Éleonora calmed down and after a while she started speaking more clearly.

“Is your birth name Alexis Tremblay like my niece over there?” She said pointing at Lexi and looking at me with very hopeful eyes.

The hamster in my brain started spinning. Lexi was my sister, my twin sister! How lucky of an encounter that had been! I looked at her with tears in my eyes and I answered her question. “Yes, auntie.”

She hugged me. “Good, this mean that I won’t have to worry about you being with your father anymore. A few days after you were born, he ran away with the two of you. My parents called the police but they told us that he looked sane enough to take care of you, he ended up putting your sister for adoption and keeping you. But since I had found him questionable since the day I met him so I couldn’t help but worry about you all those years you were gone from my life. Sorry, about those comments from before I have been stressing hard since I found out that after all these years you were still with him and not with a more suitable family.”

“It's alright, I get it.”

“No, it's not alright I could have scared you to the point of running away and then I might have lost you to the streets. I have been way too stressed out these past few days, I'm sorry.”

“It's alright auntie.”

“No, it's not alright Alexis. I have been searching for you and your sister for the last five years and I could have lost you last night for a very stupid reason. ”

“Not as stupid as calling both of your twins Alexis!” Said my sister trying to lighten up the mood.

“Your father did that because after the death of your mother he wasn’t very lucid. You both ended up with the same name because he forgot that he had already dealt with one of your birth certificates and ended writing the same exact thing in the other certificate. Mom and dad should have probably questioned his state of mind and had him checked but by the time they realized that he had lost is mind Alexis the biological girl had been adopted and the Alexis the biological boy was gone with his dad. He probably thought he could cope better if he only raised a son and not a son and a daughter. Mom and dad, your maternal grandparents, lost contact with him and they spent the last years of their lives searching for the both of you and hoping you were both OK. Anyway, it’s really awkward to call you both by the same name so how do you want to be called Alexis number 2?”

“Lexi, here present,” I said pointing at my new twin sister “has been calling me Alex.”

“OK, Alex do you want to talk about your father over brunch? Your sister didn’t tell me everything when I called her last night. She told me that you were abused so I need to know all the facts if I want you to be retired from his care.”

“Sure, auntie.”

Both I and Lexi went to change in our room.

“Who is Robin?” I asked Lexi as we started changing.

“Auntie’s wife, she’s spends most of her time in France. Why do you ask?”

“Auntie said that she and Robin didn’t want to have to care for more than two kids and I got curious about who that Robin person was. Have you met her? Is she nice?”

“She is and I love her very much, but she and aunt Éleonora spend most of their time between here, France, Japan and New York City so I haven’t seen her very often.”

“Why?” I asked finishing changing and applying some lip gloss afterwards.

“She and auntie are antiques dealers, they buy things in Europe and Asia and then sell them to collectors in the Americas. The only reasons they come here is to take care of me, and pretty soon they will be coming to take of you too.”

“Wouldn’t it have been more convenient for them to just move you to France or NYC?”

“I asked aunt Éleonora about it once but she told me she was searching for something in Montreal and that she couldn't quit this city before finding it. Now that I know that she was searching for you I am quite happy we didn’t move out,” She said pulling me out in a hug that made me blushed. “If we had moved I couldn’t have met you. Aunt Robin always says that if you have faith fate might give you a hand and while I didn’t believe her before, now I do.”

Aunt Éleonora opened the door right then and made a fuss at us for not finishing dressing up quicker.

We went to a quite small restaurant for brunch and not even seconds after starting to eat my aunt started her interrogation.

“Alex, can you please tell me how did your father abuse you?”

I was a little hesitant about this, but I started talking.

“Most of what he has done for the last three years or so has been verbal abuse and privation of food. He didn’t like my appearance or my attitude because he thought I looked and acted too much like a girl so one day he just told me that until I was ready to man up I would only eat at lunch and that even then I would only eat enough to avoid undernourishment. I wasn’t allowed any snacks or pocket money and if he ever found out that I had eaten, the weekend he would force me to stay in the basement where he would cut the water and force me to stay there without any source of entertainment or food.”

Éleonora got angry. “What, a pathetic excuse for a man! Really! Not allowing you to eat food because you didn’t look tough what kind of moron doesn’t realize the stupidity in those actions. Did he had a bad reaction when he learned you were trans is that why you were outside late at night?”

“No, he doesn’t know about my gender issues, I mean he knows that I’m not a man’s man but he doesn’t know that (for now at least) I identify as a girl. Friday, my male clothes were swapped for females ones so I couldn’t go back home that is why I was out late.”

“Wait, you don’t attend school as a girl?” Asked both my sister and my aunt at the same time.

“No, not for now (and I never had the thought of doing it).”

“Alex, when did you first started dressing up as a girl?”

I blushed. “Since my clothes were swapped on Friday.”

They both looked at each other and then Auntie started talking. “You are kidding us, right? You look so natural as a girl, we thought you had to have been doing this for a while. In fact, I thought I would have to have a discussion with you about any pills that might have been taking because I thought you were taking clandestine puberty blockers. Alex, did you ever have your body checked out for any anomalies? ”

“Dad, made me go to see a doctor two months ago, in July, to see if I wasn’t secretly intersex and they didn’t find anything. I’m just a late bloomer.”

“Well, as soon as we have dealt with your father I’m going to find you a psychiatrist to start your transition I wouldn’t want you to wake up one day and realize that you had turned into a giant lumberjack like your scandalous father.”

We were home at 3 pm and Auntie Éleonora decided that tomorrow both I and Lexi would be skipping school to go meet our father. I would be doing it dressed up as a girl because Auntie thought that my father wouldn’t try to keep me if he realized that my gender wasn’t the one he wanted to implant in me.

At one point, Aunt Robin, Éleonora’s wife, called enquiring about auntie’s day. When Éleonora told her about me she was very surprised, she hadn’t expected her wife’s five year long search to finish so abruptly. We talked for a while and I thought she sounded very nice I couldn’t wait to meet her l next Sunday.

After the call, the three of us watched some movies and played some cards until midnight came and then both Lexi and I went to sleep on the couches in the lounge room.

At 7 am, auntie called dad to make sure he would be home. She told him that I had spent the weekend with her and that we thought about perhaps making this a permanent thing. He seemed to disagree for a second, but then said that we could come right now to discuss about it as he had the day off.

30 minutes later, we were standing of the very poorly maintained lawn of my old house. My twin and I had decided together that we would be wearing matching floral dresses so we did.

Auntie walked to the porch and we followed her a few centimetres behind. Due to my attire I was getting a little bit anxious, but I wasn’t the only one, Lexi was stressing because she was going to face the had gave her away 15 years ago for being a girl.

Éleonora knocked on the door and we waited for a while hearing signs of movement behind the door. After five minutes, dad opened the door and seemed to be shocked at the sight of two girls who were identical on all points but their height. He took a good look at me and closed the door.

“What do we do now? Auntie,” Said Lexi with tears in her eyes it was clear that her being rejected by dad had bothered her a lot.

Our aunt held her closer. “You, nothing sweetie, I on the other side will be making a call to my attorney. We might have a legal battle for your new sister.”

We turned away and then the door opened again, we were about to turn again when we heard a loud noise and our aunt collapsed to the ground bleeding. I looked at the door and I saw my father aiming his shotgun at me.