Spiral and Torn Books 1 and 2 of The Salzburg Saga Trilogy

by D. U. OKONKWO

  “Your mother and I had an easy relationship,” Parker continued. “It usually only struggled when your grandparents got involved. They wanted her to move to France with them, although she was happy with her nursing job in London. The more she refused, the more difficult they became. They made it very clear when I first visited them in France that I wasn’t good enough.”

  “But you got married,” Jake said when Parker fell quiet. “They attended the wedding. Mother said they did.”

  Parker gave a bitter twist of his lips. “They attended.”

  But there was more to the story, Jake thought, but decided to let his father get there in his own time.

  “But in the end, your mother finally asked for a divorce. She couldn’t take the strain.”

  Jake held up a hand. “Wait. Hold on. You’ve gone straight to the end, and made it sound as if you had nothing to do with things going wrong between you.” And it annoyed him. Jake pinned him with a look. “There are two people in a marriage.”

  “In most marriages there are,” Parker countered. “But unfortunately not in ours. I won’t say I was perfect because no one is.” Parker studied his feet, “Your grandparents...” He struggled to hold back a grimace with difficulty as memories clearly flooded back. “There were awkward dinners, petty comments about my social status,” he recalled with a shudder. Even after all this time, Jake thought, those memories still bothered his father. “They were obsessed with all the superficial things that ultimately meant nothing,” Parker continued wearily. At every opportunity, they tried to make me quit the hotel business I was trying to set up.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed.

  “They never shared that with you then?” Parked demanded.

  “The Drayton hotel chain is worth nearly a hundred million pounds,” Jake said instead.

  Parker nodded. “It is now, but it wasn’t thirty-five years ago. As far as your grandparents were concerned, the hotels wouldn’t make any money. I’d be better off going into the wine business with them. They kept insisting I do.” He squeezed his eyes shut briefly. “They just couldn’t accept the fact that I wasn’t interested in stomping on grapes.”

  Jake half smiled. “They never liked the fact that I was always more into planes than stomping grapes, either,” he admitted.

  Now Parker looked baffled. “Why do parents do that? Why don’t they let children make their own decisions on what they want to spend their life doing?”

  “They accepted my decision in the end when they saw I wouldn’t budge.”

  Parker smiled widely, looking perversely pleased. “You got that stubbornness from me. Bet they loved that. Anyway,” he said, getting back to the story when Jake only shrugged. “A new business is often slow in the beginning. Mine was no different. But your mother and I were happy. Yes, things were tight – very tight at times – but we managed. We always found time to spend quality time together.”

  “Year on year the business grew,” Parker went on. “But we weren’t millionaires. That didn’t come for me until much, much later.”

  Confused, Jake frowned. “Was that the issue between you then? Money?” he struggled to see how it could have been for his mother. All the time growing up, she’d never been money orientated.

  “It wasn’t an issue for your mother and I; for your grandparents? Yes.” Parker enlightened. “For them, my lack of millions was paramount.”

  Jake shifted uncomfortably, wary of where this was heading. “I can’t sit here and listen to you constantly saying negative things about two people who aren’t here to defend themselves. They were always great to me.”

  Parker’s mouth tightened, and he had to squash down the urge to defend himself. “And I’m glad they were. Naturally, your grandparents’ wine business, having been established for decades when I met your mother, was doing better financially than my hotel. And at every opportunity, they reminded me of this. Worse still, whenever they called Melanie, which was pretty much every week, they dropped sly comments to her about it.” He saw Jake’s mouth tighten and hoped it was anger at his own grandparents and not for him. “They found fault in everything. Despite being thousands of miles away living in France they had friends who still lived in London and kept up to date with everything in our lives. Why was Melanie still working at her nursing job when she had just got married and should be concentrating on becoming pregnant? Why did I have to travel so much? Why this, or why that. It was exhausting, and day by day, it started to put a real strain on our relationship.”

  Jake rubbed a weary hand over the back of his neck. “Didn’t mother ever tell them to back out?” But he knew the answer to that before his father answered.

  Parker sent him an exasperated look. “Your mother was always too soft, you must know that. And when I did insist that she tell them to butt out, she and I would begin arguing. But your grandparents rarely let up.”

  Jake stared at him, sympathy rising up despite his desire to keep an emotional distance. “You seemed to have had a lot of problems with your sons,” he murmured.

  Parker’s eyes became bleak. “The women I fell in love with gave me little choice. They’re not wholly to blame but they didn’t make things easy. And I remember that after Melanie moved to France after our divorce. I wondered why she would want to do that when she enjoyed living in London so much.”

  “She told me that she went to France initially to get out of London. The divorce...” Jake drew in a breath. “She said she needed a change of scenery. A month after your divorce she discovered that she was three months pregnant and decided to stay in France where she would have family support with the baby.”

  Parker’s eyes were growing wet, making Jake feel distinctly uncomfortable. He could barely handle tears on a woman, to see them on a grown man was too much. Uneasy, he started to edge up to his feet. Maybe he could make a quick run for it back to his room. Cowardly he knew, but the mere thought of seeing his father cry was too much for him.

  “I have many regrets in my life,” Parker said hoarsely, and covered his eyes with his right hand. “Agreeing to a divorce with your mother was one of them.”

  Jake stared at a point over Parker’s shoulder. “It would’ve been good to have you around,” he murmured. “To have a mother and father like other kids.”

  “Your mother should’ve told me about you,” Parker said, his voice breaking. His hand was still over his eyes. “I had a right to know!”

  Jake swallowed. “She obviously didn’t feel like she could.”

  Parker finally took his hand from his eyes, revealing haunted pupils. “Did she every remarry?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Yes, well, unless the poor sucker was minted, her parents wouldn’t have left the poor bloke alone.” Parker’s voice was raw now.

  “You wanted to? Remarry Hugh and Justin’s mother I mean?”

  Parker blew out a long breath. “Yes. I wanted to marry her. She didn’t feel the same way though.” He paused before looking at Jake with beseeching eyes. “So what now?”

  “I don’t–” Jake broke off, expelled a long breath. “I need to think.” Slowly, he got to his feet.

  Parker rose too, using his free arm against the wall for leverage. “Hugh needs to know,” he said as he and Jake stood facing each other.

  “Don’t,” Jake said shortly. “There’s no point; Justin’s already upset.”

  “I’ll talk to both of them. I’m not going to deny my son.”

  Oh, hell. “Look–”

  “No, you look.” Parker’s tone was implacable. “I’ve been robbed of getting to know my oldest son; I won’t be robbed of that anymore.”

  Jake felt his heart twist. “You didn’t know I even existed an hour ago.”

  Parker looked him straight in the eye. “But I do now, and that changes everything.” He held up the photo he still held. “You’re not the only one who has old photos....old memories.”

  Jake took the photo back, his gaze on Parker. “What do you want from me?�
�

  Though tears had gathered at the corner of Parker’s eyes, he managed a smile. “I’d like you to call me Dad.” He chuckled as shock and surprise flittered across Jake’s face. “But we can start with this.”

  Jake looked down at the hand Parker extended, then back up at Parker. If he made the handshake, Jake knew, he’d be acknowledging Parker Drayton was his father.

  “People can delay things,” Parker said, his hand still outstretched, “but they can never stop things. In the end, people who are meant to find each other, will, often under the most extraordinary of circumstances.”

  Jake slowly put his hand into his father’s, felt his father’s firm and warm grip close around his. “No one has that much control, I guess.”

  And that, Parker thought as he shook hands with his long lost son, was what Melanie’s parents had failed to understand.

  Chapter 14

  ––––––––

  So Parker was Jake’s father. Blimey.

  An hour after, having heard Jake and Parker head back into their individual rooms, Nina lay atop her sleeping platform staring up at the snow white ceiling. Their first night out here Jake had said that had he had no one waiting for him back in London because he had no family. Well he had family now. What had been revealed also made Jake’s animosity towards Parker make sense. It wasn’t just that they had crashed due to Hugh. That had certainly been part of Jake’s animosity. But the other factor, perhaps an equal factor, was because Jake knew that Parker was his father.

  It made her think of her own family again. They were never far from her mind. Even Alex, her soon to be ex-boyfriend as she had told Jake, flitted through her mind. She felt nothing at that realization about Alex Their relationship had died several months ago, if indeed they had ever really had one. Who she had missed while being stuck out here was her sister, Hazel. Hazel she spoke to at least twice a week. As Hazel also lived and studied in London, they were both so close. It was different with their brothers Seb and Alistair because not only did they travel a lot, they were as close as she and Hazel were, and being men, tended to do a lot together. Plus, men just weren’t as talkative as women on the phone. What were they all thinking? Did they know yet? Jake swore his team would have told at least Hazel. She hoped none of them was panicking. She’d give anything to speak to them.

  For all of Seb and Alistair’s traveling, they had fortunately never found themselves in anything like this. She nor Hazel had never had cause to worry, never received any worrying late-night calls, and never heard any near death horror stories.

  Of course, they’d never traveled with Hugh Drayton.

  Merely thinking of him made her fists clench. He still couldn’t walk. As far as she was concerned that was a lame punishment for the horror he had brought the rest of them.

  To not despair at the situation they were in required constant effort. But Jake had managed to make an emergency call to his team back in London the first night they were out here, she had to remember that. And she had to tell herself that they were definitely being looked for. Yes, the avalanche would no doubt complicate things, but experts existed for those kinds of things surely? She told herself that they did. It embarrassed her to realize how clueless she was about search and rescue, but she had never experienced anything like this before. Whenever she travelled she bought her ticket, took her seat, and watched movies until she landed. Never had she worried about getting into the brace position, being sure to sit at a certain chair on a plane, or checking that her chair had airbags or whatever they were called.

  That would change for her going forward. If she was ever able to get back on a plane again.

  If she ever got on a plane again. She shuddered. The mere thought of being on one sending a chill of fear through her.

  She twisted her head to glance over at Ange. She felt like they were on borrowed time with Angela. Her temperature hadn’t fluctuated too drastically, for which they were all grateful, but her lack of responsiveness and shallow breathing kept everyone’s concern at fever pitch.

  Have faith and don’t worry. That’s what Rita had told them to do, and she was right. But why was it so hard to do? She’d be a mess if Ange had failed to come up out of that lake. But Ange had wanted to live, Emily hadn’t. Ange had fought her way to the surface of the lake, Emily hadn’t.

  Ever since the plane crash, the line between hope and despair had blurred. So many times she’d felt herself barely holding on. Oh, she’d put on a brave face for the others and used words she hoped would encourage them all as well as herself. But doing so had drained her mental resources. Every morning she searched herself to find another dose of patience, another dose of positive thinking. It continued to be a struggle.

  She pressed a hand to her sunken stomach. It continued to ache with hunger, and she wondered if that was adding to her headache. She looked over at Angela again. She yearned for her friend to wake up and get better. At least then she wouldn’t feel so alone, but she knew that was selfish. Her eyes landed on her drying clothes draped at the end of her sleeping platform and she reached for them, her breath expelling on a loud sigh of relief. They were finally dry. Quickly, she changed back into them, the familiarity of her ski jacket though still stained, was hers. She slipped back into her long johns and bottoms too, beyond grateful that she had heeded Parker’s advice to dress in warm clothes to travel out here.

  Feeling more like herself again, she started out towards Neil and Rita’s room.

  She was only two steps from their room when she heard their raised voices.

  “You know I’d never want to do that.” Neil’s voice, sharp and testy, had Nina pausing, and she started to turn away to give them their privacy when her name came up.

  “Fine. But I hope you didn’t make Nina feel uncomfortable about it.” Rita sounded more weary than annoyed.

  “Of course I didn’t. It’s hardly the first time I’ve seen someone do that. You know that,”

  Luke whimpered then, seeming to sense his parent’s discord. “She probably didn’t even realize what she was doing. It’s instinctive.”

  “Instinctive?” Neil scoffed. “Come on.”

  Nina wracked her brain, trying to remember what she’d done instinctively that had upset her friend. She came up empty. Wasn’t it rude to eavesdrop? she thought with sudden guilt. But she’d obviously done something to upset Neil. It hurt that he hadn’t come to her directly and told her. It was what they always did.

  “I don’t even know why you brought this up; you know how I feel about it.” Neil’s words rang with frustration.

  “I didn’t bring it up, baby, you did. You said Nina had done it, and it made you remember.” Rita paused when Neil didn’t reply. “Did you say it so I’d recommend it to the others?”

  “Of course not.”

  What on Earth were they talking about? Nina moved to stand at the entrance of their room.

  Rita sat on the edge of her sleeping platform with Luke on her lap. Neil stood in front of them, his back to the entrance of their room. His hands were stuffed into his trouser pockets.

  “You always get angry whenever I talk about it.” Rita’s cheek lay pressed to Luke’s. “Look at the situation we’re in?” Rita’s eyes glistened with tears. “How bad does it have to get? Two people are already dead. Ange...Ange is...” She sucked in a pained breath. “We’re dying, Neil. Every day we’re stuck out here we’re dying.”

  “I said you can do it if you want, but I won’t.”

  “And I respect that. We should have done it the first day this happened, before we even took off. It would have made a whole lot of difference.”

  “Did it make a difference twenty years ago? You know what happened then; I’ve told you the story more than once.”

  Rita’s expression and voice softened. “So why tell Nina what you told her about Derek?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Neil sounded baffled. “Maybe because it would help Ange.”

  “Baby, what happened with
your brother–”

  “Don’t.” The raw emotion in Neil’s voice had Nina frowning in bafflement. “I was there. I have to live with the memory every day: the crying, the confusion when nothing changed.” Neil’s voice rose angrily. “We were ignored, and we lost Jeremy. Where was he then?”

  Time to announce her presence, Nina decided, and she cleared her throat. Neil spun around, giving Rita full view of her.

  “Neen.” He stared at her. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Sorry.” She gave a wan smile. “I should’ve announced myself, but well, I heard my name mentioned, and I was curious.” She looked at him for a moment, then at Rita briefly before looking back to Neil. “If I did something to upset you, why didn’t you just say?”

  “Neen–” Rita began, but Neil shook his head.

  “You didn’t do anything, Neen,” he said with impatience.

  She frowned. “That’s not what I overheard.”

  “You don’t get the whole story when you eavesdrop,” he pointed out, but his tone held no reprimand.

  “I heard my name mentioned,” she insisted.

  “That was my fault,” Rita admitted, and shot a glance at Neil.

  Neil scrubbed his hands over his face, the gesture making a scratchy noise as his hands ran over his growth of beard stubble. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

  Rita’s eyes were clouded with tears as she stared at her husband. “Your prayer over Ange made him think of Jeremy, Neen.”

  “Jeremy?” Nina repeated. “You mean your...?” Dead brother, she finished silently, then squeezed her eyes shut as guilt washed over her. “Oh God. Neil.” She pressed her hands to her fists. “I completely forgot.” She caught a breath. “My praying over Ange. It reminded you....?”

  He nodded briefly, his shoulders hunched forward in a protective manner that she hadn’t seen in some time. “It reminded me of how it was twenty years ago with him. Watching my parents pray and fast over Jeremy and nothing changed. Watching the only brother I had wither away and eventually die.”