Brandon sighed. “There’s not much to tell.” His eyes were withdrawn. Their gazes met. But, he was somewhere else, far away and distant. “But you’re right. I did promise you those things. What do you want to know?”
Sandra felt a little twinge of regret about pressing him on the subject. Maybe it was still too early. But, just like he wanted her to be comfortable around him, she wanted Brandon to be comfortable around her, too. So, she curled into his body, pressing her soft curves against his hard planes, and said in her gentlest voice, “I just want to know about you, Brandon.”
He smiled, but the expression did not touch his eyes. “I was the oldest of the clan.”
“You have brothers?” she probed softly. “Sisters?”
“Four brothers, three sisters,” Brandon said stiffly. “I loved them very much.”
“Oh.” It was a soft murmur. The way he said that, said loved instead of love, made it sound like some great tragedy had befallen his family. Clarisse had alluded to that… but Sandra had to know the truth from Brandon, so she took a chance. “Did something happen to them?”
“Last I saw them, they were all alive and well.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. And when he opened them, that distant look was gone. There was life in his eyes again. Sandra knew he was back with her. “Sandra, I’ve never told anybody this. Not even Clarisse knows the whole truth. But you’ve trusted me with your past. I want to do the same with mine.”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing you need to hide from me.”
He took another breath, and when he exhaled, the words came out of him like a flood. “Everyone in my family was very close. We didn’t have much money growing up, but we had two loving parents. There were eight of us kids, so you can imagine how overwhelming things must have been for my parents. My father was a cop, my mother a barmaid-turned-optician, of all things. We moved to America when I was three, just before my brother was born.
“My parents barely made enough money to scrape by. I didn’t realize how close we were to poverty until I became a teenager. It was just the way my parents raised us; they made sure we never felt pinched for money. But I can’t imagine the sacrifices they must have made, just to feed us all.
“Anyway, I had a happy childhood. I was best friends with all my brothers and sisters. But even though my closest sibling was only three years younger, I remember thinking back then that we were a world apart. I always tried to help my parents deal with all of us, always tried to be the responsible one. I took care of my sisters and brothers when I could, offloading chores from my mother, helping with scraped knees, sticking up for them in schoolyard fights, that sort of thing. But everything changed when I was fifteen.”
“What happened?”
“It was in the middle of summer, but a cold, wet storm had been raging outside for weeks. Rain, dark clouds, and wind were the norm for most days. It was like nothing you would ever expect in the summer. I’ve never seen anything like it since. You must have been, what, six, seven, when it happened? I don’t know if you remember it…”
“No,” Sandra shook her head. “I must have been too young.”
“Well, you can imagine, having eight kids cooped up in a tiny house for weeks on end, with no school or summer camps to distract any of us, made for high tensions. There were more fights that summer than at any point I could remember before.
“To make it worse, my father had started working overtime to scrape together some more money. We were growing up, getting bigger, which meant we needed more food, more clothes, more household supplies, more everything. That was the first time, I think, that I realized just how stretched my parents were for money.”
Brandon took another breath. “I remember that summer night like it was yesterday. My dad was out working. There was a thunderstorm outside, and it was dark. Just before dinner, somebody broke my sister Ashley’s hairbrush, her only one. I don’t know if it was by accident, or on purpose, or as payback for something she did. But I remember my mother playing peacemaker when a crash of thunder shook the house. That was when the phone rang.”
Brandon pushed away from Sandra, and sat straight up. “I heard it first. I went to pick it up.” He motioned with one hand, re-enacting that moment, bringing an invisible phone to his ear. “There was a stern voice on the line. He asked for my mother. I walked over to her while she struggled to solve things between my siblings. I gave the phone to her—” he extended his hand in front of him, “—and I don’t know what the man said, but such a look of terror came over my mother’s face that Ashley started to cry. Without a word, my mother turned around, put on her jacket, and walked out the door.”
Brandon looked strained but he continued.
“None of us had any idea what was going on. But the storm outside fit the moment perfectly. My mother’s reaction to the phone call stopped all the squabbling. We all sensed something was terribly wrong.”
Sandra waited for Brandon to continue. “She was gone for hours and hours and hours. Some of the younger kids fell asleep, while the rest of us waited in the living room, trying to stay awake for our mother to return. Time stretched by. We waited, and waited, and waited. We didn’t hear a word from our mother or father.”
“What happened next?” Sandra asked.
“Finally, my mother burst through the door. Her jacket was gone. Her shirt was soaked with rain, and she was sobbing.” Brandon’s voice became strained. “I ran to her. I was first.” He tightened his grip on Sandra’s arm until he was hurting her. She didn’t say anything. “I asked my mother what was wrong. She didn’t answer. She fell into me and just cried and cried and cried. My youngest sister Kelsey—she was three—was asleep when my mother came home. She must have heard her voice, because she woke up, and walked out of her room with groggy eyes. She walked to our mother, tugged on her sleeve. She asked, in the most innocent of voices, ‘When is daddy coming home?’”
Brandon fell silent. Sandra didn’t push him. She waited for him to continue the story.
“My mother looked at her,” Brandon exhaled finally, “and did not say anything for a long time. And right there, right at that moment, something came together in my mind, and I knew. This… dread came over me. The constant beat of rain against the windows was the only thing that broke the silence. My mother bent down, took my sister by the shoulders, and whispered, as gently as she could, that daddy wouldn’t ever be coming home again.”
“Oh, Brandon,” Sandra murmured.
“Those words confirmed what I had already sensed. I brought my mother to the couch, where she recounted the whole story. My father had been working late. There was a robbery in a convenience store. He was in the area, so even though he was exhausted from working overtime, he took the call anyway.”
Brandon continued, his frustration obvious. “It was such a stupid thing. A small, pitiful, useless thing!” There was heat in Brandon’s voice. “Some junkie looking for his fix stood up the clerk for twenty bucks. Twenty dollars. My father arrived just as the crook was leaving, and the sight of an officer must have spooked him. He turned around and fired at my father on the spot. My father tried to shoot back, but the first bullet bit him in the arm.” Brandon’s jaw clenched. “He dropped his gun. But the junkie didn’t run. Fueled by some high, he turned around, and fired shot after shot at my father. Again, and again, and again.”
As Brandon spoke, Sandra found her chest constricting until it was hard to breathe. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t be. My father was killed on the spot. He didn’t suffer. There was nothing anyone could have done. But what I did when I heard the story was unforgivable.”
“What do you mean, Brandon?” Sandra asked.
“Something snapped inside me when my mother told the story. I became angry. I blamed her for pushing my dad to work more. If he hadn’t been working overtime, he would have been home when the robbery took place.” Brandon’s voice became heated. “I was just so mad at her for allowing him to go out i
nto the storm. I yelled and yelled in front of all my brothers and sisters. She just sobbed on the couch. I told her it was her fault, that she was the one to blame for my father’s death. I was consumed by anger. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting her. I wish every day I could take back all the horrible things I said.”
“You were just a child,” Sandra said. “You couldn’t have known.”
“No. I knew. I was the one in the wrong. I was the oldest, the responsible one, the one everyone looked up to. But when I finished, my siblings looked at me like I was a stranger. I didn’t know what to do, so I raged out into the night. I ran out on all of them. I wandered the streets until I found myself at the store where my father had been killed. The area was blocked off by police cars and yellow tape. I don’t know what I was doing there,” he admitted. “Maybe I was looking for revenge. Maybe I wanted to take my anger out on the junkie. The guy had been a coward. He turned the gun on himself after he killed my father. All for a lousy twenty bucks. All for a stupid high.”
Brandon continued. “One of the officers recognized me, and I ran off. I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t go back home. I bounced around from friend to friend for an entire week.”
Brandon’s eyes tightened. “Everything was my fault. I should have been there for my family after my father died. Instead, I abandoned them when they needed me most.”
“You were young,” Sandra said, as gently as she could. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“What I did was stupid,” Brandon spat. “It didn’t take long for me to start getting into trouble on the street. My mother found out, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. Too much had happened to her, too much and too quickly for a newly-widowed mother of eight. I came home one day, maybe two weeks after I stormed out, and my mother was there. She screamed at me for staying away, for getting into trouble, for getting arrested. She wanted to know what kind of example I was setting for my brothers and sister. And—this is the worst—I yelled back, again. I blamed her again. Except this time, she didn’t let me off so easy. She told me I wasn’t welcome in her home anymore. She told me she never wanted to see me again.” He sighed. “It took me a long time to understand that her words were spoken in the heat of the moment. She never meant them, not really. But I took them to heart, and left.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to my grandparents, on my father’s side. They had moved from Italy to Chicago to help take care of the kids when I was about ten, but they’d never really got along with my mother. I don’t know why. They took me in, and housed me until I finished high school and went to university.”
“Have you talked to any of your family since?”
“I saw my brothers sometimes when they came to visit my grandparents. I saw my sisters, too. But the way they looked at me… There was always such accusation in their glares. When I graduated high school, I moved away from Chicago. That was the last I saw, or spoke, to any of them. And my mother… well, I haven’t talked to her since that argument that summer night.”
Sandra reached out and touched Brandon’s arm, offering silent empathy.
“But I made a promise to myself when I left. I promised I would be back for my family when I could help them. I swore that when I had enough money, I would support them. I would support my mother, so she would never have to worry again. I promised, so that I could make up, in some small way, for running out on them when they needed me the most.”
“And did you? Sandra asked.
“That’s what I’ve worked my whole life for. That is what all this—” Brandon gestured around him, “—is about. All I want,” he admitted quietly, “is to provide for them like an older brother is supposed to.”
“Surely, you must be there now?”
Brandon smiled, but his eyes were still sad. “Almost. I’ve been sending them money through my grandparents for years, but they don’t know it’s from me. My mother would never have accepted it that way. But returning to their lives? I’m still not ready for that. But with you, I feel like I’m getting closer every day.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Thank you, Brandon. For telling me that. For trusting me with your past.”
He smiled, put an arm around her, and brought her close. Sandra understood now why Brandon had been so hesitant to speak of his past. They’d both known tragedy in their lives. Now, with everything out in the open, Sandra felt like their relationship had gotten stronger. Another bond had been formed from their understanding of each other’s suffering. There was nothing left to be said, so she sat quietly in Brandon’s arms for a long time, looking out at the stars and sea, until the gentle ebb of sleep washed over her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Even though the nightmares no longer bothered her, Sandra still had the tendency to wake early. This morning, she found herself huffing alongside Cassie, streaming down the seawall in the crisp dawn air.
Ever since that special date with Robbie a week and a half ago, Cassie had attacked her old goal of losing weight with a newfound vigor. She’d taken up hour-long powerwalks in the morning, combined them with a strict intermittent fasting diet—“It’s the new latest thing,” she’d told Sandra. Already, to Sandra at least, Cassie was looking slimmer. But maybe it was more the constant smile on her face and secretive twinkle in her eye that told Sandra that Cassie and Robbie had found that spark in their marriage again.
“You know, I’ve known Brandon for almost a month,” Sandra said. “It’s crazy how fast time flies.”
“A month, hmm?” Cassie mused. “Men tend to be pretty bad with anniversaries. But women… well, you need to do something for the occasion, girl!”
“What do you mean?”
“All this time, he’s been taking you out, showing you places, no?” Cassie sneaked a peek at Sandra. “It’s your turn to do something for him.”
“Like what?” Sandra asked, dubious.
Cassie’s eyes widened. “I know! Cook for him!”
“What?”
“Oh, men love when women do that!” she insisted. “You know that old saying: The fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!” Cassie broke off laughing, and Sandra joined in.
“You know, I think I could do that. Actually, I used to love cooking when I was younger.”
“I know. I remember you telling me about it once.”
Sandra narrowed her eyes. “You really do remember every single conversation you’ve ever had, don’t you?”
“It’s a necessity for my occupation,” Cassie winked. “So, do you like my idea?”
“You know, I tried to cook for him in Seattle, but we… kind of got sidetracked.” Sandra blushed and gave a shy smile. “But I don’t think I can do it here. I don’t even have a kitchen in my apartment.”
Cassie gasped and pressed both hands to her cheeks. “Oh my God! I just had the greatest idea ever! Why don’t you use my house?”
“Your house?”
“Sure! You haven’t told Brandon where you really live, have you?”
Sandra looked down at her feet. “Well, no…”
“Then he still thinks my place is yours! That’s great!” Cassie beamed. “It’s settled, then. You’ll cook for him at my place.”
“No,” Sandra started. “I can’t impose on you and Robbie like that…”
“Nonsense!” Cassie waved the objection away. “It was my idea, remember? And I won’t take no for an answer.” She nodded. “Robbie’s going to be out of town this weekend fishing with his brother, so it’ll be the perfect time to set something really special up. We can go shopping for everything you need together—just you and me. We’ll spruce up my dining room at the same time. And when we’re done, your Space Needle date will be a distant second in Brandon’s mind.”
“Cassie…” Sandra began again, admonishing, but the woman swept right over her.
“And I have just the candles you can use. They’re tall and made of this amazing wax tha
t starts off purple but turns red as it warms up. And they give off the most tantalizing scent! I bought them for me and Robbie before Valentine’s, but he took me to a bed and breakfast instead, completely out of the blue, so I never got a chance to use them. They’ve been gathering dust in my closet ever since. Oh, this is going to be just perfect! We’ll have so much fun setting up.”
“Come on,” hedged Sandra. “Are you really serious?”
“Of course! Why not?” Cassie beamed again, the grin almost splitting her face in two. “Robbie’s not going to be home, and Brandon still thinks you live at my place. I don’t mind. It’ll be an adventure! And I can go sleep over at one of my girlfriends’ house. I haven’t had a slumber party since high school!”
“Look, Cassie, I don’t think I can ever repay you—”
Cassie stopped in front of Sandra, fists on her hips. “Sandra Hawthorne, I won’t have that type of talk out of you. Your friendship is more than enough.” She turned around and started walking again. “Now, I won’t hear another word of protest out of you! I’m just happy to know that I can play some small part in netting you the man of your dreams. Now, we need to start planning for this immediately. In fact, we can start today. We’ll need to buy some wine, and then go shopping for all the food, and then we can get you some…”
Sandra was just placing the croissants in the oven when the doorbell rang. She sprang up, hopped to the window, and spotted Brandon’s yellow Ferrari parked in a stall across the street.
She looked at the time on the stove—and cursed. He’s not supposed to be here for another ninety minutes!
As things currently stood, she was completely unprepared for his arrival. Half the kitchen was covered in flour, her hair was tied back to stay out of her face, she hadn’t had time to shower, and she didn’t have a lick of makeup on!
Yours to Savor Page 29