Chad stared at his grandmother, his eyes wide, confused. “What did happen?”

“In good time, Chad, dear. For now, just sit here, say hello.”

She patted the edge of the bed, and Chad did as instructed. He saw Mercy zero in on him, as if she’d just noticed his presence. A slight smile crossed her lips, but otherwise her stare remained blank. He tried to imagine what she was thinking, then wondering how much thought she was capable of. She had spoken, but her words had been garbled, almost unrecognizable, her voice quiet and child-like. He reached out a warm hand, thinking to take hers in his. He hesitated before looking over at his grandmother.

“It’s okay, Chad. She loves to be held. To be touched. Mercy is very giving.”

Another tear formed in his eyes. He felt an overwhelming sense of loss and sorrow, over the kind of life she’d led, and of what had been denied him. None of this made sense. Yet right now he had to think not of himself but of Mercy. So he held her hand, and that’s when her smile brightened, her high cheekbones transforming her appearance. She was lovely, so innocent.

“Hi, Mercy,” Chad said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Daddy,” she replied, her voice the softest whisper.

“Grandmother, why does she keep saying that? Does she think I’m Silas?”

“Mercy gets easily confused. Whether you wish to admit it, you do look a bit like him,” she said, “in his youth, before the drinking destroyed his looks.” Eleanor lopped around the other side of the bed at this point, allowing Mercy to be cocooned by them. She too took hold of her hand, Chad watching as she squeezed it gently, no doubt to Mercy a familiar touch. He could tell the two women shared an intense bond. Mercy was comfortable in her grandmother’s presence. “Mercy, dear, I’ve told you about my beloved Chad. I told you he’s seen so much of the world he may as well have circled the globe for you both. Remember I said he recently came home, too? I told you one day you would meet him.”

Mercy and Chad locked eyes. Her head tilted to one side, as though she were examining him through her own special, blue-flecked lens. Her eyes were mirrors of his.

“Chad,” she spoke, the hard sound of the Ch difficult. It came out sounding like tsad.

“My God, grandmother. How does she know me, and I ...” He paused, his mind recalling details of his lonely childhood. The truth he’d known, now exposed as anything but. “You told me I was born eight months after Silas and Tina got married. But that’s not even possible ... not if Mercy came first.”

“Some stories get changed. Rewriting history becomes necessary.”

“Grandmother, I feel like my whole life is ... a lie.”

“Nonsense. You are a Singleton, through and through. Now, shh with all this. Let’s not get into it all now, we don’t want to rattle Mercy. Just sit with her.”

Chad kept his eyes on his newly discovered sister. He didn’t think he could ever look away, not after having missed out on nearly thirty years of being a sibling. How many memories might they have shared, fights and laughs both within the myriad hallways at Edenwood. Would they have been best friends? She could have been his confidante growing up, revealing to her his conflicted feelings about his attraction to men. How might she have guided him, saved him? He might have stayed in Eden his whole life, his sister his tethered bond. She might have even negotiated peace between Chad and Silas.

And Tina, what of their wayward mother, how might her life have been different? They might have been, dare he think, a family. So many crazy questions swirled inside Chad’s brain it was like the past two months in Eden drifted away. There was no murderous intrigue surrounding Silas’s death, no corporate intrigue at Harte Industries, and no personal drama in his bed. No troubled Elias, no sexy Brett, no wounded Kelt. Everything about him had been stripped away, his past suddenly non-existent. Nothing mattered now except this sweet, damaged creature lying in this bed.

“Mercy,” he said again, his words breathy, as though the single word lingered in the stale air. When she continued to stare forward, he turned back to his grandmother. “You said she gets confused and maybe she sees Silas in me. But given what she said ... I mean, I don’t understand any of this. Why would she ask him for help? Did she remember Silas? Did he even come to visit her?”

“That’s part of her story, Chad, dear,” she said, a soothing warmth emerging from behind her sparkling green eyes. “For now, I think it’s time Mercy gets some needed rest. She tires so easily, especially when meeting new people.”

New people. Such a cold phrase considering she and he were family, yet it was hopeful at the same time. It gave promise to tomorrow, a future. He was her brother, she his sister, and yet they knew nothing of each other. That feeling of having lost something precious returned to him, leaving a hollow pit churning in his stomach.

“I think it’s time to hear what happened,” he said.

Eleanor nodded. “It’s a beautiful day outside. What do you say we go for a walk?”

Before they departed the room and returned to the antiseptic smell of the institution, Chad squeezed Mercy’s hand, the gesture which she seemed most to respond to. She smiled broadly at him, and said, “Brother.” He wondered, sadly, was she merely mimicking the sound she’d heard, or did she understand the deeper connection siblings could share. Chad suddenly felt like nothing else mattered -- not his job, not his relationships, not his life. Just his sister.