A/N: Hey guys...umm this is my first fanfic so if you guys could be generous on the reviews, that'd be great, but you totally don't have to if you don't want to...

thanks to my first reviewer, Xx Hidden Secret xX, and my best friend xoxoGossipGirl...u kno who u are chickadee.

Chapter 1

December 21-25, 2007

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." --T. S. Eliot

"Grace, honey, come on!" My mother called from the kitchen. I was kneeling on my bed in the room I shared with my eight-year-old sister, rummaging through one of my drawers. The space in the room was so limited that the space between my bed and my dresser was one and a half feet, so that if I wanted something out of my dresser, than I had to kneel on the edge of my bed and open the drawers, then go through my clothing. It was kind of annoying to live in a space that small while sharing it with a sister who was five years younger than me, but I wasn't going to complain: my mother's bedroom was half the size of mine and Maddie's, and even though we'd offered to give Mom our bedroom before, she'd explained that if our room was her room, than I would have to sleep on the couch in the living room, because her room could barely fit a single dresser and a twin-size bed. There was no way that two girls were going to be able to live there. My mother could barely live there, alone.

"I'm coming," I told her, grinning in spite of myself. Mom, Maddie and I were going Christmas shopping in New York City, and even though we were cutting it a little close to the holiday itself this year, it was a highly anticipated event in my household. Since Maddie and I didn't have a father, as far as we knew, and since Mom was an only child and both of her parents were dead, Mom got really excited about the whole concept of family togetherness, due to our general lack of it, and nothing says 'family togetherness' like Christmas shopping. 

Also…it was just kind of a tradition. Even with the noticable lack of money in my household, we each saved all year to buy each other Christmas presents.

Of course, calling it 'Christmas' shopping was a bit of the stretch of the word Christmas. Mom, Maddie and I had no specified religion, even though our mom had been raised Catholic. Mom had never really believed in the Catholic religion, but her father was a minister, and that sort of required that she go to church every Sunday and a Catholic school, complete with nuns as teachers. You'd think that some of that would rub off on her, but Mom had something against the Catholic faith, because I'd never been in a church once in my entire life. Even for Mom's parents' funeral: it'd been at a funeral home. A priest had been there, but Mom had only arranged that because she'd known that would have been what her father wanted, had he been able to make that sort of decision.

"Mommy, can we go to American Girl?" I heard my sister ask, and I tried to repress my grin as I found the sweatshirt I'd been looking for and jumped down off my bed and into the three-foot space between Maddie's and my bed. Even if I was forced to spend hours in American Girl, I would have fun today. Every year we did this, and every year I wished we could do it every day.

I shoved my feet into my sneakers and slipped out the door and into the hallway to stand with my sister and mother.

Mom had caramel blonde hair with some brown streaks that was back in a ponytail. She had a heart shaped face that was inexplicably sweet, but her electric-shock-green eyes showed that she wasn't stupid or gullible, as several sweet people were. She was five feet, seven inches tall, and was permanently tanned and extremely thin, a gene she had passed on to Maddie and me: we had ridiculously high metabolisms, which explained our thin arms and legs.

Maddie looked a lot like Mom in hair color and metabolism, but she was different in other ways: her face was longer, thinner, and she was average height for a eight-year-old girl—maybe four feet, two inches tall. Her eyes changed color from day to day, within the basic range of blue: they could be a piercing, icy blue, or such a dark blue that it took you a moment to realize that they weren't actually black. Today, her eyes were indigo, a very provocative color, as my mother liked to say, a color that made you think that there was something more beneath the surface with Maddie, like maybe she was a child prodigy or something. As if.

"We're going Christmas shopping, we're going Christmas shopping, we're going Christmas shopping," Maddie sang as she skipped down the hallway towards the front door, her braids bouncing. I sighed. Although her eyes might have made you think so, there wasn't a whole lot beneath the surface with Maddie. There wasn't a whole lot on the surface with her, either.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Maddie to death. But she could barely remember her own birthday, much less words and numbers: Maddie was falling increasingly behind in school. She could barely read, and her teachers were throwing around words like 'dyslexia' and 'attention deficit hyper activity disorder'. Mom and I knew what the real problem was though: Maddie just didn't care. She didn't want to learn how to read. If she did, than she'd do better, because she was an intelligent girl. But she didn't. So Mom had to deal with a constant onslaught of parent-teacher conferences and meetings with the school 'learning specialist', which was another way of saying the woman that parents talked to when the school wanted the child gone, because my little sister was lowering the school scores. And that, in turn, put more pressure on me to do well, so that we could play that card where we said 'fine, but if Maddie's leaving, so is Gracie,' and that would be the end of the conversation. We went to a fabulous public school, the kind that came complete with waiting lists and extra grants from the school board because they had the best students, and if the school didn't want you there, mostly they got you kicked out for one thing or another.

"What do you want for Christmas?" Mom asked me suddenly as we followed Maddie out the door and to the car.

"What?" I asked, surprised. Christmas for me really just represented the day we went into the city and shopped for each other, rather than the twenty-fifth of December itself. Also, I tended to try to keep my want of things to a minimum: there was never enough money to buy any of the things I wanted, or the things I wanted weren't necessarily worth money. For example, I wanted to know who and where my father was. But he could have been the man in the moon, for all I knew about him.

"I know what Maddie wants for Christmas." She continued, forcing me out of my drifting mind. "But you, Gracie, have yet to make it clear what you want." She looked at me, and I shrugged uncomfortably, trying to think of something inexpensive that I wanted for Christmas. I couldn't just come out and say something expensive—it would be completely insensitive because Mom felt really guilty about the lack of money. But I also couldn't say something I completely hated, because then she'd get it for me and I'd be stuck with a present that I thought was stupid.

"Umm…maybe…a…" I struggled for something, and Mom laughed quietly, maybe even a little bitterly. I was surprised.

"Gracie wants a cell phone." Maddie said from the car, and I glared at her through the window. "And a video iPod. And a digital camera. And a computer. And—"

"Shush." I ordered, opening the door to the car and putting my hand over her mouth. She grinned evilly at me, and I rolled my eyes. This is what I meant by saying she was a smart kid: she always knew the exact wrong thing to say at any moment. But in order to do everything wrong, you have to know all the right answers, than avoid them, so really, Maddie was pretty smart. If you thought about it that way. "Mads, come on. I don't want all of that stuff…" My voice trailed off as I slammed the car door shut with one hand, then scrutinized my sister before releasing, making sure she wasn't going to say anything more.

"Gracie, its okay to want things you can't afford." Mom said, but her voice was a little defensive as she got in the front seat.

"I know…but I also know that it's not possible for me to get a single one of those things." I informed her, and Mom sighed in exasperation, and she started the car. We pulled out of the driveway and drove down the street before turning onto the main street of Troy, New York, our hometown.

Then I had a thought. "Unless…you could tell me something, for a present." I suggested, and Mom smiled wryly at me in the mirror.

"Exactly what was it that you want to know?" Mom asked. I smiled angelically at her in the rearview mirror, and her face grew suspicious.

"The question 'who's our father' comes to mind." I told her, and Mom sighed in exasperation again.

"Honey, we've been over this. It's not about who your father is. It's about who you are." She told me, and I rolled my eyes; I'd had this moral-filled, confidence-boosting speech a million times before, and I was hardly eager to repeat it.

"I know, Mom. But seriously. I'm begging you. You can spend all the Christmas money on Maddie if you tell me," I pled, and Maddie grinned.

"Come on, Mom!" Maddie said, suddenly eager to help me. I rolled my eyes at my little sister's selfishness, but accepted the help all the same; I really wanted to know.

"Girls, really. It's not important." Mom insisted.

"If it's not important to you, and it is important to us, than you should tell us," I persisted. Maddie nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

"Your father's name is Scott Hale." Mom said finally, annoyance putting an angry twang in her voice. I froze, surprised that I'd actually gotten an answer. Maddie stopped nodding and froze as well, her indigo eyes wide.

"Scott Hale?" I asked in a shaky voice. "Really?" I frowned and blinked twice, trying to recover from the shock. Maddie and I had pushed this point many times before, but we'd never gotten as far as a name before. We'd never gotten as far as anything before.

"Yes. Scott Hale." Mom said shortly. "He lives in Ruby Falls, Virginia, and he's your father." I blinked again, surprised.

"Scott Hale." I said again, trying the name out. "How old is he? What does he do? Why'd you leave him? Or did he leave you?" My torrent of questions caused her to look back at me with recognizable but I thought unreasonable anger, and as she did, I saw the traffic light in front of her turn red in the blink of an eye. "Wait, Mom!" I cried, pointing at the light quickly.

Everything seemed to go in slow motion.

Mom turned around, her hair flying, and she slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel wildly, trying to stop us from moving any farther, but the car was already spinning on a thin layer of ice, the result of snow melting and refreezing. Maddie and I were screaming at the top of our lungs—as if that would help anything—and I grabbed the seat in a desperate attempt to stay unhurt, and flung my other arm out, holding my sister to the seat like a seatbelt would have, had we remembered to put them on. But even as the SUV that was crossing the intersection crashed into the hood of our car, I knew it was impossible, because my head jerked forward, hit the back of the driver's seat. I was out cold before I could remember to close my eyes.

My return to consciousness was heralded by a cold breeze. I shivered a little and winced in pain. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a white ceiling. I lifted my head a little and winced again: my entire body seemed to be bruised. I was in a hospital room, I realized, in a hospital gown the color of Pepto-Bismol. I felt that uncertain kind of fear bloom in my stomach, and I tried to take a deep breath, but my ribs protested as I struggled to sit up at the same time. I guessed that a few of them were bruised.

I had a cast on my left arm, and I had stitches on my cheek, but that was pretty much the extent of my major injuries. I had a serious headache though, and I felt a little dizzy. An IV drip was taped to the back of my hand, and I had a tube taped under my nose. I followed the tube with my eyes: it was connected to one of the three machines around my bed.

"Hey Honey," A nurse stood in the doorway, and I turned my head to stare at her, my eyes wide. She smiled reassuringly at me, and I blinked, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Where am I?" I asked. The nurse—a young, African-American woman who was about six feet tall—came over, flipping through papers on my chart. "What day is it?"

"You're in Mount Sinai Hospital," She said. "In New York City. And it's Christmas." She smiled half-heartedly at me, and I blinked. "Merry Christmas."

"It's been four days?" I murmured after a moment, trying to think through the morphine and adrenaline creating a haze on my mind. Four days. I'd been out of it for four days? It had been the twenty first, the last day I remembered. And the other days, the ones I didn't remember, weren't missing from my memory like how people generally forgot things. There was absolutely no memory from the past four days. What had happened to me? Why couldn't I remember.

"Where's my Mom? And my sister?" I frowned, not responding to her holiday cheer. "What happened?" The nurse looked mildly concerned at the last question, almost as concerned as I was.

"You were in a car accident, sweet heart." She glanced at one of the monitors around me. "In Troy, New York. But your mother, sister and you were airlifted here once they got you out of the car." She avoided my gaze, and I felt that uncertain fear become more defined.

"Where are they?" I asked.

"Your sister is right next door." She said, still avoiding my gaze. I frowned; she hadn't answered my entire question.

"Where's Mom?" I asked softly, my voice making it clear that I was particularly vulnerable. The nurse shook her head infinitesimally, and I felt panic bloom in my throat, making it difficult to breathe.

"Your sister is fine for the most part, we just airlifted her here because she's so young and you and your mother were being airlifted, so she would have been all alone in the Troy hospital." She continued. "You were airlifted because you had a closed head injury, and we didn't know how severe it was, and your blood pressure was much too high." She said.

"Why was Mom airlifted?" I asked. "Where is she?" the nurse became silent, and remained that way. I sighed, and scrutinized her, trying to figure out whether I was ever going to get an answer out of her. "Is Mom…?" I felt tears jump to my eyes. "Is Mom dead?" My voice was a hoarse whisper.

"I'm so sorry," She murmured. "Grace, really. I'm incredibly sorry." I think I literally froze, then. My muscles became taut; my eyes were permanently fixated on the nurse. My heart, surprisingly enough, continued pumping steadily, according to the quietly beeping machine in the room that was monitoring my heartbeat. I hardly breathed, and the nurse's kind eyes took on a kind of panicked look, like a deer caught in head lights.

"Grace?" She asked me. "Breathe. I need you to breathe." She said, and when I took the smallest gasp of breaths, than stopped again, she gently untapped the wire from under my nose and unhooked an oxygen mask from the wall, than strapped it to my face. I took another spastic breath, and eventually another, than another, until I had a semi-steady breathing pattern, and she took the oxygen mask off slowly. "Grace? Do you want to see your sister?" She asked. I nodded a little, and she slipped quietly into the hall. There was a large, plate glass window between my room and the hallway outside in the wall, and I saw the nurses at the nurses' station watching me with a mix of pity and sympathy. I ignored them.

Mom's dead, I thought with disbelief, frowning. It was simply two big an idea to wrap my head around. I tried to grasp it for a moment, but it was tantalizingly hard to understand. Not that it was something I wanted to understand, but I knew, somewhere in my mind, that avoiding the truth would only hurt me more once it finally hit me. My free hand (the other was in the full-arm cast on my left arm) grabbed the covers and clutched them for dear life, like I had in the car, when it had crashed.

The nurse came in with Maddie, and I was shocked for a moment, at how much Maddie didn't look like Maddie.

Her hair color was the same. Her skin color was the same. Her eye color was even the same indigo color it had been when we'd crashed. But there was something about her that drooped. She watched the ground, her back bent over like she was the hunch back of Notre Dame. Her hair seemed flatter, straighter. Every bit of cheerfulness and silliness that had made Maddie, Maddie was no longer there. She looked up at me with frightened eyes and instantly broke away from the nurse, who'd been holding her hand, and clambered onto the bed and crawled into my lap. Then she buried her face in my shoulder and proceeded to burst into tears.

I wrapped my arms around her as tears brewed in my eyes, and buried my face in her hair, crying into her hair, wishing I knew something brave and older-sister-like to do. I wanted to take care of Maddie so badly, but I had absolutely no idea how to go about doing that. My tears kept pouring, through, since I had no idea what else it was I was supposed to be doing.

"Mommy's dead," She hiccupped, her voice a whisper and broken, and I hugged her tighter.

"I know," I whispered, pain tearing through my throat, vocal cords, and heart.

"I thought you were dead too," She sob-whispered after a moment, and I felt more tears fight their way angrily out of my eyes and pour down my face.

"I'm sorry." I told her. The pain in my chest was unbearable: the lump in my throat made it difficult to breathe. But I held onto my sister with the same intensity as if holding onto her could hold me down—both of us—to earth, and keep us both from completely losing our minds. As if holding onto Maddie was the only thing that could keep us grounded to Earth, something everyone else seemed to do so effortlessly. I suddenly envied everyone that could manage to do that, that could stand there and watch us with pity—those poor little girls, they'd think. Motherless. And indeed we were.

Maddie was finally the one to pull away, a confused look haunting her face as the tears continued to stream silently, steadily, over her face. She looked like she'd been standing on what she'd believed to be firm ground, before suddenly realizing that she was actually sinking, as if she was standing in quick sand. "Where are we gonna live?" She whispered. "Who are we gonna live with?"

I hadn't even thought of these things, and I suddenly wished I could be a better older sister. I wished I knew what to do when my mom died. How to take care of my little sister because she was eight-years-old and not capable of taking care of herself. I was barely even capable of taking care of myself.

"I don't know." I whispered.

"Grace? Maddie?" The nurse asked. "Could we call someone for you?" I sighed. "I mean, you two have no adult here…and social services is going to get involved unless you have another close relative or some family friend who can be here in the next twenty four hours and take care of you two."

"Can I use this phone?" I asked her, gesturing to the phone on my bed side table. She nodded, and I picked it up, calling information.

"City and State," I heard an automated voice ask, and I wondered idly if I was doing something incredibly stupid. Yes, some analytical part of my mind told me in a tolerant voice. This may be the stupidest thing you've ever done.

"Ruby Falls, Virginia," I murmured, and Maddie looked up at me, her eyes filled with sudden understanding. She shook her head emphatically, but I shrugged: I wasn't sure what other option we had. Trying to see if my father actually existed was a long shot, but a worthwhile one. At least then, when I was in a foster home, I wouldn't be driving myself crazy with the thought: what if I'd called him, what if he exists, what if he wanted to take us in. What ifs were things that could keep you up at night.

"How may I help you?" I heard a woman's voice ask.

"I'm looking for Scott Hale in Ruby Falls, Virginia." I said in a dazed voice. I heard the sound of someone typing, the clicking of the keys being pressed by someone with those long, fake fingernails.

"I'll put you through," She said, then hung up, and then I heard more ringing. It rang three times, and then a teenage boy picked up.

"Hey," He said, laughing, in a familiar voice, and I was surprised for a moment. "Merry Christmas!"

"Hi." I said, trying to sound normalish. "Uh…Same to you. Can I talk to Scott, please?" I asked, and I knew my voice sounded like I was Maddie's age, as opposed to thirteen-years-old. Whenever I got really nervous, or frightened, or apprehensive, my voice became ridiculously high-pitched, and it made me sound like I was Maddie.

"Sure," The boy said, laughter still in his voice, the way my mom used to thread colorful ribbons through Maddie's braids on holidays or for dress-up when she was younger, so she could feel like a princess. "Who's calling?"

I hesitated for a moment. "Grace Hale," I said finally, and I heard a small intake of breath on the other end. "I think I really need to Scott, like, now, though, so if you could put him on, that would be really great."

"Gracie?" the boy asked in an awestruck voice. Something in his voice triggered a memory, tugging at my mind, but I couldn't quite place how I knew it. How did this boy know me, though? And he was obviously familiar with me, or had been, a long time ago: he called me Gracie, a nickname my mother had coined when I was a baby. My preschool drawings all had Gracie Hale written in the corner of them. I'd lost the nickname in third grade though, in my effort to pretend I was all mature.

"Yeah…people call me that. I need to talk to Scott…" I said my voice drifting off. "Or I guess…I don't know." I looked down at Maddie. "Dad?" My voice was a complete question. Maddie wrinkled her nose at the foreign word.

"Yeah, of course. I mean…yeah." The boy said hastily on the other end, and I heard him call out, away from the receiver, even though I still heard him. "Hey Dad? Can you pick up line one? I think it's…well, I think its Gracie." Someone mumbled something incoherent wherever the boy I was talking to was. "Yeah, that Gracie. Do we know that many 'Gracies' that I'd sound like that with? I mean seriously, Michael," He came back on. "Okay, here's Dad." He said, passing the phone.

"Hello?" I heard a half-eager, half-dread-filled voice ask.

"Hey Scott," I said, taking a deep breath. "My name's Grace Hale. I think I'm your daughter."

Six hours later, Maddie and I were sitting on our beds. After a mini-tantrum from Maddie, the nurses had moved her bed into my room and we were sitting there, talking quietly about the thing I'd just set in motion. The awful truth was, as big and scary as the concept of having a father after our mother had died was, it was our only option, other than foster care, and there was no guarantee that Maddie and I could stay together in foster care, so we'd love to avoid that.

After Scott had recovered from the initial shock of realizing that I existed, he promised that he and the 'boys' would be right over. Who the boys were, I had no idea, but I wasn't going to try to figure it out on the phone, because that was a waste of time. Maddie and I needed an adult who could take control of the situation, and he was as close we were getting to adult, right then.

I hadn't exactly told him that Mom was dead, though.

I had instantly regretted it the moment I hung up the phone. But it wasn't like I could just call him back and say 'hey, I forgot to mention that my mother's dead'. I'd told him we were in a car crash, but he seemed more interested in how I was doing: he hadn't mentioned Mom.

By the time Maddie and I were talking about him, I was maybe the most nervous person on the face of the earth. I was practically shaking, that's how frightened I was. My father was making an appearance in my life for the first time, and I was in a hospital, recovering from my mother's death and a car crash. I didn't want another big, life-changing event, but as far as I could tell, I wasn't getting much of say in it.

"What if he's mean?" Maddie whispered. She hadn't talked over a whisper since the car crash. Even the tantrum had been mainly screaming and crying, as opposed to actual words.

In all truth, I was worried about Maddie. As much as I tried to pound down what was going on, I knew that I could only stomach so much before I snapped. And when I snapped, I snapped: I was upset, and I let the whole world know it once I'd lost my mind on that level. But first I had to make sure that Maddie was being taken care of. I couldn't just leave her to deal without me. Also…guilt was sort of haunting me. There was something about the whole concept of calling my father that seemed sort of like a betrayal. My mother had been amazingly reluctant in telling us about our father. I had to assume something was wrong with him. But what? Was he a jerk? Had he cheated on Mom? Had he…I hated to even think this, but abused one of us?

I sighed and went back to Maddie's question, not wanting to lie to her, but feeling as if I had no other option.

"He won't be. He and Mom were together, and Mom's not a bad judge of character. How do you think we got here?" I asked, trying to make my little sister at least smile. Her face remained as scared as ever, as deer-in-headlights as she'd ever been, and I winced audibly, wishing that this wasn't happening, that I had some vague idea of what was about to happen.

"Hello?" I heard someone ask quietly from the doorway, and I turned my head quickly, my dark hair flying. I'd brushed it since I'd woken up, and as it swung around my neck I felt annoyance shade me distantly, knowing it would knot as it flew. And that's when I saw the boys.

There were four. An adult, a boy about my age, maybe a little older, a boy who looked about seventeen, and another who looked about eighteen. I stared at them for a moment before seeing the obvious resemblances between me and them. It was painfully obvious that the three boys and man were related to Maddie and I.

The adult looked shocked, but happiness was scattered over his features. The oldest of the boys looked frozen in time, as if Maddie and I had come from another dimension. He was watching us, scrutinizing us, judging us, with a surprised look on his face. The second oldest looked like a deer caught in headlights. And the youngest boy—who was still a year older than me—looked happily surprised.

"Oh my god." I murmured, my eyes traveling over them. They were staring right back at me, no shame in their gazes, and I turned my head away, my eyes resting first on the floor than the blankets on my bed. But that couldn't last long: curiosity gravitated my eyes up to the boys standing in front of me.

"Grace." The adult said. "Hi. Wow. I'm Scott, your Dad," He said slowly, his eyes resting first on me, then on Maddie. "And who is this?" He asked softly, smiling hesitantly at Maddie. Maddie stared at all four guys with wide, frightened eyes before scrambling off her bed and onto mine, crawling into my lap and sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest.

"This is Maddie," I said softly as she pulled my arms around her, as if I was a blanket to cover her. "She's…my sister," I frowned. "Who are they?" I asked quietly, nodding at the boys. They stared at me outright, as if there was something wrong with me, and I self consciously lifted one of my arms and tucked a few strands of my hair behind my ears, before Maddie reached up and grabbed my arm, pulling it back down so my arms were wrapped around her waist.

"Your brothers." Scott—Dad?—said. I swallowed hard, and Maddie squeaked. "And I thought I only had one daughter. Unless…she's someone else's…" Scott said, his voice trailing off, and I shook my head.

"No." I said firmly. "Mom doesn't—" I stopped, tears jumping to my eyes and my voice breaking off abruptly. "Mom didn't," I continued softly, my voice determinedly cheerful, which sort of defied the purpose, now. "She didn't date. She never went out with a single guy." I hugged Maddie closer to me, and she continued to stare.

"Well…I mean…we were…you were…" Scott tried a few times before shrugging. "Never mind." Scott shook his head. "Later. We'll work through all the details later."

Scott was in his late forties, about, with graying light brown hair. He was very tall—maybe six feet, four inches—and his eyes were indigo blue, like Maddie's, and I took a deep breath. Wow. They were exactly like Maddie's.

"She's your kid," One of the boys said, the middle one. He pointed first to Maddie's eyes vaguely, than nodded at Scott, his eyes glued to me so much that he couldn't even turn his eyes to look at someone else. I was staring back though, so I supposed I couldn't talk too much about it. "You guys have the creepy colored eyes thing going on."

"That was very nice," Scott said sarcastically, turning back to his son to scold him. Then he looked around. "Where's Addie?" He asked. I bit my lip and looked away, a tear streaking down my face. "I can't believe that she would go through a car crash with you two than leave you alone." His voice was a little bitter, and my arms tightened around Maddie at the sound of my mother's name.

"Mommy didn't live through the car crash." Maddie whispered for me, explaining everything as I pressed my cheek to her hair, resting my head on top of hers. "I thought Gracie was dead. So did the people in the helicopter." My brothers all stared first at her, than at me, and I pressed my lips together, more tears breaking free as I struggled to control myself. "Mommy's dead."

Scott groaned softly, sinking into one of the chairs against the wall. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and placed his face in his hands carefully, as if afraid he'd break himself. "Addie's dead?" He murmured, looking up at me with blind eyes, filled with grief. I was surprised, I had to admit: Mom and Dad had been separated for at least as long as I'd been alive. I sobbed once, nodding as I wiped away my tears with my hand roughly. My brothers looked increasingly frightened as I broke down in tears.

"Umm…" The oldest one said. "I think this would be a good time for us to go get some food or something…" He said. I forced myself to stop crying; I wanted to find out more about my brothers before they disappeared again.

"I'm fine." I said in a determined voice. I narrowed my eyes. Suddenly a name popped into my head, along with a picture of a laughing little boy. I'd been a little girl, under four, certainly, and I'd been building some structure with Legos. William had caught it as it collapsed…and helped me rebuild. A smile played over my lips, and my mind raced, wondering with instant curiosity where this memory had come from. "Will," I said softly. He blinked.

"Yeah." He said quietly. "People call me William, now, though. I'm eighteen." His facial expression didn't change. "I was nine last time we saw each other." Something in his eyes shifted as he continued to watch me, and I hung my head a little, letting my hair fall down to shield my face from his unyielding stare.

Will had black hair, hastily arranged over his forehead, and the exact same color as mine. He was tall and definitely muscled, but in a more subtle way than the middle of my brothers, who looked like superman personified with light brown hair and light skin. But Will's skin was deeply tanned, and I realized suddenly that he looked a lot like me. For all that I'd always been the outsider in appearances in my family (between my mother and my sister, at least), it looked like I was going to fit right in with my brothers. William and my other two brothers had black-brown hair and deeply tanned skin.

"That would have made me four." I said slowly trying to think through the fog on my mind created partially by morphine and partially by what I was facing right now. "Wait, we lived together? You've met me before?" I asked in a dazed voice. I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut. "God. I'm so confused."

"Yeah." He said, his voice thoughtful. "You're my little sister. We lived together for four years." He said this slowly, as if he was trying to gauge my reaction, but he seemed less concerned about me than he was about his father: he switched his gaze from me to his father, and then waved over his brothers. Only his youngest brother came, though—the middle one just continued to stare at Maddie and me.

"Dad?" The youngest boy (or at least the shortest--I couldn't be sure whether he was youngest or not, though he certainly looked it) asked. "You okay?" Scott didn't move, his head in his hands, and the boys in front of me, Maddie and I all stared at him when he didn't answer.

"Addie's dead." He said in a strangled voice, and I sank back against my pillows softly, looking down at the covers on my bed.

"Yeah," Will replied swiftly with a bitter note to his voice. I looked up at him, surprised and he met my eyes with a defiant and frustrated look, as if he was searching for something that he knew he'd never find. As if he knew that he was running in circles, and he wanted to stop so badly, but it was all he could do to catch his breath, much less turn in a new direction. "But Dad, the day she left with Gracie was the day she died." He glared at me swiftly, "You've ruined my life, you know. Leaving. And returning" He stalked out of the room in a huff, leaving enough tension for a bigger room, and I stared after him in confusion before looking back at my other brothers. But they looked up at me, their gazes showing their surprise at both their brother's reaction and my existence.

We weren't even on a first name basis, though, so it wasn't like I could ask either of them about what William was talking about. I had no idea who these two boys were, how old they were. All I knew was that we had extremely similar DNA, the same parents, same gene pool. That, at some point in my unremembered childhood, I'd known them as my brothers, not the strangers standing in my hospital room.

"Sorry," the youngest one said gruffly, and the two of them followed Will into the hallway as naturally as if Will had politely excused himself after a very nice, measured conversation.

"Woah," Maddie whispered, staring at our father, who was still having some sort of quiet mental breakdown, judging by the pained look on his face, his eyes (which were squeezed shut) and the wrinkles around them as he pressed two fingers to each temple, trying to contain a headache before it got out of hand. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back onto my pillows.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Woah,"

Brothers were a way bigger deal than everyone else made it sound.