Kevin Died

32. The Video Diaries

"Believe me, I know!" I said. "For that to be true, would mean that Kyle was 'X.'"

"But that doesn't make sense."

"Exactly!" I said. "This whole time I assumed 'X' was Raymond's son. But that can't be true if he's Kevin's twin brother. Kevin is Mom and Dad's birth son, ergo Kyle is biologically Mom and Dad's as well, so where would Raymond's kid fit in all this?"

"Maybe you're looking at this wrong," Travis said from the backseat.

"What do you mean?"

"It's possible that this Kyle guy could be Raymond's son... As well as Kevin."

I took a moment to digest this. "Raymond? The father of Kevin and Kyle?"

"It's possible, man."

"No, it's not!" I said. "Raymond supposedly hid and raised this kid for years. Now even that doesn't fit with this new information, if Kyle was telling Nathan that he'd been locked up in a completely different institution for a long time. Raymond couldn't have been raising him."

"Furthermore," Sayora added, "that would also have to mean that Mariana and Raymond were able to separate the twins and raise them individually. Unless there was some agreement between them and Mauricio, there's no way they could've pulled that off."

"Dad doesn't even know about the affair, so an agreement is out of the question," I said. "Kevin and Kyle were birthed by my parents and not Raymond. That only makes sense."

"Fine," Travis said. "But all this talk about mental institutions... What was Kyle locked up for anyway?"

"Whatever it was, it couldn't have been great, seeing as how Dad and Mom have never mentioned him to me and Kyle had to contact Kevin on his own before jumping off that bridge," I said.

"What was with that whole diary thing?" Travis asked.

"I'm gonna handle that," I said. "I think I know what to do."

"You're not going to fill us in?" Sayora inquired, seeming a little taken aback at the notion.

"It's nothing too important," I lied.

Fact of the matter was, the video diaries had been one of the biggest question marks in this whole thing.

And now I knew where to find them.

"My whole life is a lie," I said after a while with a dry chuckle. "It's laughable how screwed up this is. And you wanna know the worst part?"

"What's that?" Sayora asked.

"Remember when I asked how DNA is tested?"

She nodded.

"Well, I think I found my explanation on how everyone was so certain it was Kevin's remains that were found."

"You mean..."

"I mean there's a high probability that Kyle's DNA was something like a ninety percent match to Kevin's," I said. "And it's his remains that are in that grave dedicated to Kevin."

___

School had long been out by the time we arrived back in Hillbury. I dropped Travis and Sayora off at their homes, but I was not going home myself. I would soon have to face the wrath of my parents. I wondered how soon after I ditched them did they notice I was gone.

I parked my car in the usual spot by the edge of the woods and started my hike. This was it. Once I found the diaries, everything would fall into place.