She smiled at the memory of the family who’d loved her. “The Callahans wanted to adopt me, but I wasn’t ready for a family, not then.”

“Callahan,” Gideon repeated. “You took their name.”

“After I left, yes. We still keep in touch. They’re a good memory during a time when I had nothing good.”

Gideon’s face fell. “You had me.” But then he sucked in a harsh breath and she could see the moment that he truly understood. The hurt on his face gave way to horror. “But you didn’t know why I’d run. You didn’t know the truth. You must have thought I’d left you to rot in Eden.”

She nodded, both relieved and devastated all at once. “Mama tried to tell me, the day she got me out. But I didn’t want to listen. I’d been indoctrinated with the lie that you’d murdered Edward McPhearson because you didn’t want to work, because you were lazy.”

“Oh, Mercy,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. We were both victims of Eden.”

“It was hard afterward?” he asked tentatively. “After I left?”

“Yes,” she said simply. She wasn’t going to get into any of that right now. She had things that she needed to say first. “For Mama and for me. And I blamed you.”

“I understand.”

Mercy shook her head. “No, you really don’t. I have something to tell you and I need to get it out, so just let me talk, okay?”

Gideon nodded, his concern unabated. But he remained silent, just as she’d asked.

“I aged out at eighteen. I considered coming to find you, but . . . well, I didn’t want to. I knew where you were, of course. I’ve always known where you were.” Her lips curved, just a little. “I followed your career, even though I thought I hated you at the time. And I both lived for and hated the days you’d call me—my birthday and Christmas, like clockwork. I knew I should let my anger go. My therapist told me that it was eating me from the inside out, but I couldn’t. My hate was the only thing that kept me going sometimes.”

Gideon’s eyes filled and he opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut.

He’s going to hate me. I know it. “Anyway, after my eighteenth birthday, I found our grandparents. Or one of them, anyway. Mama’s father had passed away a few years before, and her mother was in hospice. Cancer.” Abruptly on edge, Mercy rose and began to pace around Karl’s office. “She knew I was Mama’s daughter at first sight. Actually, for a minute she thought I was Mama.”

“You look just like her,” Gideon murmured, then clamped his lips closed again.

Mercy remembered the moment she’d laid eyes on her maternal grandmother, the absolute joy in the old woman’s eyes. Like Mercy had been the prodigal daughter, returning home. But mostly she remembered how the old woman had wept when she realized that her daughter was dead and that she’d missed all of Mercy’s life.