Chapter 2 - The Brother Who Died
His name was Caleb Mercer.
My older brother.
He was seventeen when I was fifteen.
And according to every adult in my life, Caleb died in the fire that destroyed the detached guesthouse behind our family home.
I never saw his body.
That was not unusual after the fire.
Or at least I had been told it wasn’t.
My mother identified him.
My father handled the funeral.
Closed casket.
Three weeks later, Mom took me to Boston.
Dad disappeared from our lives soon afterward.
I spent fifteen years believing grief had simply destroyed what remained of our family.
Now Mason stood in my dining room claiming to be Caleb.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the alternative was impossible.
“Caleb had blond hair.”
“So did I.”
“You don’t.”
“I was seventeen.”
“His eyes were blue.”
“Contacts.”
That answer was too fast.
I stared at him.
“Show me your shoulder.”
Mason went still.
Caleb had fallen from a tree when he was eleven.
A long scar ran from his left shoulder toward his back.
Mason didn’t move.
“Show me.”
“No.”
“Because you don’t have it.”
His jaw tightened.
I suddenly understood.
He wasn’t my brother.
But he knew about the scar.
Which meant he knew Caleb.
“How?”
Mason grabbed the photograph.
I refused to let go.
It tore down the middle.
His half showed his younger face.
Mine showed the staircase.
Then Mason whispered:
“You really don’t remember me.”
“Apparently not.”
“I lived in that house for four months.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The year before the fire.”
I tried to reconstruct my childhood.
That year had been chaos.
My mother, Diane, suffered what everyone called “nervous exhaustion.”
My father, Richard Mercer, traveled constantly.
Caleb fought with him.
I spent months with my grandmother.
Could another teenager have stayed in the house?
Maybe.
Then Mason said a name I had not heard in fifteen years.
“Daniel Reed.”
I froze.
Daniel was Caleb’s best friend.
Quiet boy.
Dark hair.
Always carrying a camera.
He practically lived at our house during the summer before the fire.
I remembered him only vaguely because I had been thirteen.
Mason watched recognition arrive.
“Yes.”
“You were Daniel?”
“I changed my name.”
“Why?”
He looked toward the torn photograph.
“Because Daniel Reed was supposed to be dead too.”
My skin went cold.
“What happened that night?”
Mason laughed bitterly.
“You married me before asking that?”
“I didn’t know who you were!”
“You didn’t recognize me.”
“I was thirteen!”
“Exactly.”
The word landed strangely.
Not accusation.
Resentment.
Then:
“Your family destroyed mine, Emma.”
There it was.
Not brother.
Enemy.
The marriage suddenly felt different beneath my feet.
Two years of dates.
Proposal.
Wedding.
Three days.
Was any of it real?
“What did my family do?”
Mason stared at me.
“That fire wasn’t an accident.”
May you like
I stopped breathing.
“And Caleb didn’t die in it.”
