Finally we stood in front of Grandpa’s room, the door ajar. The nameplate read Blake Lorcan, though they’d misspelled it, using a k instead of a c in Lorcan. He was one of the patients that was allowed to wander the Pavilion; perfectly safe, just totally bonkers. None of the anti-psychotics, sedatives or whatever else the doctors had tried had worked. He was trapped inside his head, and the monsters that haunted him there had gotten him into trouble more than once in the real world.

Mom had tried putting him in an old folks home, but he was still too young for that—too healthy. So the Eric Martin Pavilion Mental Institute it was. I pushed the door open and peeked inside. Grandpa was sitting in his chair, staring out the window.

“Grandpa!” Ashling called out, dashing into the room. I don’t think she noticed, but I saw him jump when she spoke; shudder when she gave him a hug.

He tipped his head and stared at Ashling, his eyes fogged over. “Hello? Who be here?” The faintest of Irish accents was still on his tongue from his early years.

Ashling’s face fell, and she dropped to her knees in front of him. She had always had a tighter relationship with Grandpa; he’d been our surrogate father, the only male role model we’d ever had.

“Grandpa, it’s me, Ashling. I came to visit you,” she said, her hands reaching out to take his. He pulled his fingers away from her, slowly bringing them to his chest.

I sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “That isn’t very nice Grandpa. Ashling and I came here to see you. We didn’t have to come you know.” Ashling flinched at my hard words. I shrugged; there was no point in pulling any punches. It wasn’t likely he’d remember anyway.

Ashling sat next to Grandpa, and took his hands in hers, speaking softly to him. I looked out the window, not really seeing the view, just thinking.

Our family was a weird one at best. Mom had all but ignored us, though, if there was one of us she preferred, I suppose it would have been me—though saying she favoured me was a stretch. All it meant was that she hadn’t completely ignored me. As a young child I’d seen how her behaviour towards us affected Ashling and tried to make up for it in my sister’s life. Grandpa, he’d favoured Ashling, coddling and spoiling her to the point where I wanted to pull my hair out, while he snubbed me, many days acting as if I didn’t even exist. It didn’t surprise me that I’d always felt as if we didn’t fit; as if there was some gaping piece in our genetics that kept our mother from loving us.