“I don’t want your empire,” she whispered, and the tears were falling again, unhidden.

“I never did.

I don’t want the shares or the money or the Lake House.

You can keep every dollar of it.

I just wanted a brother.

That’s the whole of it.

I spent my entire life being someone’s secret, and I came here to look at the family I was kept out of, and somewhere in six months of sitting with a dying woman who turned out to be the kindest person I ever met, I stopped wanting to look at you all from the outside.

I wanted in.