A Simple Twist of Fate

by HelenKay Dimon

  He held up the envelope. “What’s in here?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  He didn’t believe that any more than he believed Sophie’s claims of innocence. Leah called for his mom to come there. Callen had figured out that much, which meant the contents of the envelope related back to his mother in some way. “But whatever is in here made you rush to town though, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Her answers were all over the place. “Mom, that makes no sense.”

  She reached down and gathered up the clothes Beck had knocked off the rocking chair in his rush to get out of there. She folded his shirt and laid it over her arm. “I don’t know what document or information is in there, but I know the subject matter. I know what Kristin Accord wants to tell you because I know who she is.”

  “And that is?”

  “Your mother’s best friend.”

  The more she said, the less sense she made. “Since when do you talk about yourself in the third person?”

  She lifted her chin in the direction of the envelope. “It’s about your mother and her past.”

  Something that felt like relief smacked into him. If this was about a deep, dark family secret, he could handle that. Nothing could be worse than all Charlie had done. Whatever his mother did to get through didn’t matter. He didn’t want details but he’d never judge her for it. He knew what it took to survive. Charlie had taught him that lesson well.

  Just like Leah’s father being Charlie’s partner didn’t mean anything to them and didn’t color how they saw Leah. Whatever happened in his mother’s past should stay there.

  Callen just wondered what any of that had to do with him. “This is about something you did when you were a kid or when we were with Charlie, right? Why would I care about that?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I said your mother.”

  It had been so long since he’d seen her cry. That day he slipped into her doorway when she didn’t know he was there. Beck had been a baby and she was on the phone begging Charlie for help, offering to do anything. Even as a young kid Callen had known how awful the moment was for her and what it took for her to get there.

  Seeing the start of her tears again now punched his gut as hard now as it had back then. “What are you saying?”

  “Some piece of paper in that envelope probably gives you the name of your birth mother, your father’s first wife. The one he kept a secret and hid.” Her voice had gone so soft that he had to strain to hear it. “I was wife number two.”

  Callen could barely think over the rushing sound in his ears. “I don’t . . . What?”

  “I couldn’t stop Charlie from taking you when you were ten because he reminded me every day, in every way, how I was your mother through circumstances of our marriage but not by birth. He told me I didn’t have a choice and would never win against him in court because you didn’t have a biological tie to me.” She rubbed a hand over her stomach. “He threatened to disappear with you and make sure I never saw you again. I thought if I placated him, he’d bring you back or at least let me see you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She wiped at the tears streaking down her cheeks. “Please don’t make me say the words again.”

  “You’re not my mother.” The reality rolled through Callen until it pounded in his brain. This couldn’t be happening . . . but it was. He’d thought about what secrets the envelope could hold and never imagined this sick answer.

  “You were mine and he took you.”

  “But you said—”

  “I don’t care who gave birth to you.”

  “Who is my mother?” It hurt to say the words. Actually burned a path up his throat. They were foreign and awful and he still couldn’t process the reality behind them.

  “I am.” She stared, her blue eyes flashing with fire as she made the vow.

  “You know what I’m asking.” And it killed him that she made him beg for information.

  “I didn’t know your birth mother. She was gone by the time Charlie found me, but her name was Sylvia and Kristin was her best friend.”

  The word snuck through the numbness falling over his body. “Was?”

  “Charlie said she threatened to hurt you, that she was sick, so he had to take you and get custody. He had documents to back it all up, and I loved you the second I saw you, so—”

  “Don’t say that. Not right now.”

  “The records I found much later supported the illness and her signing over custody, though heaven only knows what part Charlie played in driving the poor woman mad.” She let out a long exhale. “Sylvia died a few years after Charlie and I got married and after we moved to Sweetwater. The three of us came here as a family and no one questioned it even though I was so young.”

  None of it made sense. “But I’ve seen my birth certificate.”

  “The one Charlie wanted you to see. It’s not real. Like everything else, it was part of the cover. Seeing how good he was at lying about it should have clued me in. I should have . . . ” She swallowed. “But I thought he was protecting you.”

  Callen sat down hard on the mattress. It was as if his legs lost all feeling. He was only a half-brother to Declan and Beck. He didn’t share any of her DNA. There were days when he was a teen that thinking maybe he’d inherited something decent from her had been all that kept him going over the edge. Now he knew that to be a joke.

  He was the son of a con man and a sick dead woman he’d never know.

  “You didn’t tell me. Neither did Charlie.” Those facts were obvious, but Callen needed to say them.

  “No.”

  His gaze went back to her. “Why?”

  “Because in every way that mattered, you were mine. You are mine. You have always been my son. Will always be, no matter how hard Charlie tried to destroy that. I love you as much as I love Beck and Declan. There has never been a difference in my mind.”

  “That’s not true.” He’d been there, lived it.

  “It is.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Callen sat forward with his elbows balanced on his knees but sat back up again just as fast. “You hide this huge thing and—”

  “I love you.” She ran a hand over his hair.

  The touch was so familiar and yet so wrong. He pushed it away. “Don’t. I can’t stand any of that right now.”

  “Callen, please listen to me.”

  He could hear the tears in her voice. See them on her face.

  “What is it about the women in this house? The lying.” His mind scattered with his thoughts moving in a hundred directions. He couldn’t think. He needed to stand up and walk out of there. “I can’t do this.”

  “Listen to me.” She stepped in front of him.

  He didn’t dare touch her and couldn’t move around her because she somehow made her thin frame fill the entire doorway. “Don’t do this.”

  “I kept it from you at first because you’d had enough turmoil and I didn’t know what Charlie had done to you while you were gone.”

  The excuse was convenient and not very believable. “I’m thirty-four.”

  “And then I kept it from you because I was selfish. I admit that.” She brushed away the tears as the ache filed her scratchy voice. “I was so desperate to have you back in my life and to earn your love again. I knew if I told you right then, when you were so raw and closed off, you would cut me off forever.”

  He couldn’t even get there. Seeing her, the pain on her face and in her body language. Hearing the pleading and watching the reflection in her sad eyes. He couldn’t handle it. “I have to get out of here.”

  “Please don’t go.”

  Declan appeared behind her in the hall. “What’s going on in here? Sophie’s car is racing out of the driveway and Beck is walking into the woods.”

  Callen refused
to listen to one more syllable. He pushed by both of them with a quick glance for Declan. “Ask your mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Beck sat on the television room couch and stared at his hands where they hung together between his legs. The screen stayed black even as four adults hovered around it. But they weren’t there to watch a movie. This was family-talk time. Well, family minus Cal, which was what Beck feared the family would now be.

  It would be like Cal to separate and move on. This time Beck would follow and drag him back. The days of the Lone Wolf were over.

  But Beck understood why his oldest brother needed space. There wasn’t even a word to describe how much today sucked. It started out with shopping, which Beck hated, then morphed into a series of body blows from the women in his life. And they kept coming. This one with his mother he couldn’t even understand.

  “You’re not Callen’s mother.” The words tasted awful and sounded worse.

  His mom jerked in her chair across from him and her chin came up. “I absolutely am.”

  None of this made sense. On top of the Sophie betrayal this bordered on too much. One family could only handle so much bad news. It kept rolling over them. Whatever karmic fuck-up his ancestors created caused unending blowback now. Beck didn’t even believe in that sort of thing, but he’d given up trying to find a rational explanation. This much bad luck had to come from somewhere.

  Declan with his wrinkled shirt and rough shadow of stubble around his chin sat next to Beck on the couch. With his head back against the cushions and a blank stare at some unidentifiable spot on the far wall, every inch of Declan telegraphed exhaustion. Emotional free fall did that to a guy.

  Before all the brothers went down for the count, Beck tried one more time to make sense of it all. “I don’t understand, Mom.”

  Leah sat on the armrest next to her with a protective hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “She isn’t talking about being his birth mother. She is his mother in every other way.”

  The voice brought Beck’s attention zinging back to Leah. The exposure of the secret came through her. She stumbled onto something and shared it with cryptic remarks about how Callen shouldn’t worry about it.

  Beck loved her with Declan, but her role in this ticked him off. “And you knew about this the whole time and didn’t say anything?”

  “Hey.” That’s all Declan said, all without life or movement behind the word.

  Leah nodded. “I suspected.”

  The women in this family had the damnedest time just saying things in concise statements. Beck hated that in a client and didn’t love it in a family member either. And that’s how he saw Leah. She wasn’t at this second but she would be, and soon, unless Declan totally lost his mind.

  The comfort of thinking of her as a sister let Beck fight with her now. “What does that mean, Leah?”

  “The paper in that envelope is from the private investigator I had years ago. I knew from talking to Declan early on that he thought your mom was Charlie’s first wife, but my notes said something else.”

  “So you dug deeper.” That’s what she did. Sophie hid things and Leah nosed around until she found an answer.

  Two strong women. Two annoying habits.

  “I didn’t put it all together until a month ago.” Leah sat up straighter. “For years I investigated everything, collected a lot of information about your family. That’s not a surprise. You knew that from day one, so don’t try to say I was hiding it.”

  “Right.” Taking out his anger at Sophie on Leah wasn’t the answer. It also might be the one thing that woke Declan out of his stupor. “Fine.”

  “The investigator came across it thanks to a stray comment from some guy Charlie knew way back when who died right after the call. My guy tracked down the marriage, which wasn’t easy because in true Charlie style it was buried behind a pile of documents and a fake name. Hell, to my knowledge even the FBI and police didn’t find it.” Leah glanced at Declan then continued when he nodded. “But I had this document on an unknown marriage.”

  “And you couldn’t let it go,” Beck said, not feeling very charitable at the moment.

  “The investigator poked around and eventually a person led him to someone through someone else, who gave Kristin’s name as the best, possibly only, friend of the unknown first wife.”

  His mother placed a hand over Leah’s. “Charlie using a fake name on the marriage certificate is something I didn’t know at the time. If I had, maybe I would have seen the cons coming. But, really, who knows what I would have done. I already loved Charlie and Cal.”

  Declan winced. “Mom—”

  “The bottom line is her name was Sylvia Jenkins.”

  “There was a note, unsubstantiated, about a baby.” Leah closed her eyes and blew out a long breath. “I knew from the timeline what that suggested. The idea that Cal came before your parents’ marriage wouldn’t have been that unusual, but I knew about the marriage to this other woman and how the divorce happened right before your parents’ marriage and move to Sweetwater. It looked like it had to be more than a simple case of a kid out of wedlock.”

  Rage blew inside of Beck. He felt it simmer and explode. He clamped his hands on his thighs, digging his fingernails into the denim, to give his anger an outlet. “And that didn’t strike you as big news?”

  “It wasn’t my secret to tell and, honestly, Cal had been through so much—you all had—that I didn’t see what knowing right then would accomplish. You were growing together. Why risk ripping you apart?”

  Beck pushed up from the couch and walked to the alcove near the built-in bookcases. Anything to funnel the energy speeding through him in another direction. “Leah, come on. This is about his birth mother.”

  “Ease up on her and do it now.” As predicted, Declan woke up in time to defend Leah. It was as if he had an internal watchtower and if anyone breeched he jumped to alert. He even sat up straighter. “She handed the information to Cal and he ignored it. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, I’m the one who did.” When Leah started to say something, his mom stopped her. “My choices caused this.”

  “You were trying to protect Cal.” Leah glared at the brothers as if daring them to disagree.

  “At first. Later I was trying to preserve a relationship with him.” His mom made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “It was unfair and the exact wrong way to handle it.”

  Beck’s frustration bubbled over. The lying, the secrets. The excuses. He’d been fed them his whole life until it all ran together. Losing Sophie. Potentially losing Cal. Dealing with the one huge thing his mother always held back. The one thing they deserved to know.

  He grabbed on to the first thought that came into his head. “Charlie lied and then you turned around and did the same thing.”

  He regretted the words the second they came out. The shock on his mother’s pale face did him in.

  Declan jumped to his feet and was in his face a second later. “Beck, back the fuck off.”

  “It’s okay.” His mom said the words but she couldn’t sell them. Her voice cracked at the end.

  “No, it’s not.” Declan stood right in front of Beck, looking every inch the rescuer his mother tagged him to be.

  She stepped between them with a reassuring hand on both their arms. But her gaze stayed on Beck. “Do you really think taking in a baby, loving him and mourning his loss when he was torn out of the house equals all your father’s crimes?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean . . . sorry.” Guilt made it hard for Beck to even look at her right then, so he stared out over the backyard and the swing set jumping in the wind.

  “There’s enough blame to go around. Charlie shoulders most of it, and I own my share for not stepping up and telling you all sooner.” She looked from Beck to Declan and back again. “But do not for one second th
ink this means I love Callen any less or that I have any intention of giving him up.”

  “How does he bounce back from this?” Beck asked, because he really didn’t know.

  “I’m not sure.” His mom inched away, increasing the circle when Leah stood up to join them.

  Declan put an arm around Leah and the fight rushed out of him. “Like he always does. Cal is the most resilient guy I know, and that’s coming from a guy who spent ten years in the army and a third of those in Iraq.”

  “Okay, then where do we go from here?” Beck gave a voice to the fear that ran through him. “He separated himself from us before. I don’t want that again.”

  Leah cuddled closer to Declan. “You let him know none of this information changes anything. That’s what you all made clear to me about my dad after I found out what he did, and it made all the difference.”

  “I’ll try to get Callen to forgive me. If it takes a lifetime I’ll do it.” His mom slipped her hand in Beck’s as she talked. “And if he can’t, I’ll keep loving him anyway.”

  Declan didn’t waste time on the loving angle. He went right for the hit. Took up his military stance—legs apart and arms crossed—to get his point across. “Speaking of forgiveness . . .”

  “Don’t.” Beck didn’t want another word.

  “There has to be an explanation.” Leah sighed. “I heard how Sophie talked about you. Saw how she looked at you.”

  Beck didn’t pretend to be confused by the comment. “She couldn’t give me one.”

  Declan nodded, taking his time as if he’d studied this relationship thing and had it all figured out. “Then there’s only one thing to do.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Leah nudged Declan. “Just tell him what to do before he makes a total mess of his love life.”

  “Ask Sophie again, because the alternative is losing her.” All amusement faded from Declan’s face. “Any idiot can see you’re not ready for that.”