After I've showered, dressed and had a bit of a continental breakfast, Lady Penelope and I walk into a secret room that is accessed through a large floor-to-ceiling portrait in Penny's parlor. Susan is seated at one of the many stations in the room, her back to us. When she turns, her eyes light up and she smiles.

"Brains!" she exclaims, and before I know what's happening, her arms are around me and squeezing me so tightly I can barely breathe. "Oh, Brains, I'm so glad you're okay," she says, looking up at me. "I was worried."

I smile, but my smile disappears when I look into her eyes. The way she's looking at me, the way she has her arms around me...was it...no, it couldn't be. Could she...no. What would I do if she...? I feel it returning, feel my mind shutting down and look to Penelope as my breath starts coming faster. I want to...what do I want? I look back down at Susan, look directly into her eyes. They're more than just light green, I see now that I allow myself to examine them.

There's an odd and fascinating speck of pale pink to the left of her right iris. And yet another above it. The left iris is surrounded by flecks of the same color. I've never before seen any shade of pink in anybody's eyes and as quickly as I felt the panic begin to rise within me I suddenly feel a sense of calm wash over me as my hands rest palm-flat against Susan's back. "I'm okay," I manage to say. "Thank you."

She smiles at me but right now the part of me desperate to find my parents is at war with the part of me who wants nothing more than to continue staring into these new eyes.

Thank God for Penny, who comes and gently steers us back to the research she and Susan have been doing. She successfully gets my mind back on track, but I know that part of me is still processing, still twisting and turning, still chewing over this new and exciting thing I simply don't know what to do with.

But I think I'm drawing on something I didn't even know was within me. Rather than the stammering child I somehow had never seemed to shed, rather than the reclusive inventor of the world's most advanced machinery, I feel someone new inside my skin, someone who actually seems to have a strength I never knew existed.

I have lived the stigma that was placed upon me from a very young age. Lived it for so long I've become what everyone expected me to be as a man so far ahead of my time. An overused phrase, but the one I'm most identified with. Yet another fascinating study for Freudians everywhere, I suppose, as part of me listens to Susan's findings. It's like the child who's labeled as a bad kid in preschool and decides if he's going to get in trouble, he might as well actually do whatever he's being accused of. Or the girl in high school who is labeled as "loose" simply because of how she dresses. She begins to believe she is what they say she is, and so her life spirals out of control as she finds herself in increasingly dark situations.

For all my research, for all my studying, for all my degrees and work and the knowledge base that lies inside my brain cells, I have never recognized that like these case studies I remember from school, I, too, have become someone who isn't really me. I enjoy every minute of what I do on Tracy Island, make no mistake. But Susan was right. In a way I have been acting. Only not just to her, but to everyone. I believe Jeff and his sons see me a certain way and true to their expectations, I act in the manner they expect me to. There's only been one person with whom I've actually felt more comfortable in being me.

They say men mature more slowly than women. In fact, research has shown that to be fact. It has also shown that most normal men don't mature until approximately 28 years of age. That being a national U.S. average, of course. I feel myself smile a little as I realize that I never did that myself. Mature, I mean. How could I have? I was surrounded by people who thought I was a freak. My peers in grade school, in college, during my Masters and Doctorate degrees, all regarded me with both awe and fear, I think. Because nobody understands how I think, why I act the way I do, they tend to stay far away from me, and attach certain labels to justify their actions. There's no malicious intent, and their labels are not negative, but they are there just the same. I'm used to it; it's just the way people deal with me.

Until Tin-Tin, who overcame her shyness to become playful, flirtatious, educational and an extremely good friend. And now, Susan. She hasn't run away, no matter how strange I might have seemed to her at first, no matter how leery she was of me. Here she is in another country, here with me and Penny, still trying to help me. I have known her less than a week, but somehow I feel she's the closest I've come to ever being understood, to ever having anyone care to understand, outside Tin-Tin.

I know it's not possible for Susan or anyone else to ever truly get inside me and figure me out. I can't figure myself out most of the time. And I don't necessarily care to try. But as I process what Susan and Penelope have said thus far, as I return my primary thought processes to the matter at hand, I think perhaps for the first time I might just start to care.

"And so, Brains, you see that this birth record truly is accurate. I have spoken with an obstetric nurse at Blodgett Campus and she recalls your birth in vivid detail."

"She does?" I ask Penelope. "Why, after all these years? How could she remember?"

"Well, it's not you and your actual birth that she remembers so vividly per se," Penny replies. "It's your mother."

"My...mother?"

Penelope nods. "It seems she was a frightened young lady of only sixteen," she says. "She didn't want to give you up, but her father apparently forced her to. And it was either her father or someone connected to her father that arranged for the Turners to adopt you."

"The...the nurse knew about this?"

"Yes," Penelope says. "She remembers it quite clearly. The young lady was British."

"Her name," I hear myself say. "What was her name?"

Susan and Penny exchange glances. "She couldn't remember, Brains," Penny finally answers. "She only remembers that she was British, sixteen years of age and extremely upset about giving you up. And that she was all alone."

My emotions are there again, but this time I can handle them, I realize. I can deal with what I'm being told. "What was a British teenager doing giving birth alone in Michigan?"

"We just don't know, Brains. I've been trying-"

Penelope and I both look at Susan when her voice cuts off. "What is it?" I ask.

"I've been trying to search through the hospital's back records based on some information Lady Penelope gave me. Trying to get a name or address for your mother." She looks up, first at Penny and then at me. "I think I just found something."

We stare at the screen. There's a single name blinking there and I freeze, my eyes unable to believe what they're seeing. There's no way Susan could know, but I do. And as I look at Penny, her face confirms what I know to be true.

"My God," Penelope breathes, her hand clasping mine. "Oh, my God."

"I don't understand why we're searching your attic, Lady Penelope," Susan says as we ascend into the gigantic topmost floor of Creighton-Ward mansion. "And why did you go so pale when you saw that name on the screen?"

Penny leads us to a pile of boxes nearly halfway across the attic and opens the top box. "My mother, Lady Amelia Mather, had a sister," she begins. "Her sister's name was Lady June. Lady June married Lord Donald Best. Lord and Lady Best had only one child."

"Best? As in, Lily Best, the name I found?"

"Precisely," Penelope replies as she pulls an old photo album from the box.

"Lily Best," I say, shaking my head. Penny opens the photo album and turns to a page. She then hands it to me.

"Lily Best," she repeats. "My cousin."

I stare at the photo of an auburn-haired girl. "And..." I falter as tears fill my eyes. "If this is all true, my mother."

Once again I feel the world fall away and as I stare at the photograph I feel the connection to the young lady in it waft over me. I don't suppose I will ever be able to explain it, but it's like the wheels have been turning and turning all my life, never clicking into place until now. The answer is staring at me from many years past. I sink to the floor, my fingers touching the edges of the photograph. The smiling, happy face seeming to speak to me. Soon Penny and Susan are sitting with me, on either side, looking at her with me. Looking at my mother. And that's when Penny tells us the story. Lily's story. My story.

"It's been so long, I'd forgotten," she begins. "My cousin was a year older than I. When Lily was sixteen, she became pregnant. My uncle was absolutely furious. You must understand that when you travel in the social circles that lords and ladies travel in even to this day, there is a certain stigma associated with children born out of wedlock."

"I can identify with stigma," I whisper.

I feel Penny's hand squeeze my leg as she continues. "She refused to abort the child, so my uncle disowned her, banishing her to the States. At Lord Best's insistence, our family made no attempts to contact her, nor was she spoken of whenever our families met. Then suddenly, less than a year later, Lily returned to the Oldway Mansion, inexplicably also returning to her father's good graces. It was only when I happened upon my mother and my Aunt June talking in the parlor that I learned what had happened."

"She'd given birth to the baby in Michigan?" Susan asked.

"Exactly. Of course, at that time I didn't know it was that particular state, only that it was in the United States somewhere. Lily had been intent upon keeping her child, but because of who the father was, her own father forbade it. And so she made a difficult decision. Rather than try to be a single mother in a strange land, and since she was unable to contact the father of the child, she chose to give the baby up for adoption as my uncle insisted."

"But who was my father? And why couldn't she contact him?" I ask. "Surely your uncle couldn't keep her from doing that."

"I don't know who your father is, Brains," Penelope says, squeezing my leg again. "I never did find that out. I do recall asking Mother about it once shortly before she died, but she said it was a secret best kept in the Earth with Lily."

"You mean Lily's no longer alive?"

"That is correct, Susan," Penny responds. I know this part of the story, and so I look back down at the photo. "Three years after her return home, Lily was killed in a terrible car accident. It was believed she was driving under the influence, but if that was true, my uncle used his connections to cover it up."

"What did he do for a living that he had such influence?" Susan asks.

Penelope smiles. "Aside from being a lord, he worked for MI-6," she tells her.

Susan's eyes grow wide. "What? Your uncle was a spy?"

Penelope nods, and I can tell she's struggling with whether or not to say more. But I know she won't, at least, not until she and I are alone. After all, she can't give her own profession away to a woman we barely know, no matter how helpful she's been.

"But someone must know who the father was," Susan says. "Are your uncle or aunt still alive? Or your father, maybe?"

"Sadly, no. I am the only surviving member of my family, I am afraid, as my father, Sir Hugh, was also an only child." Then Penelope gave me a small smile. "Well, at least, I had believed I was the only surviving member of my family until now."

I still can't believe it. All this time to have known Penelope, only to find out that my mother was her cousin. The odds of me winding up involved in a secret organization in which she and I would have contact are astronomical, and yet the facts are not lying to us. Related to a Lady of England. I had never expected to find this.

"It can't stop here," Susan whispers as she looks at me. "I mean, we've found your mother, but that still leaves one question unanswered."

"It does. It leaves the question of who my father is," I reply, and I am surprised by the steady sound of my voice. I feel so calm about it all. Instead of the nerves and butterflies that had plagued me since receiving Susan's e-mail, I feel relieved. Regardless of the strange facts, regardless of the oddity of being related to someone I already know...for the first time ever, the answers feel right. "If my father is still alive, we could confirm this once and for all."

"Yes," Penelope nods. "We could do so with a DNA test. Your father and you, and my DNA."

"Right," I say. "Your DNA and mine will share characteristics if indeed I am your cousin's son."

"All of this hidden within my own family," Penelope sighs. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave."

Susan murmurs, "When first we practice to deceive."

"At least in this case the deception turned out to be in my benefit."

"Yes, but all the years you've lost, dear boy."

I shrug. "But look at what I've gained, Penny."

"I thought I'd lost all my family when my father died," Penny says with tears in her eyes. And suddenly she's enveloped me in a hug, showing uncharacteristic emotion. "I do so hope it's true, Brains."

"So do I," I say as she backs off and attempts to recompose herself. A living relative...dare I hope that much? Yes, I decide. I do dare hope that much. My second cousin, Lady Penelope. I can't help but grin.

"The DNA with Lady Penelope will confirm your mother was Lily," Susan says. "But without anyone left to ask, how can we find your father?"

I think about that for a moment as I remove the photo from the album, rise to my feet and replace the album in its box. The ladies rise with me. "Penny, you said your uncle wanted me aborted because of who my father was."

"Yes," Penny nods uncertainly. I don't blame her. To know that I was unwanted by my grandfather isn't something I really want to think about right now. "I heard Aunt June say those exact words to my mother."

"If your uncle worked for MI-6, isn't it possible that Lily became involved with someone who also worked for MI-6?"

"Where on Earth did you come up with that connection?" Susan asks, eyebrows raised. I blink at her. "You really think that's possible?"

"I know of one way to find out," Penelope says. "Brains, Susan, you remain here. Parker and I need to take a small trip."

"Where to?" Susan asks as we turn and head for the steps leading down to the mansion's second floor.

"I can't say," Penny admits as she starts down the stairs. "But if there's any chance at all of finding out who your father is, Brains, I must make this journey." She stops at the bottom of the stairs as I step down next to her. She takes my hands and looks into my eyes, and I know she's silently conveying something to me. "And I must do it alone."