Dr. Maura Isles

My origins were a mystery to me for most of my life. I knew I was adopted, and my attempts to unearth any information about my birth parents were in vain; all the court documents were sealed. They had obviously gone to great lengths to disassociate from me entirely.

My adoptive parents were kind, loving in their own, inimitable way, but their lives were frenetic and left very little room for me. I learned from an early age to accept this as a way of life, and I suppose I never received much love or attention simply because I didn't think to ask. I didn't know how to. Growing up as a rather isolated person beget this fervor within to know the truth, even as I'd begun to accept it would elude me. More than anything, more than even knowing about my birth parents, I wanted to have a sibling.

I recently discovered that I did, in fact, have a blood relative: my half-brother, Colin. We share a father, Patrick Doyle. I'd wanted to know his identity for so long, and then discovered that Patrick Doyle had been in hiding since I was born. He was an enforcer for the Irish Mob, he killed people in cold-blood.

And yet, when I met him, there was a tenderness to his nature that surprised me; it was in direct contrast to my perception of him as a man devoid of humanity. The terrible men he'd associated himself with had killed Colin in order to draw my father out.

So much killing, so much death. I still can't expunge those feelings of doubt, that I'm like him, that I surround myself in death, that our lives and careers are not as disparate as I'd wish them to be.

Sometimes I think I want one last chance to speak with him, sometimes I wish I could have known Colin.