Summary: Sometimes, life’s most heartbreaking curveballs can bring unexpected joy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make nothing. All characters, plot points, and recognizable dialogue belong to DC comics, Warner Bros., December 3rd Productions and anyone else with a stake in the Superman franchise.
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It all started with a few obviously derisive, private comments made between his favorite aunt and his least favorite cousin at his sister’s funeral, accidently overheard while he’d been refilling the large water dispenser full of sweet tea made from his grandma’s recipe. Oh, how the funeral parlor director had made a fuss about that! But the sweet tea had been his sister’s favorite, and he wasn’t about to send her to the hereafter without supplying it to her mourners. So, he’d politely told the young man to stuff it and had brought the tea anyway, letting the man’s sputtering protests fall on deaf ears.
Unlike the comments he’d unintentionally caught his family members making.
Those had stung and burned and needled at his brain long after Wandamae’s casket had been laid to rest in the cold, unfeeling ground at the Perpetual Pines Cemetery.
The comments had been accidently overheard…hadn’t they? Common sense dictated that no one had purposefully said such vile things with the intent to be eavesdropped on by the grieving brother…right? The exhausted grieving brother. The brother who was nearly broke from paying for his sister’s medical needs – both mental and physical needs. The brother who’d suddenly felt lost and aimless now that his most important task in life was over – the caring for his sister, which had been his duty for so long that he could not remember what it was like to not carry such a weight on his shoulders.
Come to think of it, Cousin Xavier wasn’t exactly a shining example of decorum. He never had been. Which is why William had never been close to his cousin, despite the fact that they were a scant three months apart in age. But even that scoundrel Xavier couldn’t be that uncouth, to start purposefully stirring things up at a funeral, could he? William had tried convincing himself of that for weeks after the funeral, brushing the comments off as best he could, shoving them back into remote recesses of his brain. At the funeral, he’d pretended to be blissfully unaware of the conversation and had continued his task of filling the sweet tea not thirty feet away from where Xavier and his mother stood gossiping. But once everything was all over, and he had the chance to sit and reflect, the more the comments stewed in his brain, and the more William grew less confident that he hadn’t been meant to overhear the conversation.
“Now that the nutcase is dead, we only have one, final piece of riff-raff left before the Waldecker bloodline runs pure again. Thank God he never had children!”
“I’ll never forgive that brother of mine and his useless wife for bringing such shame into our family. Better they should have stayed childless than sully our good Southern family name! The gall of them, making those Yankees a part of our family.”
Finally fed up with living with his uneasy doubts, William had done the one thing he’d never done before – he’d gone poking through his long-deceased parents affairs. He never even been tempted to pry before. It had always felt a bit like a violation of his parents’ privacy to go rooting through their personal papers, with the necessary exception of their will. And even that had been less than comfortable for William to do when the need had arisen, some forty years ago.
Nervously and feeling like a child secretly doing something naughty, William had spent weeks slowly sifting through his parents’ personal effects and papers, until, at last, at two in the morning one cold, glum, rainy night, he’d found what he’d unknowingly been looking for, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His blood had turned to ice as he stared down at the papers in his shaking hands. He read the faded pages over three times, trying to force them to be some kind of sick joke. But they weren’t. They were real.
They were adoption papers, for both himself and Wandamae.
The revelation that he was not a Waldecker by blood had hit him like a freight train to the solar plexus. He’d felt winded and nauseous and had thrown up all over his living room floor; his knees having gone to rubber and refusing to get him to the lavatory in time. He spent the better part of the night in a kind of numb stupor, only occasionally allowing a few burning tears to escape his aging eyes.
For six months, he’d sat on the isolating knowledge that he and his dear, sweet sister hadn’t been blood relatives. For six months, he’d wrestled with alternating feelings of pride that his parents had chosen him to be their son, and that they’d loved him as fiercely as if he’d been their biological offspring, and feelings of utter despair, betrayal, and of abstract loss that left him feeling directionless and depressed. Then, with the help of his new therapist, Dr. Friskin, he’d begun to make peace with his situation, if not embrace it. Four months later, he’d decided it was time to find out who he really was and, on a whim, he’d signed up for a website in the budding new industry of home DNA ancestry tracing. Then, for the next two months, he’d gone about his business, half forgetting the test, until he’d received an email stating that a one hundred percent match to a family member had been found – a brother he’d never known.
Tentatively, William had reached out, opting to call the man on the phone, rather than conduct such a conversation over the sterile and emotionless atmosphere of cyberspace. After the first call, all traces of doubt faded. All the worries he’d had over if it had been a good idea to try the DNA tracing vanished and had been replaced by relief that he’d taken the plunge. He’d felt like he’d known the other man all his life as they talked the afternoon and half of the evening away. They’d had so much in common – including that they’d both been given up for adoption by their mother at birth. They’d had similar tastes in movies, music, television, and books. They liked the same kinds of foods and had both expressed how grateful they’d been that they’d given the test a try – on a whim in William’s case after seeing a magazine ad and at his brother’s wife’s instance that it could be informative. In short, William had ended the call feeling like he’d found a missing piece of his soul.
Immediately, he’d emailed his brother and they’d made plans to meet up that weekend. William had chosen the venue – a delightful little French café in the heart of Metropolis, since, as fate would have it, his brother also lived in the city. Nervous excitement fluttered in his stomach and stayed there all week until the day finally arrived.
Today, it would finally be time to meet a man he shared DNA with.
He donned his best tan suit and nervously fiddled with his tie until it hung ramrod straight. He stuffed his “lucky” handkerchief – embroidered by his own beloved and much missed Mama with his initials – into his breast pocket, and left his house. Arriving at the café early, he ordered a coffee that he mostly ignored until it was barely tepid, and a croissant he barely touched other than to push it anxiously around his plate until a noise from behind him made him stand up with a gulp.
“William Wallace Webster Waldecker?” asked a soft, tremulous voice.
Slowly, William turned around to face his brother. He gasped in shock as he looked upon his own flesh and blood family for the first time – things had happened so quickly they hadn’t even had the chance to send each other a photograph yet. All of William’s nerves melted away and he half laughed at the absurdity of the situation. His brother’s chuckle matched his own.
“Surprised?” the man asked with a grin.
“That’s putting it mildly,” William replied in a squeaky, strangled voice as he slowly nodded, eyes wide.
It was like looking in the mirror at his own diminutive reflection.
“I’m Alan Morris,” the other man continued with a tender smile as he enveloped William in a tight, warm hug. “I’ve been searching for you for a long time, ever since I first saw your picture in the Daily Planet. Of course, you were dressed as Resplendent Man,” he explained quickly, his bright eyes twinkling. “I knew who you were, even with the mask on your face. I’m your identical twin brother.” He smiled conspiratorially. “You may have heard of my brief exploits as Metropolis’ Invisible Man.”
William laughed and gestured to the seat across the table. “Oh, Lord have mercy,” he exclaimed in wonderment. “Take a seat. We have got a lot to talk about, brother.”
The End
