"Pai, there is someone I want you to meet." Callum holds Ana's hand when he enters the Fig Tree accompanied by the Brazilian beauty.

Paulo smiles softly when he sees the look in Callum's eyes, a look he never witnessed before. "Hello, Ana. I've heard so much about you."

"Meu prazer. O Callum fala de voce a toda a hora." (My pleasure, Callum, speaks of you all the time.)

Paulo smiles broadly once she speaks his mother tongue. "Que bom ouvir alguem falar Portugues." (So nice to hear someone speak Portuguese.)

He glances at Callum mockingly that scoffs and looks away.

"I never got my children to take an interest in speaking my native tongue."

"That's not true. We speak enough." Callum interjects, and Paulo shakes his head mockingly at Ana, who laughs in response.

"He hasn't spoken a word since we've met apart from occasionally hearing him call you pai." Ana retorts.

"It's my fault. I never pushed them to converse with me enough. Aimee, when she tries, is quite fluent, but this one here..." He gives a teasing glance at his son. "Portuguese, like many other things, were always too bothersome to try."

Ana laughs. "I can see that in his 'jogging' efforts." She raises her hands using air quotes amusedly.

"I like her!" Paulo says.

"Come on, you two!" Callum protests. "Don't gang up on me!"

A soft cough interrupts the moment. Jack stands outside the door and nods at Paulo. The playfulness erases and Paulo features crease. He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves before looking at his only son.

"Are you ready?" he asks, which Callum nods while tightening his grip around his girlfriend's hand. "And..." he glances at Ana. "Don't get me wrong, querida..." (sweetheart)

Ana smiles softly, understanding the tone of his request.

"Are you sure you want her here for this?"

Callum wraps his arm around Ana and nods.

"They are on their way. Jack and I will wait outside. She will come here."

Callum releases Ana from his embrace and hugs his father. "You know I love you, right?"

Paulo holds his son dearly. "I know," he replies and leaves the room with Jack.

Callum paces the room and rubs his hands together nervously.

"I would ask if you are nervous, but..." Ana points at Callum's anxious movements around the room and Callum chuckles lightly, diffusing the tension around the room. "Do you know what you're going to say to her?"

Callum stops walking. "No idea, to be honest. I've only wanted this. For so long. To know who she is, it's what mattered the most to me. And now she's here and all the questions I had... they seem to dissipate from my mind. It's just a blank." Callum rubs his hands together. "I think that's what is making me more nervous."

Ana approaches him and takes his hands on her own. "Anything I can do to help steady your nerves?"

Callum smiles, "Just you being here with me, it's enough. I..." He lowers his eyes to the floor. "I love you." He finally blurts it out.

Ana smiles shyly and places a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm glad because I love you too."

Callum embraces her and places a gentle kiss on her lips and connects their foreheads.

"You wish your sister was here, too."

Callum sighs knowingly. "She's always been adamant that knowing her meant nothing. I've always felt this emptiness. But, she never did..." He glances at the piano in the room. "If she was here right now, she would sit at that piano playing her music, and would not care one bit about this woman. It would be just her and her piano."

Callum stares at the piano imagining for a moment his twin playing at the piano with her messy bun and steady eyes on the instrument and releases a small chortle.

"What?" Ana enquires.

"Just something Uncle Jack said the other day. He said that he knew who our mother was the moment he heard her play the piano. I'm just thinking that my sister couldn't care less about this woman and yet she has a connection that I don't have right there, ingrained in her brain, steeped in her fingertips. And Aimee just can't care less."

"Is your birth mother a musician?" Ana asks.

Callum removes himself from their shared embrace. "Don't know... maybe. Honestly, I don't even understand how seeing Aimee play can lead to him knowing who she was..."

"Maybe she used to play in the restaurant?"

Callum scoffs for a moment and shakes his head, internally rebutting the proposition. His eyes land on the instrument and he looks up at the myriad of photos that hang on the white wall of the illustrious benefactors of the establishment.

"Maybe she is a famous pianist..." Ana continues to consider options.

Callum takes a step forward to the photos and focuses his attention on one particular photo of a patron of the restaurant that not only used to dine often at the Fig Tree but renownedly made this a mini-performance venue for his music. The recording of the contemporary classical pieces now plays as the backdrop to the restaurant most of the nights.

"Callum?" Ana places her hand on his right shoulder and jolts him back from his thoughts.

"Stidolph..."

"Who?"

Callum's eyes dart back to the piano, and he grazes his keys. It's the same piano that Aimee plays every Thursday. The piano, the infamous Devon Stidolph, played every night when he settled in Australia. The same Devon Stidolph that was a renowned pianist, known for his proficiency with the instrument and his compositions that made soundtrack history. Devon Stidolph, the late father of Eva Forsyth.

"Ana?" Callum says to his girlfriend, that watches him examine the instrument. "I know who my mother is."

"Who?" Ana asks.

"I am." A voice from behind makes them both raise their eyes towards the door. Eva stands with her short blonde hair, and her immaculate designer clothing and her face covered in tears. "I'm your mother."

Callum turns around in a state of confusion. He expected to meet his mother for the first time, but he didn't expect that his mother had been there all along.

"Hi," she says in a muted tone.

"Hi," he replies.

Ana senses the momentum and lingers a small kiss on Callum's cheek. "I'll give you two a moment," she says and leaves the room.

Eva stands uneasily and takes a few steps towards Callum hesitantly. "I think it's time we talked."

Callum nods and sits on the piano's bench.

Eva stands and caresses the piano. "Hi, daddy," she whispers. "You know, the day I saw you, I knew you were my son. You are Justin's spitting image."

Callum chuckles. He never thought he was until recently. He had browsed some old picture of when his dad was a young surfer on the Bay. The features that have never been apparent to him before came alive with every flicker of the photo book pages.

"And when I met Aimee..." She runs her hand through the wood. "It was like I was listening to my father play again. God, she plays just like him. Has the same vision. I've seen it."

Callum thinks about how much he misses Aimee and how he wishes she was there with him right now.

"I'm sorry I didn't make more of an effort to get closer to you. I was trying to rack my brain how I would. With Aimee was easier. I had the perfect excuse, but with you... I did not know how to get closer." Eva sits next to him at the piano.

Callum lowers his eyes to the keyboard and pushes a key softly.

"You must have questions."

"Yes, I do." Callum sighs and pushes another key. "Millions of questions..."

"I've got time."

"I think you know what's the burning question is..." He pushes another key. "I mean, it's the question every adopted child has in their mind."

"Why I put you for adoption," Eva mutters.

Callum presses another key in confirmation.

"Because I was 19 years old, in a university abroad. My relationship with my family was strained, and I had twins. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do."

Callum sighs loudly but stays silent.

"I was too immature to raise any children. It was the toughest decision of my life, but it wasn't about me. It was about finding you two a loving home. When I wrote to your father, I had no hope. I just needed his signature on a paper so this family could adopt you two. The family was kind-hearted. I never expected he would turn up here with your other dad..."

"You didn't know..."

"I found out then. Justin told me he loved me... just never in that way. I stormed out and never spoke to him again. I also told the agency that I had changed my mind and that I wanted my name to be taken off the birth register. I told them I never wanted to see you two again." She wipes tears that spill from her face. "I was a different person then. I was vain and self-centred. I was so angry at Justin. And I got angrier when I found out that he had adopted you both. It was that anger that made me write the letter that Aimee found."

"The one where you threatened to take us away..." he mutters.

Eva lowers her head, ashamed. "I regret that letter more than anything else in the world. I would have never taken you away from them. Especially after Jack saw you both so happy and fulfilled."

"Wait, you wrote that letter after uncle Jack saw us?"

Eva nods. "He came to me asking for answers that he didn't get from his brother. He said he saw you and thought that you were curiously similar to Justin. But it was the moment Aimee played at the piano that he realised those two children were his brother's kin. Children he had with me," she sighs. "That letter was a weak and stupid moment of an insecure little girl. I also wrote it on the night that I had met the man that was going to become my own Paulo."

Callum smiles softly at the comparison between Charlie and Paulo.

"I never intended to follow through with it, and I'm glad I didn't. I would spoil the most amazing family."

Callum puts his hand over hers. "Thank you"

"If you must know, I never told your grandfather for the same reason." Jack's voice resonates across the room where he stands, next to Paulo and Charlie. "He would have done something despicable, and I decided that day that although I had lost my brother..." he glances at Paulo. "I wouldn't allow him to lose his children."

Callum looks at Charlie, that stands with his hands in his pockets. "How long have you known?"

Charlie looks at his wife. "Eva told me on our third date."

"What now?" Callum asks looking around the room.

"Now, we would like to introduce you to your other sister," Charlie answers. "It's about time she knows she has two wonderful siblings."

"But first I need to speak to Aimee," Paulo says.

"Yes, Izzie is too young and attached to Aimee. We don't want her to blurt something out unexpectedly." Eva says.

"So, you're going to call Aimee?"

Paulo shakes his head. "I'm going there. This is a conversation we need to have in-person..."

Author's Note:

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash