A/N - Readers, I need opinions. Since this story is complete and I have finished editing it, would you rather have the rest posted all at once or would you prefer one chapter per day? Let me know.

Chapter Thirty Six

Danny spent most of his days sleeping, which wasn't surprising because he was mentally and physically exhausted. Following his rejection of Tara, she had made good on her threat to him and had endeavored to have him transferred from Grassy Acres to an unknown psych facility that very night. She had falsely reported to the staff that Danny had threatened to kill her and claimed that the bruise that she'd received when he pushed her from the bed had actually resulted from his attack on her and not the other way around.

When staff arrived to investigate the allegations, Danny vehemently denied the charge and reluctantly recounted the story of how he had awakened to find Tara in his bed. The entire time he was speaking Tara screamed that he was a liar and then took it a step further by informing the staff that particular night had not been the first time he'd assaulted her. From there, matters had degenerated quickly and the authorities were called. In a panic, Danny retreated into his small bedroom and locked the door, even going so far as to barricade himself inside. He had been deathly terrified of what would happen to him should Tara prove successful in her plans before his grandparents arrived.

After fifteen minutes of an emotional standoff, the police finally arrived and were able, after another twenty minutes of negotiating, to coax a terrified Danny from his room. From there, Danny was given the choice to be taken to the police station or to the local hospital to receive an evaluation. At that particular moment, either option was welcome to Danny as long as he was able to get away from Tara. However, as a result of his health history, the decision was ultimately made to take him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Once they arrived there, Tara wasted no time writing a formal petition against him, reiterating her claims once more that Danny had attacked and threatened to kill her. He was then placed on a twenty four hour hold within the emergency department which prevented him from leaving the ER until he could be evaluated by the social worker on staff. Strangely, it was only at that point that Danny began to feel he was regaining some measure of control, as he was able to request that Tara be formally banned from his treatment room.

His nurse, a brusque, no-nonsense guy with burly shoulders and a perpetual scowl, seemed to have no problem putting Tara in her place and telling her, albeit in the most respectful way, to take a hike. He didn't so much as flinch when Tara began yelling at him and haughtily throwing around her last name as if that should be motivation enough to do her bidding. Instead, the nurse merely pointed her to the door. If Danny hadn't been so tired, he might have stood up and cheered. It was only when he didn't have the constant specter of his aunt lurking about that he was finally able to tell his version of what happened that night to the social worker and attending physician and he held nothing back.

Thankfully, neither Lacey nor Jo had been volunteering that night so he didn't have to deal with their added scrutiny. Danny didn't think he could have abided facing either one of them after what he had endured. He had never felt lower in his life and he certainly didn't want the two of the people who had hurt him the most to witness his shame. Danny went so far to express that concern to the his physician, who was quite familiar with Danny due to his previous visits. He reassured Danny that all of his treatment and even his visit altogether would not be discussed with anyone Danny had not approved. The assurance made it a little easier for Danny to breathe.

Following his physical and psychological evaluation, it was determined that, despite Tara's claims that Danny was a self-destructive narcissist with violent tendencies, Danny was actually clinically depressed and possibly suffering from PTSD besides being slightly underweight and anemic as well. It was the social worker's recommendation that he receive outpatient therapy and that he could be released from the hospital pending his grandparents arrival.

Several hours later, Cameron and Mimi Kincaid arrived to take their grandson home. The relief Danny felt as they wheeled him from the emergency room and past a stunned Tara could not be described. That first night they stayed in Green Grove at one of the local hotels due to the lateness of the hour. Neither Cameron nor Miriam had pushed Danny to reveal what exactly had compelled him call for their help. It had been evident from the full-fledged meltdown that Tara threw as they left the hospital with Danny in tow that it had been nothing good.

That night while Danny had lay in his temporary bed, his father called his cell phone again and again but Danny never answered a single call. He'd had a lifetime of listening to Vikram Desai make excuses for his twisted sister and now he was done. The next day, when he was on his way to New Haven, Connecticut with his grandparents the following morning, he discovered that the service to his phone had been abruptly cancelled. By that point, however, Danny was too emotionally exhausted to care.

His grandparents proved to be kind and benevolent people, assuming responsibility for his healthcare and personal well-being without hesitation. Danny hadn't known what to make of them in the beginning and he still didn't. They provided a private, live-in physical therapist to attend to his needs, a private suite of rooms for him to reside and unlimited access to their palatial, suburban home. They welcomed him into their family as if he had been a part of it all along. Not once had they questioned his worthiness or mentioned his past. They were more than willing to make an assessment of him based on their experiences alone and not hearsay.

In the meantime, they held nothing back from him. He hadn't been in their home a full day before they were eagerly introducing him to his uncle, his uncle's wife, various cousins and assorted extended family. The Kincaids, it seemed, had resided in Connecticut for generations and generations. The family was scattered in all corners of the state. They had come from very old money and even deeper traditions. Their lineage dated back as far as the 1800's. It was difficult for Danny to believe that he was connected to them in any way and yet it was a truth his grandparents never let him forget.

They boasted about him over family dinners, as if they had known him all along and pressed to know his interests, his experiences and anything and everything they could glean about his life. They were sincerely interested in him. For Danny, the entire concept was foreign. He wasn't accustomed to family dinners where everyone laughed and joked about their day. He didn't know what to make of it when they asked about his day. He had no idea how to react when he was given praise or encouragement or even shown affection. It was easy then for him to feel out of place in such a warm, close knit family, an aberration whose only link to them was shared DNA.

As a result of those feelings, Danny tended to shy away from their kindness. He declined his cousins invitations to social gatherings, avoided his uncle's attempts to spend time with him and avoided his grandparents' questions about his childhood. Danny spent most of his days sleeping, the only time he felt any relief from the constant awareness that he was an outsider in his grandparents' home. He didn't want to come off as antisocial or arrogant. Danny wanted to connect with his family. He just didn't know how. It felt like he was encased in a glass box, able to see everything going on around him but unable to touch it. Thankfully, however, his grandmother seemed to discern the problem despite Danny's inability to talk about it and then sought to rectify it.

"Do you plan to hide out in your room the entire time you're here?" she asked him frankly on the fourth day after inviting herself inside his suite to pull open his curtains. "It's a lovely day outside. You should go out joy riding with your cousins or go to the mall or whatever it is you young people do these days." Danny emitted a lackluster grunt over those suggestions but Mimi was not deterred. "How about exploring the gardens then?" she suggested, "You could use some sun. I'll even go with you."

Danny burrowed his head deeper into his pillow. "Some other time," he mumbled, "I'm too tired."

Mimi perched herself on the edge of his bed and stared down at Danny with sympathetic eyes. "Is it really that you're tired or are you hiding?" she murmured astutely.

He flipped over onto his back with a mildly disgruntled sigh. "Maybe it's both," he admitted, "I'm not so good around people these days."

"Nonsense. There isn't a single person who's met you who doesn't want to know you better, Danny. You only have to let them."

"I think if they really knew me they'd stop wanting to," he predicted glumly.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"You don't really know me," he told her in a gruff tone as he shifted into an upright position, "I don't think I'm the person you think I am."

"Oh," Mimi whispered with a nod of understanding, "You're referring to your drug use and past run ins with the law, aren't you?" Danny glanced at her sharply, clearly astonished that she would know any of these things. Mimi grunted a laugh at his expression. "Come now, sweetheart, your grandfather and I haven't lived under a rock this whole time," she told him mildly, "Your name has been in the news a fair bit in the past few years. The media paints you as quite the bad boy."

Danny averted his eyes, his face darkening with shame. "You knew all of that and you asked me to come here anyway?"

Mimi frowned at him in concern. "What they say about you on the television is only half the story. Did you really expect that to matter to us?"

He answered with a noncommittal shrug. "You haven't been around in all of these years," he reasoned aloud to himself, "I guess I was trying to figure out what made you care all of a sudden."

"Danny, we've always cared about you." His expression must have registered a dubious note because she insisted rather vehemently a split second later, "It's true. Cameron and I have always, always wanted to be a part of your life, especially after Karen died."

He chanced a wary look at her then. "Then why did you never come around?" he demanded in an accusing whisper, "My dad said that you disowned my mother for marrying him because he was Indian, that you never approved of them being together based on that. He said that was the reason that you never acknowledged me."

"Is that what you believe?"

"I don't know what to believe anymore!" he exclaimed softly, "Nothing and no one in my life has been what or who I thought they were. I'm alone. I always used to think that when I was a kid but it never really felt that way until recently. I can only depend on myself."

His grandmother reached forward to cradle his face tenderly in her hands, her voice wavering with emotion when she told him, "You can depend on me. You can depend on your grandfather. We will not leave you, Danny."

Danny lightly shrugged off her hold, blinking back the tears that gathered in his eyes. "You already have," he reminded her in a tear roughened tone, "So please, don't make promises to me that you can't keep."

Mimi sat back to regard him with a resigned sigh. He presented a tough, unaffected facade, the belligerent expression on his face shouting that he did not need anyone. But his eyes...his eyes always betrayed him. Their liquid brown depths were stormy with confusion, hurt and, most of all, fear. Her heart contracted with pity for him but well beyond that Mimi wanted to divest him of the notion that he had been unwanted.

"Your father has misled you about a great many things, Danny," she said, "starting with his relationship with your mother. Their marriage wasn't some fairytale that ended in tragedy. Karen spent her last days feeling isolated, controlled and terrified in her own home.

"Yes, I disapproved of Karen's marriage to Vikram and your grandfather and I adamantly opposed their union but not out of spite or prejudice or whatever else Vikram might have told you. We feared for your mother and later, we feared for you. By the end, we wanted you both out of that house."

"What do you mean?" Danny asked despite his firm resolve to remain aloof.

"Karen and Vikram only knew each other a short time before they married," Mimi explained, "Less than a month, in fact. They met when both of our families were vacationing in Saint Tropez during the same weekend. Karen was immediately taken with Vikram. Back then, he seemed like a charming, engaging, handsome young man interested in our daughter. We saw nothing from him that alarmed us in the beginning."

"So what happened?"

"Little things," Mimi told him, "He started criticizing Karen about the way she dressed or the way she spoke or the way she wore her hair. The longer they dated, the more he started to control everything she did. He started picking out her makeup and clothing, even going so far as to choose friends for her. It was ridiculous!"

"And my mom just let him do all of that?"

"Your mother was blind with infatuation for him," Mimi sighed, "You're a lot like she was. Karen had a wild spirit and she had made a lot of poor choices in her younger days. She thought Vikram was helping her to become a better person. She couldn't see that he was trapping her. None of us did."

"So my father was able to convince her to marry him," Danny concluded sadly. He knew full well how compelling and convincing Vikram Desai could be, having fallen victim to his old man's will, even against his better judgment, time and time again.

"He convinced her to marry him," Mimi replied with a rueful nod, "They barely knew one another and then suddenly she was moving off to some little town in New York that we had never heard of to start a life with a man we didn't know or like very much."

"But she seemed happy in the beginning?" he pressed, "Right?"

"Of course she did. It was new, young love. But I saw the warning signs and I was concerned. I foolishly thought that if I contacted Aravinda Desai he would have the same concerns about how fast they were moving and would help me to talk some sense into our children."

"Let me guess. He didn't care at all."

"Quite the contrary, he was adamant that Vikram and Karen stay together. He was the one who encouraged them to get married. He wouldn't hear any talk of splitting up at all. He thought that their need to be together was 'romantic,' he said."

"My grandfather?" Danny balked, "Every story I've ever heard about him makes him sound like he was a mean son of a bitch." He cringed in apology at his coarse language and quickly amended, "I meant...um...a mean bastard."

Mimi's lips twitched in amusement. "Not much better but still an appropriate description of the man," she said, "He was a manipulative, calculating devil! He wanted to use Vikram and Karen's union to make inroads into our business holdings! To him, their marriage was nothing more than a merger."

"You think my dad was using her."

"I know he was using her. But when I tried to tell Karen that, she was adamant that I was wrong about all of it and that Vikram loved her. The more we tried to convince her to leave him and come home to us, the further she pulled away from us. By the time she eloped with Vikram, our relationship with Karen was already severely strained."

"So you disowned her?"

"No!" Mimi denied, "Quite the opposite. The marriage was done. Cameron and I had no choice but to accept Vikram for Karen's sake. So we did. We wanted to maintain a relationship with our daughter, especially after we learned she was pregnant with you."

"What happened after they got married?"

"In the beginning, Karen and I didn't speak very much because she was still too angry with us," Mimi recounted, "But after about six months, she started calling us again and right away I could tell how disillusioned she was. She said that Aravinda Desai had a stranglehold on his family and that they both hated and feared him. He proved to be even more controlling than his son and stopped allowing Karen to go out at all unless she was accompanied by Vikram, himself or his daughter Tara."

"My aunt Tara hated my mom," Danny confided, "She never made a secret of it."

"She didn't make a secret of it to Karen either. Karen often said she felt like she was living in a den of cannibalistic jackals."

"Sounds about right," Danny muttered.

"Karen reached her breaking point when she learned of her second pregnancy," Mimi said, "She was determined to get out of there. We had to make secret arrangements to get her back home because Aravinda was always so demanding about where and when we saw her. He would often make offhand comments about relocating back to India to 'gain peace for his family.'

"We were always so terrified that he would leave the country with you and your mother that we often yielded to whatever demands he had as long as we could see you and Karen."

"But you said that she was going to leave my dad."

Mimi nodded. "She was. She wanted to wait until after your birthday party and then she was going to run. She said she was determined not to raise her children in that house."

"Only she died before she could leave," he finished grimly, saying aloud what Mimi had left unspoken.

Her expression became haunted as she jerked a quick nod. "Yes, she died a few days before you were set to turn two. Her funeral was the last time Cameron and I had any contact with you. Vikram filed a court order against us claiming that we had been opposed to his marriage due to his Indian heritage. He claimed that he didn't want us influencing you with our hate. In the court's eyes he was a grieving father who was trying to protect his son. They granted his petition and we never saw you again."

"But none of that was true, right?" Danny asked tentatively, "You didn't disapprove of my father because he was Indian, did you?"

Mimi covered his hand with a reassuring smile, sensing without explanation that Danny's question had been born out of his fear of her rejection. "No. Not at all. We disapproved of Vikram because he was a controlling, manipulative liar, just like his father. He used my daughter to gain her fortune and then kept her a virtual prisoner the last three years of her life."

After everything Mimi had revealed to him, Danny had very little difficulty relating to his mother and the miserable existence she must have led in those last three years. Vikram hadn't controlled Danny quite to the extent he had his late wife but he had imposed his will on his son numerous times, especially where it concerned Tara. He had been forced to endure her presence every day of his life and then was daily told how wrong he was when he was anything less than appreciative for it.

He regarded his grandmother with a softened expression, grateful for the new understanding she had given him of his mother. Danny had no doubts that he could ask her anything about Karen and she would provide him with answers to the best of her knowledge. Therefore, he asked her the one question that he had wondered about his entire life, the one that no one had ever answered for him.

"How did she die?"

Mimi startled with surprise at the question, her pale, blonde brows drawing together in a frown. "You mean no one ever told you?"

Danny shook his head. He had once found an article about his mother's death on the internet when he was Googling her some years before. Other than mentioning that Karen Desai had died tragically while she was pregnant with her second child and that her lifeless body was later found by her sister-in-law, there hadn't been a great many details about what would cause a perfectly healthy woman in her early twenties to die suddenly. His grandmother provided the answer.

"Anaphylactic shock," she told him hoarsely, "Your mother had a peanut allergy. She died with her Epipen within ten feet of her reach."

He struggled to digest that revelation because it had been the last thing he was expecting to hear. "You're telling me my mother died from a peanut allergy?"

"It seems ridiculous, doesn't it?" Mimi grated bitterly, "And so oddly timed..."

She wisely refrained from sharing with Danny that she and Cameron had suspected for many years that Karen's death had been deliberate. That she should die on the eve of her plans to leave Vikram and ultimately divorce him seemed much too convenient. Besides that, their daughter had always taken great care with her diet as a result of her severe allergy and she was almost religious about what she ate. She had also always been careful to keep her rescue medication near her person at all times in case of an emergency. The thought that she would have inadvertently exposed herself to the allergen was ludicrous enough but the idea that she had been without her medicine as well...that seemed almost premeditated. Karen Kincaid Desai's death had been ruled officially an accident by the coroner but the Kincaid family had never believed it was anything less than cold-blooded murder.

Danny however, Mimi determined, was not ready to hear such things. He was still reeling from the truths he had learned within the last hour as well as his aunt's recent attempt to have him committed to a psych facility. He was also recovering from a very serious car accident that had involved one fatality and had very nearly cost him his own life in the process. He didn't need the added stress of knowing his father might very well have murdered his mother to keep her from leaving with his children. Danny didn't need to bear the burden of that at all. From Mimi's perspective, her young grandson had already been through more than enough in his short lifetime. As far as it depended upon her, she was going to spare him further pain.

"I want you to know something," she whispered as Danny continued to wrestle with processing all she had told him, "Your grandfather and I have always wanted you. We filed petition after petition to be granted custody of you. We never stopped fighting to have that court injunction barring contact with you overturned. We have never, never given up on you."

"Dad said that you didn't want me," Danny recounted thickly, "He said you would think I was too much of a troublemaker and would never accept me into your family. I believed him. I believed him my whole life."

"He lied to you." She gave him time to let that irrefutable truth sink in before she reached for his hand. "Come with me," she urged softly, "I want to show you something."

Despite his longsuffering groan, Danny allowed her to tug him from the bed. As he situated his walker to bear his weight, he whined, "Where are we going? You're not about to take me on some kind of spiritual hike, are you, because it's too early in the day for that."

"Stop your bellyaching," Mimi admonished him playfully, "and follow me."

She led him out of his room and down the corridor towards an unoccupied suite at the far end of the hallway. Mimi had explained on the first day of Danny's arrival that the room had once belonged to his mother. It seemed unspoken that the area was off limits so Danny was quite stunned when Mimi not only led him there but invited him to go inside and explore.

Danny prepared himself to find some untouched shrine dedicated to his dead mother's memory but instead he discovered what reminded him of a child's playroom. The space was brimming with toys and boxes upon boxes of unopened presents. He pivoted around in a slow shuffle as he took it all in with a low whistle of astonishment.

"Whoa...this is not what I was expecting," he told his grandmother, "You have Toys'R'Us up here." He turned to regard her quizzically. "What is all of this?"

"This is every birthday present, every 'I love you' gift, every milestone reward that your grandfather and I have purchased for you in the last nineteen years. It's not all children's toys though," she explained, "There are electronic devices and gaming systems and all kinds of things we knew a teenage boy would enjoy in here."

"Why?"

"Because we love you," she said, "Because we knew that one day we would see you again and, when we did, we wanted you to know that we never forgot about you. We never gave up hope that one day we would be together again. It was that hope that carried me through Karen's death. I would have never survived without it."

The rough emotion brimming in her voiced filled Danny with a baffling sense of guilt and he had a difficult time meeting her eyes right then. "I don't understand how you can look at me and not be reminded of my father," he told her, "and how he ruined your daughter's life."

"I look at you and I see Karen. You're the best part of her."

"I don't know about that," Danny mumbled self-deprecatingly.

Mimi smiled at him fondly. "I do."

Feeling himself being pushed dangerously close to tears and filled with determination not to shed them, Danny anxiously darted his eyes about the room for something to distract him from the heavy emotion burning in his chest right then. Salvation came in the form of a Lego pirate ship set. Danny lurched forward to sweep up the box with a wry smile.

"I had one of these when I was a kid," he remarked softly, adding before Mimi's eyes could cloud with disappointment, "I never had anyone to build it with me though. Jo was never much into Legos."

"Jo?"

"My best friend," Danny replied automatically only to amend the statement an instant later, "At least, she used to be my best friend." He set the box back down as his smile faded. "That's done now."

"Was she the pretty little blonde who used to sit with you while you were in the hospital?" Mimi wondered curiously.

Danny bobbed a short nod. "Yeah. She's the one."

"You two had a falling out? That's a shame. She seemed rather devoted to you."

Yeah well, looks can be deceiving, Danny thought to himself but he said aloud, "It's a long story."

Sensing the pain in his tone, Mimi offered herself as a confidante. "I'm a good listener," she said.

He shook his head at her implicit invitation. "Some other time maybe." After that, he turned his attention back to the Lego box, recalling all the hours he had spent on his own trying to piece that ship together after fruitlessly begging Jo to help him. It had been impossible to convince her to do something she didn't want to do. That was the reason her lie had hurt him so badly, because no one had forced her to manipulate him. On some level Jo had wanted to deceive him.

"Would you like to give it a try?"

Mimi's question abruptly cut through Danny's brooding reverie, startling him back into the present. He offered his grandmother an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, Mimi. What did you say?"

"I was asking if you would like to put that ship together."

Danny's eyes widened comically at the offer. "With you?"

"Of course with me," Mimi chuckled, "Unless you think you're too old for this sort of thing."

A slow smile spread across Danny's features, making him appear in that instance like a boy of nine rather than a man of nineteen. "You're on."

An hour later, Danny and Mimi were still sitting on the floor with a completed Lego pirate ship between them while they laughed and joked and engaged in a childish game of pretend little Lego men. That was the scene Cameron Kincaid discovered, when he poked his head into his daughter's old room and found his wife and grandson doing the most awful pirate imitations he had ever heard. He chuckled at the picture they made.

"Is this a private party or can anybody join?" he joked.

Without hesitation, Danny beckoned his grandfather forth to join their silly game of make believe. It was only in that moment when Danny was sitting there with his giggling grandparents that he fully understood for the first time in his entire life what it meant to have a family. Reactive tears sprang to his eyes with the realization, breaking open the sorrow and emptiness that had resided inside him for a lifetime. The sobs burst forth from his chest without warning, stunning his concerned grandparents into silence. He tried to stifle them with his fist but was helpless against the uncontrollable emotion that had suddenly overwhelmed him. The sudden breakdown was frightening to him and unstoppable.

"I-I'm s-sorry..." he wept helplessly, "I...I d-don't...know wh-why...I don't..."

"It's okay, sweetheart," Mimi soothed as she and Cameron moved to take their weeping grandson into their arms, "Let it all out, Danny. You're home now. You're safe."