Thinking about my father made my stomach turn and my heart pound a little harder in my chest. By the time I was a teenager, there would be months at a time when I didn’t see him. He would leave us with nothing and come back only to brutalize my mother. Him changing the way he had and leaving me with so much instability in my life had really messed me up.
Now to find out he was dead, I didn’t know how to feel. He was a human being and was once a good man, so there was some sadness, but there was also a sense of relief. I hated the confusion.
“She didn’t tell you anything else?” I asked.
“Well,” Mom said, stepping back from me, “I guess I do know why she contacted me. It seems your father left you something in his will.”
“He left something for me?” I asked. “I didn’t know he had anything to leave.”
“Neither did I. I have some papers for you in my car, and there will be a will reading in a couple days,” she said.
I was in shock as I followed her to the car and took the papers from her. It wasn’t just trying to wrap my head around the fact that my father was dead. I was having a hard time accepting that my mother was actually this sad about it.
23
Maya
I was just about to get ready for work when the door to the apartment opened. Surprised, I looked out of the kitchen and saw Greg come into the living room.
“Hey,” I said happily. “What a wonderful surprise. And I thought that having a pizza delivered to me was going to be the only surprise I got today.”
I started across the room to him, ready to gather him up in my arms and kiss him. It only took a few steps for me to notice the look on his face. He looked ashen and drawn, and his hair was on end like he’d been running his fingers through it. He walked straight past me and to the cabinets in the living room where he kept liquor for parties.
Opening it firmly, he reached inside and pulled out a bottle of vodka, an alarming action that made a spike of worry go up the back of my neck. Greg was far from a big drinker. Definitely not the type to come home in the middle of the day and start knocking back vodka. Something was very wrong.
He’d left for work that morning in such an incredible mood but came back hours before he was even supposed to get off looking devastated. Could he have been fired? This seemed extremely unlikely. I had been around the entire team, and they absolutely adored Greg. He worked extremely hard and put everything into not only the races, but everything else did at the complex.
It would take something huge for there to be such a sudden change that they would remove him from the team.
It had to be something else, something I couldn’t even fathom. I wanted to give Greg his space, to let him work through whatever he was feeling and thinking without suffocating him. But after he had taken three long pulls from the bottle without even bothering to pour the liquor into a glass, I realized this was a more serious situation than I originally thought.
Crossing the room quickly, I put one hand on his back and pulled the bottle out of his grip with the other. I put the top back on and put the vodka away.
“What is going on?” I asked. “You never show up early, and you look like you’re about to crack. Tell me what happened.”
He looked into my eyes as if it was the first time he was seeing me since walking into the apartment. He let his shoulders drop and shook his head slightly. Taking his hand, I led him over to the couch and brought him to sit down with me. I didn’t let go of his hand, wanting to offer him the comfort and support of me being there.
“My mother showed up at the compound today,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize she was in town.”
“She was,” Greg said. “She came because my grandmother got in touch with her.”
“Your grandmother?” I had never heard him talk about a grandmother. “Which grandmother?”
“My father’s mother,” he said. “My mother said she called to tell her that my father died.”
The news struck me so hard I felt like I couldn’t come up with any words for a few seconds. Everything I’d ever known about Greg’s father was that he was a course, distant, and sometimes violent man. I remembered him telling me that when he was much younger, his father was very different. But that would change because of alcohol. He was around very little, didn’t provide for his family, and had taken everything he could.
“He died?” I asked. “When? What happened?”
Greg shook his head. “I didn’t get all the details. Apparently, it was fairly recent. Within the last week, I think. Mom said she thinks he must have had a heart attack. Heart disease ran in his family, and he didn’t exactly have the healthiest lifestyle.”
“Greg, I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “I don’t even know what to think. Or feel. This is my dad. For everything that he did when I was a teenager, I can still remember who he was when I was little. I try not to remember it or think about it because it hurts too much. But I do. And I remember how hard it was to have him not around. And I never got a chance to talk to him again. Now he’s gone.”
I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“I know,” he said. “But just being here for me means everything.”
“Give me just a minute. I’ll be right back.”
I went into the bedroom to get my phone and called Lindsey.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to come in today. Can I call a family emergency? Greg is in a really bad way,” I said.
“Absolutely, that’s fine,” she said without hesitation. “Family is always first. You let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“I will, thank you so much.”
I went back into the living room to check on Greg, then went to the kitchen. I got out a bag of potatoes I had just bought and rummaged around in drawers until I found the peeler. Bringing two large bowls with me, I went back into the living room and sat down with him. He was holding papers in his hands.
“I thought of something you could do for me,” he said.
“Anything. What do you need?”
I started peeling the potatoes into one of the bowls, waiting for him to let me know what I could do to help him.
“Come with me to the lawyer’s office.”
“Lawyer’s office?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Apparently, my father left me something in his will. That’s why my grandmother found my mother. We have to go to the reading to get the formal information about what I inherited. But according to these papers, he left me some money.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s nice.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
He looked at me with a storm of emotions in his eyes. “I hadn’t even spoken to this man in at least eight years. The last time I did, I was trying to beat him to a pulp. Before that, we barely exchanged words more than once or twice a year. The last I knew of him, he was an absolute bum who stole everything from my mother and left us with nothing. How could he possibly have left me money?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I will absolutely go with you. We’ll find out together.”
He continued to stare at the papers in his hands while I finished peeling the potatoes. When I was done, I grabbed the remote and turned on one of his favorite shows. It was just an old rerun, but I felt like he needed something mindless right then. I brought the potatoes into the kitchen and chopped them into chunks, then filled the pot with water and waited for it to boil before putting the potatoes in.
While they cooked, I sat with Greg on the couch. We didn’t say anything, but I held his hand and occasionally stroked the back with my thumb. I just wanted him to know I was there, and he could depend on me. I didn’t need him to talk. He didn’t have to open up any more than he was ready to. I knew this had to be extremely difficult for him, and he
was struggling to figure it out himself.
All I could do for him right then was let him know he wasn’t alone.
When the potatoes were done cooking, I mashed them with plenty of butter and milk, added a liberal amount of salt and pepper, and topped them with warmed-up corn. It was a favorite simple meal of ours from when we were younger, something I hadn’t eaten in a long time, but something told me it would bring him comfort.
Filling two massive bowls, I brought them into the living room and sat down to eat.
“He was here in Charlotte the whole time,” Greg finally said an hour later.
“He was?” I asked, shocked. “And you didn’t know?”
“No,” Greg said. “I had no idea. I had always wanted to move here, and I didn’t really know why. Maybe he mentioned it when I was younger and I don’t remember, but the name of the town stuck with me. I just can’t believe I have been living in the same place as him for years and we never saw each other.”
He looked broken, so overwhelmed by emotions and confusion he didn’t know what to think or do. I stood up and brought the dishes into the kitchen. Not bothering to wash them, I went back into the living room and took the papers out of his hands from where he had picked them up again.
“Come on,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Come on,” I said again, tugging on his hands. “You need some rest.”
I brought him into the bedroom and helped him strip down to nothing but his boxers. I got down to my bra and panties, and we crawled into bed. He curled onto his side, and I wrapped around him. There was far too much of him for me to wrap around completely, but I did my best to surround him and pressed a kiss to his back. I would hold him tight for as long as he needed me.
24
Greg
Just like after my crash, when the family was so understanding and did everything they could to help me, I was indescribably grateful for the Freemans over the next two days. My mother hadn’t gone into any details with Gus when she got to the complex. Instead, she just told him that there was an emergency in the family, and I needed to tend to it.
It left me with the decision of how much to tell them. I really had no reason to hold back from them. They were the closest thing to family I had outside of my mother and had been there for me from the first day I started working for them. I wanted them to know what I was going through and why I’d ended up walking off the compound so suddenly in the middle of the workday.
They already had a hint that my family life wasn’t the best growing up. I didn’t tell them the full story of everything that had happened because I didn’t want to dwell on it. The whole point of moving out of Shelby was to escape that misery and find my own life. Of course, I had no idea I was actually moving right toward what I was trying to escape all along.
Now it was time to completely open up to the Freemans and let them know what had brought me to Charlotte in the first place. As soon as I did, they closed ranks around me. I felt their support and their love, and not for a second did I feel judged or looked down on.
They told me to take as much time as I needed away from work. When they first said it, I had no intention of actually doing it. Freeman Racing was my home. It was where I felt comfortable and happy. I was able to distract myself and immerse myself completely in what I had discovered was my favorite thing. But by that evening, I knew I wasn’t going to be in any shape to go to work until the will was read.
I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t get my brain to fully wrap around the situation and come to terms with the fact that this was reality.
Finally, the day came for the reading of the will. Now that Maya was sleeping in my bed every night, the second bedroom was legitimately a guest room, which meant Mom could stay with us rather than having to find a hotel. She was already going through enough. I didn’t want her to have to be alone.
She was delighted to see Maya again. It seemed seeing her gave my mom some comfort as well. She always knew how important our friendship was to me and often asked about Maya. Seeing us not just back together geographically but finally actually together, did her heart good.
The morning of the will reading, Maya got up early and made us all breakfast. The tower of perfect, golden French toast in the middle of the table looked beautiful, but none of us seemed to have much of an appetite. We brewed cup after cup of coffee and sat around the table in anxious silence. I managed to get down a few bites of food, and Maya did the same before we finally gave up and went to get dressed.
We arrived at the lawyer’s office a few minutes early, and the secretary directed us to the waiting area. It was empty, but not for long. Just a few moments after we arrived, three other women walked in. My mother immediately stiffened, and I knew that meant they were my father’s family.
I’d never met my grandmother or my father’s two sisters. Even when I was very young and he was still the strong, fun father I remembered back then, we never got together with his family. He always gave excuses that they lived far away, or they didn’t like to travel. It seemed strange to me considering I had friends whose grandmothers lived on the other side of the country and came to visit, but it was considered a nonnegotiable conversation.
Now looking at my grandmother for the first time, I was beginning to understand what he might have been keeping us from. She looked at my mother with steel in her eyes and turned just as much darkness toward me.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said through gritted teeth. “How could you be so selfish?”
“I’m not being selfish,” my mother said. “This is Walter’s will, not mine. I had nothing to do with it. If he wanted to leave something for his son, then that was his choice.”
“It’s ridiculous that you think either one of you is entitled to anything of his. You weren’t good enough for him from the beginning. He never should have married you. You know the only reason he did it because he got you pregnant,” my grandmother growled.
I could feel Maya’s hand tighten around mine. She wanted to say something, but she was staying quiet. She didn’t want to escalate anything or make this more challenging than it already was.
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Mom asked. “You hated that he married me. You hated that he stayed after Greg was born. You drove him away.”
“I didn’t do anything,” my grandmother said. “He made that choice.”
“No,” Mom said. “He wrote me a letter. I know exactly what you did.”
I looked over at her. “What do you mean?”
“Not now,” Mom said. “She’ll know soon enough.”
Just then, the lawyer stepped out into the waiting room and called us back into the office. I chose a chair for Mom and made sure Maya and I bookended her so we could both hold her hands. There was no need for her to be exposed to my father’s awful family.
I always grappled with the reality that my father just ran. He chose not to find a way to make himself better, but that he just abandoned us. Now that I was experiencing his family, I was starting to think it was less that he ran away and more that they dragged him away. These women clearly thought nothing of my mother or of me. And even though I had mixed feelings about my father, this experience was terrible.
The lawyer sat down and pulled a file out of his drawer. My grandmother immediately held up a hand.
“Before you even start, I want to make it extremely clear that I have no intention of accepting the terms of Walter’s will.”
“Are you saying you are going to contest the will?” the lawyer asked.
“Absolutely,” my grandmother said. “My son ended his marriage to this woman many years ago. There was never a true relationship between them, anyway.”
“How could you possibly say that?” my mother asked. “You were never around. You never interacted with me or saw us together.”
“I didn’t need to,” my grandmother said. “I am well aware of the type of person you are. You manipulated my son i
nto sleeping with you, and you tried to trap him by getting pregnant. You pushed him over the edge.”
“I did nothing, but take care of him. The fact that he fell into alcoholism wasn’t my fault. Trust me, he told me all about his father and your tendency to disappear from the world with a good Jack Daniels or two or ten,” my mom said.
My grandmother gasped, her hands clutching the sides of the chair, and she looked like she was going to get up and launch at my mother.
“How dare you speak to her that way?” one of my father’s sisters demanded.
“Stop it, Gladys,” Mom said. “I don’t want to hear anything from you. You have no right to be here.”
My mother’s voice was shaking slightly, and she held my hand tighter and tighter as she spoke. I could tell she was getting overwhelmed, but she was finally saying things she had been holding inside her for so long. Things I had no idea she lived with every day.
“I have far more right to be here than you do,” the skeletally thin woman said acidly. “And far more than her, too.”
Her sharp nod toward Maya made my muscles tense and protectiveness rush up inside me.
“Leave her out of this,” I said.
“I think the best thing for everyone would be if we proceeded,” the lawyer said. “I hear your desire to contest the will because your son’s decision to leave money to both his son and his ex-wife, but there are extenuating circumstances involved.”
“What does that mean?” my grandmother asked.
“The letter he sent me,” my mother said. “It was in the papers you gave to me.”
“Excuse me?” my grandmother asked, sounding shocked that she had any part in getting communication from my father to my mother.
“Walter wrote letters to be included with his will,” the lawyer explained.
“And mine detailed how you drove him into the worst of his drinking, then when he hit rock bottom and decided to seek treatment, you manipulated him into never coming back. I won’t get into the grisly details right now, but I’ll leave it at I know everything,” Mom said.
The Freeman Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection Page 97
