?"