The ancestry test was supposed to be fun—a birthday present to myself. I’d seen the commercials where people discover they’re 15% Irish or have royal blood. What I got instead was a brother and a past I couldn’t remember.
Daniel’s message popped up first: “Hey little brother!” My stomach dropped. Brother? I was an only child. My parents—the people who’d raised me—had never mentioned siblings. When I showed my dad the results, his face went white. He claimed Daniel was from an affair, begged me not to tell Mom. But his nervous glances made me suspicious.
Meeting Daniel felt surreal. He knew details about “our” childhood—a lakeside house, a dog named Scruffy, even how I’d saved him during a fire. None of it sounded familiar. “Our parents died in that fire,” he said gently. “You were adopted by the building owners.”
That night, I combed through my dad’s files and found the truth. Legal documents described a deadly fire caused by faulty wiring—wiring my adoptive parents had ignored to save money. They’d taken me in not out of love, but guilt. The perfect childhood they’d given me was built on tragedy.
Now I live with Daniel, piecing together our shared past from his memories since mine are gone. Some days I’m furious at the people who raised me; other days I’m just sad. But every day I’m grateful for this unexpected gift—a brother who remembers me when I couldn’t remember myself.
