by Kilby Blades
He stood a few inches over six feet—the exact same height as Dev. His hair was salt and pepper with a lot more pepper than salt. He was long and lean, like Dev—and clearly fit. Dev had been told many times that his green eyes were bright; until that moment, he’d never appreciated what that comment meant.
Another thing: despite how Don Jr. had made it sound in his conversation with Shea, the man hardly looked frail or ailing. Donovan Packard Sr. looked to be the picture of health, whatever the sixty-year-old version of that was. All of his adult life, Dev had worried about his mother’s shitty genetics. It was a gift unto itself to find the man so well-preserved.
“My son defied my orders.” All the while, Don Sr.’s eyes remained on Dev’s. Something in Dev’s stomach flipped to hear the man talk about his son. Clearly, Senior was referring to Junior. But the way Senior looked at Dev caused Dev to believe the man knew who he was.
“Don Jr. was supposed to be running the mills—not running them into the ground. Any transactions he told you about pertaining to the redevelopment of any of our holdings are completely unauthorized.”
By then, he had broken Dev’s gaze and looked around to the other players in the room.
“My attorney in Denver notified me of several things my son did not. I’m here to unravel all of this.”
When he mentioned his attorney in Denver, he jutted his chin toward the man who had walked in behind him—one William Hewitt, who Dev recognized from having seen his picture on the web page for the Law Offices of Hewitt & Hewitt. William Hewitt was the same attorney Dev had appealed to, to help Sapling out of this predicament—the one Trudy connected him to, who had been helping the town for years. William Hewitt was part of the puzzle—the executor of Donovan Packard’s promise to his mother that he would protect the town.
Dev wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Cliff look so surprised, though that look was replaced in short order by a hint of excitement. “That’s more like it,” he praised, not sparing another glance at the Don Jr.’s lackeys. “Where do we start?”
Donovan Packard’s gaze swung back to Dev. “With the head of your Economic Development Council—the one who made contact with my attorney. If you’d all be so kind to clear the room, I’d like to speak with Devon Kingston, alone.”
“Do you know who I am?” Donovan Packard asked only after they were the only ones left in the office. He still stood next to the table and his hands were on his hips. With fewer people crowding the room, Dev was still in awe of all the things that looked the same. From the loose waves of his hair, to the slant of his nose to his sun-kissed skin, to his very physique, the man was a facsimile of Dev.
“I found out yesterday, right about this time.” It was hard for Dev to wrap his head around the past twenty-four hours.
“Who told you?” Don wanted to know.
“Trudy,” Dev revealed. “Then a DNA test—a comparison of samples from me and Don Jr. from the crime scenes.”
When Donovan Sr. didn’t say anything more, Dev asked what had to be asked: “How long have you known?”
“Known for certain?” Don looked at his watch. “Two minutes. Maybe three.”
Heat rose in Dev’s stomach at what sounded like it had to be a lie.
“You’re the spitting image of me at a certain age,” Don went on. “There was one point—years ago—when I suspected, but I let it lie.”
“Why?” Dev demanded, his baser instincts getting the better of him as something deep inside spouted off without permission. “What kind of man who suspects he might have a child decides to stay away?”
“A selfish one. A man who held hope that the love of his life would take him back one day.”
It was a cryptic non-answer. Dev was about to tell him just that when Donovan Packard sighed and asked, “What do you already know?”
But Dev wanted the whole story—not an interrogation, a confession. “Assume that I know nothing.”
Packard raised his hand to grab the back of his neck. Dev tried to ignore the fact that he often made the same gesture. He needed to hear what was to come.
“Like I said, Josie was the love of my life. But loving a woman is complicated if it doesn’t come at the right time. I was older. And married. And I’d lied to everyone in town about my circumstances—things that seemed innocent enough at the time. They related to my own problems that I didn’t think anyone needed to know. Only, I didn’t anticipate at the beginning how tethered I would become to this place. I didn’t expect the things I lied about would matter when I told them early on.”
Only to signal that he was listening, Dev nodded, but he couldn’t help becoming distracted. He couldn’t help that Don’s story made him think of Shea, and to wonder what story she’d told herself about her lies.
“Go on,” Dev implored, wanting him to get to the important part—the part where he suspected but did nothing. Dev wanted to see how he planned to justify that.
“I realized early on that I wanted to be with Josie,” Don continued. “My plan was to marry her, but there were chess pieces to move. I needed to divorce my wife. Don Jr. was six at that point and there was another one on the way. It was damned-near impossible that the baby my wife was expecting was mine. I spent so much time in Sapling during those years and we were having marital problems. I had to be careful about sorting out that piece, because I’d been unfaithful too. It was gearing up to be a messy divorce, and I knew I needed to tread lightly.”
“Did you ever tell my mother about your wife?” Dev quizzed, wanting to compare his version of the story with Trudy’s, some part of him wanting to catch the man in a lie.
“No,” he answered. “I’m ashamed to say I didn’t. I was too busy figuring it all out—thinking through how it could be with your mother and also be a father to Don Jr. in New York. And I wanted to do it quietly. If I sullied my own reputation, the worse it would be for her.”
Dev rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Damn, but he was tired. And this was a lot to take in.
“And just what were you telling my mom while you were thinking things through?” Dev wasn’t proud of using air quotes. But that was just the state of mind he was in.
Donovan looked regretful. “Josie knew I wanted to propose. We talked all the time about the rest of our lives—about traveling the world and having kids and settling back down in Sapling. The truth is, I fell in love with this place. It’s still one of my favorite places in the world. I still think about the life we would have had if my wife hadn’t shown up to surprise me that day.”
Now it was Don whose voice was laced with sarcasm.
“I take it her visit wasn’t a surprise?” Dev guessed.
“More like an ambush.” Don’s voice was dark. “She’d figured things out, about me and Josie. There was one moment—when we were all in the same room together—when I could’ve come clean to them both. But the second I saw my wife, I knew why she’d come. It wasn’t to confront her cheating husband and it sure as hell wasn’t a pleasure trip. For her, it was desperation, and hedging her bets.
“She wanted to intimidate Josie just in case things didn’t work out between she and her lover; and she might have wanted to preserve our marriage to save face. Her worst fear at that point was nobody claiming the baby and her raising both kids, divorced and alone. But she didn’t want to be penniless and she knew I was in a good position to win against her in court. In that sense, she wanted to intimidate me, too—to show me she wasn’t afraid to use what she knew about Josie as a bargaining chip.”
Dev took a minute to let all the puzzle pieces fit together in his mind.
“Why didn’t you just tell my mother the truth? How did you not get that not telling her was the biggest risk?” He was asking as much for himself and his situation with Shea as he was for his mother.
“I should have—obviously. But there were risks on the other side, too. I was afraid of what the truth would cost. Her father knew she was seeing someone—he didn’t know it was me, but he promise
d her, any older man who was interested in her but wanted to keep the relationship a secret was garbage. He was already trying to edge me out.”
“He probably figured out you were married.” Dev pointed out what sounded obvious.
“Yeah,” Don agreed. “He probably did. Telling her the truth would confirm what every naysayer in her life was whispering in her ear. I didn’t want to hand her a stinking pile of shit. I wanted to come to her later, with my tail between my legs, having already solved the problem I’d created.”
“Ask for permission, not forgiveness…” Dev spoke out loud the old adage as soon as it came to mind.
“And if I’m honest,” Don piped up some time later, as Dev took moments of silence to process. “…I knew the longer we were together, the more attached she would be. I thought I could fix everything if I just had enough time.”
“So that’s it?” Dev challenged. “You abandoning your child and breaking my mother’s heart was all good intentions gone wrong?”
Don Packard stood a little straighter. “Absolutely not. It was me being selfish and stupid. And after I made my mistake, the damage had been done. Josie was the only woman for me. Only, after what I did, she wouldn’t have me. The only decent thing for me to do, was honor her wishes.”
Dev thought about this for minutes, heedless of the people waiting down the hall. They were supposed to be talking about business, and the mills. But Dev had hours’ worth of questions and he’d waited long enough.
“Where did your suspicions about me factor in?”
“She made me promise to stay away. And I did, except for the quarterly meetings. You have to understand, during those years, I was heavily involved in the daily operations of the mills. Me leaving town so quickly compromised the operations. It wasn’t often, but there were times when I had to be here.”
“For the most part, I kept to myself—I stayed in my house on the mountain. Sometimes I flew in and out on the same day. At the most, I stayed one or two nights at a time. It killed me, being here without her. And I wanted to respect her wishes. I thought maybe, in a year or two, there would have been enough water under the bridge for she and I to reconcile. By then, I had long-since divorced my wife.
“Then I saw you.” Donovan’s voice caught and his shamed eyes met Dev’s. “Only, I didn’t know it was you. Standing in front of you now, the resemblance is unmistakable. But that day, you were in a stroller and you were little. It was hard to tell how old you were, which made the math impossible. You could have been anywhere from eighteen months to over two.
“But that wasn’t the part that got me. Josie wasn’t pushing the stroller—she was holding her belly. And the second one…well, I knew that one wasn’t mine. And the man who pushed the stroller…he looked like a good man. All three of you looked happy.”
Dev could’ve said a lot in that moment—could’ve shot down his bullshit logic. Frankly, some of it sounded like excuses. It was a handy story Don had told himself—a convenient all’s well that ends well moment the man used to absolve himself from digging too deeply. Donovan had the resources to hire a private investigator—to dig up Dev’s birth records and do the math.
“After your mother died…” Donovan continued. “I started coming here secretly—not in any official business capacity. I had phased myself out of the ops chain a decade before. But I never stopped loving this place. Whenever I come, I keep to myself—I rent a car and drive in from Denver. I stay at the little cabin I lived in while they were building the glass house. It’s a place I spent time in with Josie. I go fishing on the river and I hike up to Bison’s Bluff. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the sunset up there.”
And just like that—in an instant—Dev’s anger drained away and tears sprang to his eyes. For the first time in a long time, he really missed his mom, not in that same bittersweet way his heart did every time he thought about her—in a way that kicked him in the gut.
“I’m giving you the mills,” Donovan said. “Not selling them—giving them to you freely—and not out of any misplaced guilt. My attorney in Denver doesn’t know anything about me being your father. But he sent me your pitch and he told me he vetted the credentials of the person who sent it. I knew it was right for Sapling before I knew anything about it coming from you.”
Dev hardly knew what to say. First, he needed to believe it. He didn’t know whether he believed anything that had happened to him over the past forty-eight hours.
“And the last thing I have to say...” Don continued, “…and I should’ve said it first—is that I’m sorry for what I did to your mother and to you. I never married again—never really loved again either. Lying to Josie was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I have regretted it all my life.”
Dev swallowed thickly, still unable to speak. When Donovan approached him, Dev’s heart raced. Soon, they were face-to-face, and Don Sr.’s hand was on Dev’s shoulder. Dev didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Was this all he would ever get from Donovan Packard or was this just the beginning?
“You seem like a good man and I’m grateful for that. Whoever raised you did better than I did with mine. My other son’s sitting in jail right now for crimes he probably committed. What you’re planning to do here…I couldn’t admire you more. And if you ever want to see me, my door will be open to you.”
38
The Geek
Shea
“Who are you and what have you done with the real Kendrick?”
Shea was only half-joking. She expected Kendrick to laugh in that smooth way of his as they sped away from The Big Spoon, Shea still felt tingly and shaky and numb from everything that had happened that day. She felt like she could sleep until morning and it was barely three o’clock in the afternoon.
“Oh, we’re gonna get to that,” he informed her. This was the first moment they’d been alone. When he’d arrived, they’d been in the thick of planning.
After Keenan had gone, Shea’s recap call to Tasha had taken time.
“And you’re gonna tell me why today was the first time I heard a few things about Keenan. Right now, I’m pretty sure you’re still in shock. We’re gonna go back to the house, fix a stiff drink and tell one another a few things we should have before now. And we’re gonna be honest. No half-stories or half-truths. I think we’ve passed that point?”
He tore his eyes away from the road long enough to ask the question with is expression.
“Alright. We have a deal.”
He quieted then and Shea let herself enjoy the feeling of the cool window glass against her temple, and the new leather smell of his car. Even the way her body compressed into the seat with him driving so fast and the way the car hugged the road had a hypnotic effect on her. She didn’t realize she was drifting off until the car stopped, and she was in the driveway in front of her door. Butters had been awkward and confined in the crate that was getting smaller for her the bigger she grew, and she trotted eagerly in front of Kendrick and Shea after she’d been let out.
Shea smiled through a large yawn when—two full minutes after they’d entered the house and closed the door behind them—Kendrick was still in the entryway, knee bent, petting and cooing to her dog.
Shea, for her part, had padded past the kitchen and onto the sofa, where she meant to sit and rest for just a while. That one minute was all it took for her to fall fast asleep.
Shea awoke to the vision of Kendrick sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, one perpendicular to the one on which she lay. A blanket had been loosely thrown over her, but her real source of heat was her dog. Butters’ head rested on Shea’s calves and her dog’s whole body covered her feet. She’d already grown a lot since Shea had brought her home.
Kendrick was texting somebody, but that neutral look he often had on his face was replaced by something new: the hint of a goofy smile. It was the kind of smile you only sported when you were flirting. Shea had sat in that very same spot, probably with that very same look on her own face all those times she
’d texted with Dev.
“Who’s the lucky girl?” Shea wanted to know. Her voice was scratchier than she’d anticipated, certainly from disuse. When she’d fallen asleep, it had been light out. It wasn’t anymore.
“Her name’s Cortez,” he reported.
“How long have you been dating?” Shea wanted to know.
“Oh, we’re not together,” he said, turning his attention back to texting just for a moment. “Yet.”
Kendrick was being playful but him actually dating someone was a big deal. He was probably a workaholic—and he really got into his computer stuff. He hoped this Cortez person was geeky as hell.
“How ‘bout Dev?” Kendrick asked too innocently. “How long have the two of you been together?”
“Actually, right now, we’re not.”
Kendrick stopped his texting and threw his phone down on the sofa.
“I’ve known you going on fifteen years and I have never seen you look at anyone like that. What are you waiting for, girl?”
“Oh, I don’t know…maybe for my divorce to go through and my life to stop being so fucked up?”
Kendrick frowned and shook his head a little. “You’re putting too much stock in something that doesn’t really exist. You don’t need to wait for a divorce or anything else in order for you to move on.”
“Kendrick. I can’t even leave the country right now because me skipping town would make me look even guiltier for taking the money. The day this divorce is final is the day I get my life back.”
But Kendrick shook his head. “You’re making it too binary, Shea. You’ve spun it up in your mind so that everything that’s wrong with your life magically resolves the second your divorce goes through. It’s the same thing you did when I first met you and you were getting away from your dad. You thought some big event was going to fix your life.”