He slid the last foot across the floor and wrapped his arms around her, careful and fierce, burying his face in her shoulder. She was smaller than he remembered, and warm, and real.
Janice made a little hiccuping cry and clutched his sweater with both hands, patting his back the way she had when they were babies in the same crib.
Behind them, Lisa sank to the floor against the wall and covered her face, sobbing openly, while her mother and father held each other and watched the twins breathe together for the first time in eight years.
Jeremy pulled back just enough to look at her. He touched her cheek, her hair, her scar, like he had to prove she was there.
“I didn’t leave you,” he whispered to her, the words pouring out now, eight years of words all at once, raw and urgent. “I tried to pull you out. I tried. I never stopped looking at that lake. I never stopped—”
Janice reached up with a clumsy hand and pressed her palm over his mouth, gently, the way she used to when they shared their silent language. Then she moved her hand to his chest, over his heart, and left it there.
She looked at him and, with enormous effort, said clearly, “Stay.”
Jeremy nodded, tears running into his mouth, and put his hand over hers, holding it against his heart.
“Stay,” he repeated, and smiled for the first time since he was five.
The nurse quietly dimmed the hall light and pulled the door almost closed, leaving the family in the soft lamp glow.
Outside the window, the night was cold and still. Inside, the table was covered in crayon drawings of two stick figures holding hands, and the twins sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder, drawing one more together, while their mother and grandparents watched, finally, finally home.
