…my husband, Paul. Forty years younger, with a beard and a leather jacket I had never seen him wear.
I waited until my granddaughter was asleep. Then I played the documentary for Paul. He watched it all the way through without saying a word. Then he took my hand.
“That’s not you,” he said. “That’s Diane.”
Diane was my older sister. We looked so alike as girls that teachers mixed us up, and we both had our mother’s birthmark. When I was twenty-two, Diane told our family she was moving to Australia. We got a few letters. Then nothing. Our parents died believing she’d simply forgotten us.
Diane hadn’t gone to Australia. She’d fallen in with a gang that robbed banks in the Midwest. She had used my name and my ID, which she’d taken from my purse, to rent their getaway cars.
And Paul? In 1987, Paul was a young undercover FBI agent. He had infiltrated the gang. He met Diane, saw how frightened she was, and convinced her to become a witness. She testified in secret. The gang went to prison. Diane went into witness protection, under a new name, in another state.
“I met you a year later,” Paul said, “because I wanted to make sure Diane’s family was safe. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her little sister.”
The necklace in the photo was a small silver locket. He had given one to Diane the day she agreed to testify, for courage. He gave me the same one on our first anniversary. He said it was a family tradition. I’d never understood which family.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked.
“Because the program said I couldn’t. Not even you. If anyone in that gang found out where she was, she’d be killed.”
The last member of the gang died in prison two years ago. That’s why the documentary had been made. Paul called his old supervisor the next morning. The supervisor called Diane.
She arrived at our house a month later. She was seventy, grey-haired, with my face. She was still wearing the locket. We sat on the porch until the sun came up. My granddaughter came out in her pajamas, looked at the two of us and said, “Grandma, are there two of you?” Diane laughed and said, “Not anymore. Now there’s just us.”
