by Tawna Fenske
Poking my head in the cooler, I locate the tools required to soothe my soul. Butter, eggs, fresh milk from the dairy down the road. I drag them out and pile them on the stainless-steel counter beside tidy canisters of flour and sugar.
I don’t even know what I’m making, but my hands are flying, going through the motions on autopilot.
Just like Mark.
No. I push the thoughts aside, forcing myself to get lost in the familiar comforts of sifting, stirring, mixing.
But my mind won’t be easily subdued.
How did I not know? How did I miss the fact that I’d thrown myself face first into an ocean of caring and commitment, while Mark stood coolly on the shore, not daring to wade in?
I thought I knew him. I wasn’t dumb enough to think I’d burrowed all the way inside the warm chambers of that big, cavernous heart of his, but I thought I’d at least touched the surface.
But it turns out I wasn’t close. Not even a little.
Flour sifts through my fingers like fairy dust, and I lose track of time. How long do I work like that? Five minutes, ten, cracking eggs and stirring in cocoa powder until my heart rate starts to slow.
Click.
My head snaps up at the sound, but it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. When they do, my brain synapses fire in a fizzy repeat of what the hell?
A woman, cloaked in a slinky black dress, stands by the doorway with a thick gold bangle on one arm. Her smile is a brittle slash of red lipstick and perfect white teeth, and her sleek blond bob glows bright under the kitchen lights.
I notice these things in sequence, cataloguing them one by one—dress, jewelry, makeup, hair—with the growing awareness that I’m avoiding the one thing in this pretty picture that chills me to the bone.
A pistol, gripped in her manicured hand, pointed right at my head.
Chapter 20
MARK
I try to go back to the party after Chelsea flees the closet. It’s my damn birthday after all, and they went to so much trouble.
I stand outside for a long time, looking through the windows like a kid outside the candy shop with no quarters in my pocket to buy gummy bears.
Bree’s bustling around talking to people, the perfect hostess with a champagne flute in one hand. She glances at her watch, then says something to Jonathan. His brows crease, and he gives a quick shrug.
They’ll forget eventually. My absence from the party, my absence from the next board meeting or the one after that. Like plucking a weed from a flower bed, no one will miss what didn’t belong in the first place.
Sean moves past the window with a platter of the chocolate-dipped strawberries, but he doesn’t see me standing outside. He knows those are my favorite, and my big, dumb heart fills with a longing that has nothing to do with sweets.
Goddammit.
I grew up an only child. I’ve been independent my whole life, so how the hell did I get so attached to these late-in-life siblings?
But I’m not one of them, I never have been, and it’s only a matter of time before they know it.
Austin moves past the window, sticking to Senator Assgrab like flypaper. Good, that’s one less thing to worry about as far as Chelsea’s concerned. He mentioned something in passing earlier tonight, a comment about suspicious banking activity that has the boys in blue watching every move the Senator’s making. So that’s a relief. With any luck, Chelsea’s drama will be over soon, and she can go back to her normal life.
A life that doesn’t include me.
The thought feels like a flaming boot to the chest.
“Is there a reason you’re spying on your own birthday party?”
I jump about ten feet in the air, no small feat for a guy my size. Whirling around, I come face to face with James. He’s got his hands in his pockets, tie perfectly straight, and he’s leaning against the side of the building like it’s cocktail hour at the fucking country club.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“Stepped outside to take a phone call,” he says, unperturbed by my language. Or by anything, really. “Nice evening, isn’t it?”
His expression is neutral, no flicker of emotion at all. I remember our father sometimes called him Iceman Bracelyn, a reference to James’s courtroom demeanor, or maybe just his personality.
Then I remember Cort Bracelyn is probably not my dad, and James is probably not my brother, and I hate myself all over again. “Fuck.”
James doesn’t flinch. Just looks at me with those cool, green eyes, assessing me like I’m a legal brief.
“So,” he finally says. “Are you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“I ran into your mother.”
I frown, not following the conversation. “Are you high?”
James doesn’t dignify that with a response. Just pins me with the world’s iciest green eyes, Bracelyn eyes, but colder. “I was the executor of Dad’s will,” he says. “You know that, right?”
I’m still not following, so I do what I always do when I feel thrown off-balance. “Why the fuck should I care?”
He sighs like he’s bored with the conversation. “I’m not telling you to be smug. I’m telling you because Dad entrusted me with a lot of documentation. Paperwork, files, information he thought might be of interest to the family at some point.”
There’s a slow prickling of hair on the back of my neck. Like my lizard brain figures something out before the rest of me catches up.
“Paternity tests?” I guess.
He nods. “Among other things.”
All the air leaves my lungs. I stand there like a deflated balloon, like the biggest loser who ever lived. “So, you know.”
James crosses one ankle over the other, still leaning against the side of the building. “I know the truth,” he says. “Do you want to?”
No.
Everything inside me screams that word, howls it while clinging to the last fading memories of my childhood. The baseball playoffs where Dad came and sat there in the front row, chest puffed up as he told the guy next to him how the big kid who’d just stolen home was his son. His son.
Or the summer I visited after high school when I told him I might not go to college, and he looked me dead in the eye and said, “you’re going to fucking college if I have to drag you there myself and pay someone a hundred grand a day to hold your sorry ass in that chair and pour the education into your ear with a funnel.”
Yeah, he wasn’t a touchy-feely dad. He wasn’t even a very good one, but he was mine. The only father I’ve ever known, my only link to this family.
Until now.
I don’t know what James sees on my face, but I know I haven’t mastered the impassive thing like he has. Not even close.
“Let me ask you this,” he says, pushing off the side of the building and taking a step closer. “Your girlfriend, Chelsea—what happens if the condom breaks?”
“Jesus.” Not what I was expecting him to say. “I’m not discussing my sex life with you.”
James snorts with disgust. “I’m not asking about your sex life,” he says with exaggerated patience. “And this is also not a moral discussion about right to life or a woman’s right to choose.”
“What the fuck is it then?”
“I watched you the other night with Libby,” he says. “And I have a hard time believing that if a biological child came along—one who had your DNA, your eyes, your nose, your thick fucking skull—that you’d love that child any less than one who’s not genetically yours.”
I stare at my brother. I stare at him for a long, long time, so long I can sense him getting uncomfortable.
“I’m going to ask you again,” he says. “Are you ready to know? Not guess, not wonder, not bury your head in the sand like a fucking coward—are you ready to actually know?”
The choice is mine.
The second shitty choice I’ve had to make in the last hour, and I already know I fucked up the first one. I knew it the instant Chelse
a walked out of that closet, and I felt a giant fucking hole rip open in the center of my chest.
I’ve spent the first thirty years of my life as Cort Bracelyn’s son. I pushed aside my suspicions because I wanted to be that guy. I wanted it so badly that I wove it into my identity tight enough that I could no longer tell where reality stopped and my childish wishes began.
But I know it’s time to yank the thread.
It stings like hell to think of losing all of it—son, brother, family member—but there’s something else that hurts more.
Losing Chelsea. Losing Libby. Losing the guy I am when I’m with them. That right there, that’s the only truth that matters.
“I want to know,” I tell him. “I’m ready to know.”
He nods, unsurprised by my answer. “Follow me.”
He turns toward the lodge, headed for the side with the administrative offices. I lumber after him, trying not to drag my feet. This is it, my final breaths as a guy who doesn’t know for sure. After this, it’ll all be on the table. No more sitting hunched in the fucking corner with my hands over my ears and my eyes squeezed tightly shut.
James leads me across the lawn and through a side door into his cavernous office. He flips the lights on and gestures to a chair. “Have a seat.”
I do what he says, wondering if these will be our last words to each other as brothers. I stare at the back of his head as he unlocks a file cabinet and pulls out a green folder. I say the words to his back because I sure as fuck can’t say them to his face.
“You’ve been a good brother.”
He stiffens but says nothing. He doesn’t turn around, either, so I keep going. “Whatever’s in there, no matter what it says, it’s meant everything being part of this family.”
He turns around slowly, green eyes blazing. He stares at me with his jaw clenched tight. “You are the biggest dumb shit.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
James shakes his head and drops into his chair. “Of all the lame-ass, stupid, presumptuous—”
“And people think I’m the insensitive asshole brother?”
He shoves the file at me in disgust. “Open it.”
I hesitate, hand on the cover. Then I take a deep breath and flip it open.
My dad’s handwriting is the first thing I notice. It’s a letter, one page, on lined notebook paper. I stare at the sharp spikes of the M, the blunt edges of the K, committing this moment to memory.
And then I start to read.
* * *
Dear Mark,
If you’re reading this, two things have happened: I’m dead, and you decided for some lame-ass, dumbshit reason, probably spewed at you by your batshit mother, that you want to know if I’m your fucking father.
* * *
I look up at James. “I’m definitely feeling the love.”
He doesn’t smile. “Keep reading.”
I lower my gaze and continue.
* * *
From the day your mother told me she was knocked up, I never questioned if you were mine. Sure, there were plenty of other dicks in the picture, your mom was hot as fuck and—
* * *
“I’m not sure I want to read this.” I look to James for assurance, but he’s sitting with crossed hands on top of his head and a cool, impassive expression.
“Keep going.”
Bossy asshole.
I sigh and lower my gaze again, skimming as best as I can over the part about my mother’s skills in the sack. There are some things a guy can’t unsee.
* * *
I always knew it might not be me who slipped one past the goalie. But I also knew it didn’t matter. You were my kid before you took your first breath, before you shit your first diaper or lost your first tooth or got your first BJ. You were always my kid, which is why I tore up the stupid fucking paternity test your mother insisted on getting.
But I’m getting older and there might come a time when you give a shit. Maybe you’re wondering about family history of insanity or maybe you need to figure out your genetic risk of ass cancer. Whatever. I got another copy of the test. If James has done his job, he’s handing it to you right now, and it’s up to you whether to open it. It’s up to you to believe that no matter what it says, you’ll always be my fucking kid.
Dad
* * *
Not “Love, Dad” or “Affectionately yours,” which is further proof he really wrote this. Not that I needed it. The words are all Cort Bracelyn. I stare at the letter, breathing in and out, until James speaks.
“Here,” he says. “Take it.”
I look up at the sealed envelope he holds like an offering. I reach for it with a shaking hand, but James pulls it back.
“No matter what it says, you’re my brother,” he says. “Get that through your thick fucking skull.”
A lump balls up in my throat, thick and hot. “You already know what’s in here?”
“Yes.”
“How long?” I ask. “How long have you known?”
“Seven years,” he says. “Dad named me executor when I graduated from law school.”
I swallow hard, trying to digest that. “Way before he died. Way before we started this place.”
“Yep.”
I grab for the envelope again, and this time he lets me. His face is impassive as I tear it open and unfold the paper inside. As the words start to blur, I force myself to make sense of them. “Mother,” “child,” “alleged father,” all the columns blur together in a haze of alphabet soup.
When I look up, James is still watching me. “Any questions?”
“So, he wasn’t my father.”
“He was,” James says. “You just don’t have his DNA.”
I breathe in and out a few times, testing my lungs to see if they feel different. If my body is still the same. It is and it isn’t, but there’s a lightness in my shoulders that wasn’t there before.
As far as I can tell, the world hasn’t ended.
“It’s your choice whether to tell the others,” he says. “If you choose not to, I’ll take the secret to my grave.”
“And if I choose to tell?”
“I’d stake my job on the fact that it won’t change a damn thing. Not for any of us.”
The words touch me unexpectedly. Nothing in James’s world matters more than his job, so he must be pretty confident.
“I’ll tell them,” I say, positive it’s the right thing to do. “No more secrets.”
I’m not talking about the DNA shit, though that goes without saying. I’m going to tell Bree and Sean and Jonathan, and even if it does change things, I’m willing to live with that.
But it’s Chelsea I’m thinking about. Chelsea who deserves the whole truth, the whole me. She always deserved that, and I was too damn scared to realize.
“There’s one more thing.” James presses his palms to the desk as he stands, turning to open a cupboard behind him. There’s a safe inside, something I never noticed before. Not that I spend much time rifling through my brother’s shit.
My brother.
I roll the word around in my brain, trying to decide if it feels any different now that I know. It feels more like a marble and less like a sharp-edged burr, and I think maybe that’s a good thing.
“This is for you.” He pulls out a cigar box and hands it to me.
Cohiba Behike. I know from being around Cort Bracelyn that these run $18,000 a box.
And I know from seeing this same box in my mother’s closet—and from being a nosy little shit—what’s inside.
I flip it open to be sure, hinges creaking as I trace my thumb over the familiar ding in the corner. I stare at the contents, then flip the lid shut and look at James.
“You’re not going to read that note?” he asks.
“Later,” I tell him, handing the box back to him. “There’s something more urgent I need to do.”
He nods and turns to slide the box back in the safe. When he turns back around, I’m already halfway to the d
oor.
“Go get your girl,” he says, smiling for the first time this evening. “I have faith in you, brother.”
Chapter 21
CHELSEA
I take a deep breath and stare at the pistol.
Yep, it’s a gun all right, shiny and big and definitely capable of blowing a great big hole in my body.
As I lift my eyes to the woman’s face, there’s a flicker of recognition in the back of my brain. “Mrs. Grassnab,” I say. “Are you lost?”
“Don’t be cute with me, you little homewrecker.”
I grip the edge of the counter, fighting to stay upright and not to pee myself in terror. Holy crap, this is really happening.
“Mrs. Grassnab.” My voice shakes, but I keep my composure. To do what it takes to keep myself alive and un-shot. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. If you’ll just put the gun down—”
“There’s no misunderstanding,” she says. “I’m tying up loose ends.”
Her glossy blond hair slips over one eye, and she blows it off her forehead, never once lowering the gun. I keep my eyes fixed on her face, not daring to glance at the pistol.
“My husband is a serious contender to be President of the United States,” she says. “If you think for one second, I’m going to let that be derailed by some floozy coming forward with a scandalous love child—”
“I’d never do that,” I insist. It might not be smart to argue with a woman holding a gun, but Libby is no one’s scandalous love child.
“So, you don’t deny it.”
Crap. Was I supposed to? This is my first negotiation with a crazed person pointing a pistol at me, so I don’t know the rules.
I lick my lips and fight to stay calm. “Look, Libby is six,” I tell her. “The world’s sweetest, most gentle, generous little girl.”
“Who looks remarkably like my husband,” she says. “I had suspicions a few years ago, so I looked you up. I had you followed; I even watched you at the playground.”