The twins grew like weeds in summer.
Marcus stood at the window of what had once been the nursery, though no one called it that anymore, watching the rain trace patterns down the glass. He was all thoughtful silences. His light skin had the warm undertone of milked tea, weathered by many summers and winters, and his hair was the same riot of dark curls it had always been, 3c coils that he kept trimmed short at the sides where they tended to spring outward.
Behind him, Darwin was doing pull-ups on the doorframe.
"Seventeen," Darwin grunted. "Eighteen. Nineteen..."
"You're cheating."
"I am not."
"Your chin isn't clearing the frame."
Darwin dropped to the floor and glared at his brother. They had the same face: the same high cheekbones, the same eyes, the same curve to their mouths when they smiled. "Fine," Darwin said. "You do twenty."
"I'm reading."
"You're staring out the window."
"I'm reading the rain."
Darwin threw a pillow at him.
----
The children called the headmistress "the witch" behind her back, though never within earshot.
Marcus had noticed things about her lately. Small things. The way she gripped the back of her chair when she stood, her knuckles going white for just a moment before she straightened. The way she paused at the top of the stairs now, one hand pressed flat against the wall, breathing through her nose like climbing had become a negotiation with her own body. She was thinner than she used to be: her collarbones sharp beneath her blouse, her wrists narrow enough that her rings had started to slip.
One morning, Marcus had passed her study and seen her standing at the window with both hands braced on the sill. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were moving, no sound, just the shapes of words. When she opened her eyes, there was blood on her upper lip. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, noticed Marcus in the doorway, and fixed him with a look that could have frozen a river.
"Don't you have chores?" she said.
He left. But he didn't forget the blood.
And then there was Lucia.
"She's weird about us," Darwin said once, pulling on his boots by the back door. "You ever notice? She's always watching."
"Everyone watches us," Marcus replied. "We're the ones with the marks."
"Yeah, but she watches different. Like she's waiting for something."
Marcus had thought about this for a long time.
"Maybe she is."
----
They had been seven when they first asked.
It was bath night. Marcus was scrubbing mud off his elbows when Darwin leaned over the tub and peered at his brother's forehead in the candlelight.
"Yours is darker than mine," Darwin said. He reached up and touched his own mark, the faint symbol above his left eyebrow that no amount of scrubbing had ever faded.
"They're the same."
"They're not. Mine's lighter. Almost gold." Darwin wiped steam from the small mirror nailed to the wall and tilted his head. "What do you think they are?"
"Birthmarks."
"They're not birthmarks. Birthmarks don't look like symbols."
Marcus didn't answer. He had traced his own mark in the mirror a hundred times, the lines too precise, too deliberate to be an accident of skin. Like someone had drawn them there on purpose.
"Mrs. Hale says we were left on the doorstep," Darwin said. "Like a delivery."
"She says we were brought by a stranger."
"Same thing." Darwin sank lower in the water. "You ever wonder who?"
"Sometimes."
"I wonder all the time." Darwin stared at the ceiling. "What kind of person leaves two babies at an orphanage in the middle of nowhere? And doesn't come back?"
Marcus pulled the plug and let the water start to drain. "The kind who didn't have a choice."
Darwin looked at him. "How do you know that?"
Marcus didn't know. It was just a feeling, something lodged deep in his chest, too certain to be a guess and too vague to be a memory. Like the answer to a question he hadn't learned to ask yet.
"I don't," he said. "But I think it's true."
Darwin was quiet for a long time. Then he climbed out of the tub, wrapped himself in a towel, and said: "Well. Whoever they were, they missed out. We're great."
Marcus almost smiled. "We're adequate."
"Speak for yourself."
They never asked Ingrid about their parents. Something in her face when she looked at their marks, a tightness around her mouth, a careful blankness in her eyes, kept them both quiet.
So they stopped asking. But they didn't stop wondering.
----
Rain streaked the windows. Darwin was on his knees beside Lucia's bed, arm stretched into the dusty space beneath, searching.
She hid the dragon book somewhere. I know she did.
His fingers brushed past old shoes, a broken hairbrush, something that might have been a forgotten stocking, and then a small wooden box.
He pulled it out. The lid was plain, uncarved. He opened it anyway.
Inside, nestled on a scrap of faded cloth, was a pendant. A small tree carved from pale wood, hanging from a leather cord. The craftsmanship was rough but careful, the kind of thing made by hands that cared more about meaning than beauty.
Darwin turned it over in his fingers. Old. Worn smooth in places.
"That was a gift."
He flinched. Lucia stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
"I wasn't- I mean, I was looking for-"
"For the book about dragons?" Her mouth twitched. "I know. I moved it."
She crossed to him and took the pendant gently from his hands. For a moment, she just looked at it.
"Someone gave this to me a long time ago," she said. "Before you were old enough to remember. He asked me to keep it for you."
"For me?"
"You and Marcus both. But this one..." She pressed it into his palm. "This one is yours."
Darwin's fingers closed around it. The wood was smooth, worn by years of being held.
"Who gave it to you?"
Lucia was quiet for a long moment.
"His name was Leo," she said finally. "He lived here when you were babies. He was..." She searched for the word. "Different. In ways that are hard to explain."
Darwin waited.
"He left when you were very young. Said he needed to find answers. About himself. About this place." She looked at the pendant in his hands. "He asked me to give that to you when you were old enough."
Darwin's fingers closed around the carved wood. It felt warm against his palm.
"What was he like?"
Lucia was quiet for a moment. Her eyes went distant.
"He was brave," she said finally. "Reckless, sometimes. He never backed down from anything, even when he should have." A small smile. "He used to hang upside down from the furniture to make the little ones laugh."
"Did he care about us? Me and Marcus?"
"More than you know." Her voice was soft. "He left because he cared. Not because he didn't."
Darwin's chest felt tight.
"I want to meet him," he said. "Someday."
Lucia reached out and touched his curly hair, the same gentle gesture she had made a thousand times.
"Someday," she said. "I hope you will."
----
That night, Darwin showed the pendant to Marcus.
They were supposed to be asleep. The room was dark except for the thin strip of moonlight that slipped between the curtains. Marcus lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Darwin sat cross-legged on his bed, turning the carved wood over in his hands.
"She said his name was Leo," Darwin whispered. "Said he lived here when we were babies."
Marcus didn't answer for a long moment.
"I know."
"You know? How do you know?"
"I've heard them talk about him. Lucia and Mrs. Hale, sometimes Miss Ingrid." Marcus turned his head to look at his brother. "Late at night, when they think we're asleep. They mention his name. Talk about where he might be. Whether he found what he was looking for."
Darwin frowned. "I never heard that."
"You sleep like a rock." A faint smile. "But I hear things. And I've always wondered... there's this feeling I get sometimes. Like something's missing. Someone." He shook his head. "I don't remember him, we were too young. But I think some part of me knows he was real. That he mattered."
Darwin stared at him for a long moment.
"That's weird, Marcus."
They sat in silence. Outside, an owl called. The old house creaked and settled around them.
"Do you think he'll come back?" Darwin asked quietly.
Marcus was quiet for a long time.
"I think," he said finally, "that some people leave because they have to. And some of them spend the rest of their lives trying to find their way home."
Darwin didn't know what to say to that.
He put the pendant around his neck and lay back on his pillow. The carved wood was warm against his chest.
He fell asleep thinking about a stranger named Leo who had left something behind. Who had promised to come back.
He hoped it was true.