It was a quiet morning patrol in Portland, the kind with no sirens and no adrenaline, just the rhythm of boots on sidewalk and polite nods from people walking dogs behind white fences. I was halfway through my usual route when a small hand tapped my leg, gentle but certain, and I looked down to see a little boy no older than four staring at my forearm like it held the answer to a question he’d been carrying for too long. He pointed at the Celtic knot tattoo on my skin and said, very softly, that his dad had the same one. My chest tightened because that design wasn’t random to me, it was personal, and I’d only ever known one other person who wore it the way I did. My twin brother Ryan, the brother I hadn’t spoken to in six years, suddenly felt close enough to touch and impossibly far at the same time.
I knelt to the boy’s height and asked his name, and he told me Mason, then pointed toward a pale brick building I recognized immediately, the county children’s residence. Something in my stomach dropped. A child under state care, a tattoo that matched my brother’s, and a four year old describing a man who sounded like Ryan, tall, brown hair, green eyes, then adding that his dad got strange, that he forgot things, that his mom cried a lot. Before I could steady my thoughts, a woman hurried over and took Mason’s hand with the practiced urgency of someone responsible for children who wander. Mason tugged her sleeve and proudly repeated what he’d said to me, and when her eyes fell on my tattoo, all the color drained from her face so fast it was like watching a curtain drop. She tried to leave, but I asked carefully if we could talk, because I thought I might be able to help, and when she demanded a name, my voice came out rougher than I wanted as I said it, Ryan Reed.
Inside her office, with Mason guided into the playroom, the truth arrived in pieces that still felt like blows. Mason had been with them for two years, found alone near a transit station repeating one name, and the woman confirmed it was Ryan. His mother had appeared days later, exhausted and pregnant again, asking for time, calling once a month from different numbers, always checking if Mason was eating and growing, never saying where she was. Then she slid a folder toward me and explained what she knew about Ryan, that an accident had changed him, that confusion and memory problems had swallowed the man he used to be, that sometimes he didn’t recognize people. Regret hit me so hard I could barely breathe, because six years of silence suddenly looked less like pride and more like abandonment I had chosen. She showed me a worn photo of Ryan looking thinner beside a young woman and a baby, and my hands shook as the words formed in my mind with brutal clarity, that boy is my nephew and I didn’t even know he existed.
