In my latest made-to-order story, I explore a reunion between a husband and wife who were separated by lies and malice many years earlier. There’s a mystery about the whole thing, and hence the headline for this post. The following scene features the brother and sister who are meeting for the first time.

“Hello,” he called, as he approached.

“Hello,” she responded. He was somewhere near her own age. Or, at least, he was as tall as Lillian. Slender and with dark hair and eyes, he reminded her of someone, though she could not think who. Could he be the company she longed for, perhaps? She held out her hand. “I am Lillian,” she said.

He took her hand and bowed over it. “Thomas,” he introduced himself. “I live over there.” He pointed to a house, or more of a large cottage, beyond the field.

Lillian pointed to the door into her aunt’s garden. “I am staying with my aunt,” she explained. “Am I trespassing, Thomas?”

He waved his arms in an expansive gesture. “I invite you to visit any time you like,” he said. “Have you met Belinda?”

“The horse?” Lillian realised. “She is sweet, is she not? Is she yours?”

“Yes, or my mother’s rather. We have owned her since before I was born. Come on.” He led the way to the horse, who lifted her head to sniff at his pockets.

The pockets proved to contain apples, and Thomas gave one of them to Lillian to feed ot the horse. Belinda accepted the offering with gentle lips and tolerantly carried them in turn around the field, one riding, the other walking. They picked wildflowers and Lillian made them into necklaces and crowns. They hunted for berries in the tangle by the brook.

Thomas suggested that another day, they could fish. He swore the brook had trout, but all Lillian saw were a few darting minnows.

And all the time, they talked, sharing stories, ideas, and opinions. Lillian had never made a friend so easily. Something about Thomas felt familiar, as if she had known him all her life.

But she could not have met him before. He had been coming to this town since he was a babe in arms, he and his mother. He brushed off questions about his father by saying, “We lost him before I was born.”

It wasn’t until later that afternoon, as she sat at the modiste’s watching Aunt Alice be fitted for yet another gown, that Lillian had time to explore the idea hovering at the edges of her mind. It was ridiculous, of course. Surely such a coincidence only happened in stories. But it could be true. Thomas had something of the look of her father, even more if she considered the portrait in the long gallery of Father as a boy. He was also the right age, for she had asked him. He had just turned thirteen, he had told Lillian, and Lillian celebrated her fourteenth birthday six weeks ago.

Two years ago, Lillian had demanded that her father tell her the truth of the scandalous rumours she’d been overhearing for as long as she remembered. She had a living mother, and possibly a living brother or sister. Her mother had been with child when she disappeared shortly after Lillian’s first birthday.