Dad had one rule about our past: what mattered was that we had each other now. For years, we accepted that answer. Then he called all five of us home and finally explained why he had never wanted us asking questions.
Twenty years ago, a single man adopted all five of us so we wouldn't be split up.
Now he had called every one of us home and said, "It's time. I can't keep this from you any longer."
By Saturday morning, all five of us were in my older brother Dorian's car, driving back to the house where we'd grown up.
"I'm telling you, he's sick," my younger sister Maris finally said.
"He sounded fine," I said.
"People can sound fine."
Dorian tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
Our other brother, Soren, stared out the window.
The youngest, Elowen, had been unusually quiet since we picked her up.
Dad's birthday was that day. Normally, we'd have descended on his house with spouses, kids, food, balloons, and far too many gifts he claimed he didn't need.
Instead, he'd called each of us separately.
He called me Monday night.
"Don't bring presents. Don't bring the kids this time. I need all five of you here, and I need you on your own."
I'd laughed nervously.
"Dad, that sounds ominous."
He had gone quiet.
"There's something I have to tell you. All of you. I don't want to, but it's time."
I called Dorian immediately afterward.
He'd gotten the exact same call.
Word for word.
That was why, instead of bringing my twins to celebrate Grandpa's birthday, I was sitting in Dorian's car with the four people who had survived the worst day of my childhood with me.
We'd lost both our parents in one go.
Five kids. Three girls, two boys. I was the middle one.
I remembered fragments from those weeks afterward. Adults talking in hallways. Women crouching in front of us and asking questions in voices that were too gentle. Relatives who loved us but couldn't take all five.
Everybody who came to look at us wanted one.
Maybe two.
Nobody wanted five, and nobody could bring themselves to split us up either, so we sat there.
Dad wasn't married. He was in his 30s, had a job, a three-bedroom house, and absolutely no sensible reason to take five grieving children.
He did it anyway.
I don't remember deciding to call him Dad.
None of us do.
It simply happened because that's how he behaved from day one.
He learned to braid hair from online tutorials.
Badly, at first. Elowen once went to a recital with one side of her hair pulled so tight her eyebrow looked higher than the other, and the opposite side unraveling before we reached the parking lot.
Dad was more upset than she was.
He never missed a game. Not one, through all the years Dorian and Soren played.
He never raised his voice at us.
More importantly, he never made us feel like we'd been taken in.
That was the whole arrangement.
But there was one thing none of us ever asked.
Why?
Why did a single man in his 30s take five grieving children?
Why had he never married?
Why had he barely dated?
Had there ever been somebody before us?
The couple of times it came up, he laughed it off.
"Doesn't matter. What matters is we've got each other. I love you lot."
When we were children, we accepted that.
As teenagers, we didn't want the sentimental conversation.
As adults, asking suddenly felt too personal.
Until Dad forced the question himself.
When we reached the house, he opened the door before Dorian could knock.
He looked exactly like himself.
Gray had spread farther through his hair, but he wasn't pale or frail. He wasn't wearing the expression of someone about to tell his children he was dying.
Elowen threw her arms around him.
Dad blinked.
"Good morning to you too."
"I thought you were dying."
"I'm not dying."
All five of us spoke at once.
"I probably could've handled the phone call better."
"You think?" Soren said.
Dad smiled, but it vanished quickly.
Inside, there were no birthday decorations. He'd made coffee and put out pastries, though nobody seemed interested.
We gathered around the old dining table.
I had done homework there.
Dorian had filled out college applications there. Elowen had once carved her initial under one corner and blamed Soren for six months.
Dad remained standing.
"I've tried to work out how to tell you this," he said. "There isn't a good way."
Maris leaned forward.
"Then just tell us."
He left the room.
When he came back, he carried a large brown envelope.
He pulled out a photograph and placed it in the middle of the table.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
I recognized my mother first.
She looked young, maybe in her mid-20s, with her head tipped back as she laughed.
My biological father stood beside her.
And on his other side was Dad.
Twenty-something Dad.
His arm was around my father's shoulders.
I looked up.
"What is this?"
Elowen picked up the photograph with both hands.
Dad sat down.
"Yes."
"How?" Dorian asked.
"Your father and I worked together."
My stomach clenched.
"Before we were born?"
"Before any of you were born."
Nobody moved.
Soren looked from the picture to Dad.
"How well did you know them?"
"Very well."
Maris's eyes narrowed.
"No."
Dad answered so quickly that despite everything, Dorian gave a short laugh.
"No," Dad repeated. "Nothing like that. Your mother loved your father. I loved them both."
The room went quiet again.
I kept staring at the photograph.
For 20 years, I'd pictured Dad entering our lives as a stranger.
That was part of our family's mythology.
Five unwanted children.
One man who'd never met us.
One impossible decision.
Suddenly, part of that story wasn't true.
"Why didn't you tell us?" I asked.
Dad rubbed his thumb along the edge of the envelope.
"Because explaining how I knew them meant explaining why I came."
Something about the way he said it frightened me more than his phone call had.
He took another photograph out.
This one showed the three of them sitting on the floor in what looked like an almost empty apartment.
Dad began talking.
He'd lost both his parents within a relatively short period when he was in his 20s.
Afterward, he'd fallen apart quietly.
He still went to work, paid his bills, answered questions with "fine."
Then he went home and shut everyone out.
My father noticed.
At first, he'd simply invited Dad to dinner.
Dad declined.
He declined again.
On the third attempt, Mom apparently walked into Dad's workplace near closing time and announced that dinner was already cooked, she'd made too much, and refusing would be rude.
"I went," Dad said. "Mostly because I was scared of your mother."
Dorian smiled faintly.
"That sounds like her."
He remembered more of them than the rest of us did.
Dad smiled too.
After that, our parents kept pulling him into their lives.
Dinner became holidays.
My father helped him move into a better apartment.
Mom appeared with groceries when Dad was living mostly on cereal.
They gave him a spare key to their place.
When Dad tried disappearing again around Christmas, they showed up at his door.
"They didn't fix me," Dad said. "That's too simple. But they kept me from vanishing."
He looked down at the photograph.
"Your father used to say, 'Family's the people who don't let you disappear.'"
The words landed heavily.
I understood before Dad said it.
"Oh."
His eyes met mine.
"When they died, I came to the funeral. I hadn't seen much of them during those last few years. Work had taken me farther away. They had all of you. Life happened."
Elowen's voice was small.
"Did you know us?"
"Barely. I'd met Dorian a few times. Maris as a baby. Maybe Gia once. The rest of you, no. Not in any way you'd remember."
"So you weren't there for us," Soren said.
Dad looked at him.
"Not initially. No. I came because I'd lost my friends."
That honesty hurt.
He told us what happened afterward.
At the funeral, he'd heard relatives discussing where we would go.
Five children were too many.
Different homes were being considered.
Dad visited us a few days later.
Dorian went still.
"I remember you."
We all turned toward him.
"Not clearly," he said. "But I remember a man sitting near the window."
Dad nodded.
Dorian had been the oldest, barely old enough to believe he could somehow solve an impossible adult problem.
Dad told us he'd overheard Dorian telling someone that if separating us was the only way the younger four could get permanent homes, they should do it.
"Jesus," Soren whispered.
Dorian looked down.
"I don't remember saying that."
His voice cracked for the first time.
"You were a child trying to volunteer yourself for abandonment so your brother and sisters could be okay."
Dorian covered his mouth.
Dad looked around the table.
"And I kept thinking about your parents. About all the times they refused to leave me alone when I was determined to be alone."
Still, I asked.
"Is that why you took us?"
Dad didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "At first, I thought I owed them."
The room changed.
Elowen pulled her hand away from the photograph.
"What?"
"I thought they'd saved me once, and now their children needed somebody."
"So we were repayment?" she asked.
"No."
"But you just said—"
"I said that's what got me there."