Jimmy had been driving to my house that night with an engagement ring in his pocket when a drunk driver hit him. He spent three weeks unconscious at St. Joseph’s Hospital. When Jimmy finally awakened, he immediately asked for me. My mother visited him once and told him I had died in another car accident and that my funeral was already over. She hated Jimmy because he was poor and because his family name was Cole.

She had deliberately told each of us the exact lie needed to separate us forever. Wendell had discovered my locket in the mud beneath the bluff after watching me throw it away. Because he knew I was alive, he assumed I had cruelly abandoned Jimmy. He kept the locket and hospital wristband, believing his brother was better off grieving than knowing the woman he loved had rejected him. Jimmy never married. After suffering strokes in his fifties, he eventually moved into Riverview Manor. Wendell looked at me through tears and offered to take me there immediately.