For sixty years, Margaret Ellis believed she would never have children. She built a meaningful life as a civil-rights attorney alongside her late husband, Daniel, and made peace with the fact she never became a mother. When Margaret sent in a test to learn about her ancestry, she expected basic results about her ethnicity or maybe distant relatives. Instead, the test showed a perfect parent-child DNA match with a woman named Emily Carson, who was thirty-three and shared half her DNA.

Margaret was stunned. She had never been pregnant and immediately suspected a mistake. But after speaking with the DNA company, they suggested she might have an identical twin sister, someone she had never met or heard about. Raised in foster homes without family history, Margaret struggled with this new possibility but reached out to Emily anyway.

Emily explained her mother Claire had been adopted young and didn’t know her birth parents, and Emily’s decision to get tested was driven by curiosity about her family. Then Margaret booked a flight to Denver to meet the mother and daughter she never imagined were part of her life.