Like Sisters
Part One: The House Next Door
My name is Sarah Lindell. I’m thirty-two years old.
I never expected the happiest chapter of my life to lead to a medical appointment that would leave me terrified for my unborn child.
And I never expected that appointment to answer a question I didn’t even know I’d been asking my whole life.
My best friend, Emily Carver, is thirty-one.
We’ve been inseparable for twenty-five years.
We grew up in neighboring houses on Sycamore Lane in Westbrook, Ohio. A small town east of Columbus with one high school, one Dairy Queen, and a water tower painted like a giant baseball.
My house was yellow with white shutters. Hers was blue with a red door. There was a gap in the hedge between our backyards that our fathers never fixed, because by the time they noticed it, we’d worn a dirt path through it.
We met when I was seven and she was six.
She was sitting on her back steps crying because her goldfish had died. I came through the hedge with a shoebox and a garden trowel and said, “We should have a funeral.”
We buried him under her mother’s rose bush. I said a prayer. She sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” because it was the only song she knew all the words to.
After that, we were never apart.
We attended the same schools. Westbrook Elementary, Westbrook Middle, Westbrook High.
We shared countless adventures. Building forts in the woods behind the Methodist church. Sneaking into the community pool after closing. Driving to Columbus at sixteen to see a concert we’d lied to our parents about.
We supported each other through our first crushes, our first kisses, our first heartbreaks. When Tommy Reinhart dumped me at the junior prom, Emily poured a cup of red punch down the back of his tuxedo.
When Emily’s father had his heart attack our senior year, I slept on her bedroom floor for two weeks.
Our mothers frequently joked that we behaved more like sisters than best friends.
“Look at you two,” my mother, Marie, would say. Watching us lie on the trampoline in the backyard, finishing each other’s sentences. “Peas in a pod.”
“Same nose,” Emily’s mother, Barbara, would say. Laughing. “Same stubborn chin. Are you sure the hospital didn’t mix them up?”
They’d laugh.
Then sometimes they’d look at each other.
And stop laughing.
I never thought anything of it.
Part Two: The Dream
For as long as I can remember, Emily and I shared one particular dream.
We wanted to become mothers. And watch our children grow up together.
We planned it when we were ten. Lying in a tent in my backyard with flashlights.
We’d live next door to each other. Our kids would cut through a hedge. They’d have a dirt path. They’d bury goldfish together and pour punch on boys who were mean to them.
“Pinky swear,” Emily said.
“Pinky swear,” I said.
Unfortunately, life didn’t unfold the way we’d imagined.
I married a man named Kevin when I was twenty-four. He was charming and funny and sold medical devices. We bought a little house in Columbus. We tried to have a baby.
Two years later, I found out he’d been having an affair with a woman from his office.
My marriage ended five years ago. It left me heartbroken and uncertain about my future. I moved back to Westbrook. I rented a small house three blocks from Sycamore Lane.
I’m a pediatric nurse at the children’s hospital in Columbus. I take care of other people’s babies all day.
Emily never married.
She had several serious relationships. A teacher. A firefighter. A sweet, quiet man named Paul she dated for four years, who left because he didn’t want children.
She’s a librarian at the Westbrook Public Library. The children’s section. She does story time on Tuesday and Thursday mornings with a puppet named Mr. Biscuit.
By the time we reached our thirties, we’d both grown tired of waiting for the right partners.
Part Three: The Idea
Then, one evening, Emily suggested something completely unexpected.
It was a Friday night in October. We were sitting on my back porch with a bottle of wine and a bag of Doritos. It was cold. We had blankets over our legs.
We’d been talking about babies. Again. Like always.
“Sarah,” Emily said. “What if our children weren’t simply childhood friends?”
I smiled.
“What do you mean?”
She leaned forward. She had that look. The one she used to get when she wanted to sneak into the community pool.
“What if they actually shared the same biological father?” she said. “They could be brother and sister. Or two sisters. Or two brothers.”
She grinned.
“Real siblings,” she said. “Not just like siblings.”
At first, I thought she was joking.
But Emily had already considered the possibilities.
She’d been researching for months. She pulled out her phone and showed me. Fertility clinics in Columbus. Sperm banks. Donor profiles. Success rates. Costs.
We could both become mothers through fertility treatment, she said. Using sperm from the same donor.
Our children would share a biological connection. Half-siblings.
And we could raise them together. Next door. Just like we’d always hoped.
“Emily,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“I know,” she said.
“Like, really crazy.”
“I know,” she said. “But think about it.”
The idea was unconventional.
But it gradually began to make sense. 