“I thought about it the first night I was here. How I could climb out the window if I needed to. How you all might think I’m old and helpless, but I’m not...”
Instincts on alert, Mason almost challenged her, denied that any of them considered her helpless, but the casual way she said the words held him back. He filed them in his mind, knowing he had to mention them to Sara, Gram’s counselor there at the Stand. And maybe to Harper, too. Just to keep her in the loop, since he’d dragged her into this.
Pulling her hand from his, Miriam folded her arms, cast on the inside, and stared at him. “I got out as easily as I knew I could. I took a walk. Enjoyed the gardens by moonlight, and then I came back. If that guard Tasha hadn’t come looking for me I’d have been back in through the window without anyone knowing. It’s low enough that I could sit on the sill and slide down without having to use any arm strength even. And I go up and downstairs every single day.”
The grounds were locked. Safe. She’d put herself in no real danger.
Still, she could have found a way out, which scared the hell out of him. The Stand was nearly impossible to break into, but it wasn’t as difficult to leave. It wasn’t a prison. Which was why they had the voluntary no release system, assigning round-the-clock watch over women who considered themselves a flight risk. And Harper’s team would have no way of knowing that a seventy-something injured woman would try to climb out her bedroom window.
“It’s at the back of the house, you know,” she said, as if that somehow changed things.
“You gave me your word you’d cooperate.”
She glared at him, and he almost took her on. Until he saw the hint of vulnerability in eyes that were growing old—their fire undimmed.
“The officers are here to keep you safe, not make you a prisoner. If you want to take a walk, anytime of day or night, you take a walk. Just let them know, okay?”
“They’re there to see I don’t leave,” she said in as strong a voice as ever. “I signed the voluntary no release form, Mason, in essence making myself a prisoner.”
“The choice was yours.”
“I had no choice! If I didn’t stay here, you’d find someplace else.”
No point in denying it. “This is a nice place, Gram.”
“It’s not home.”
“It’s only for a couple of weeks.”
“I have work to do at home. The place doesn’t stay clean by itself. And Bruce needs to eat better than he does when he’s alone. He won’t iron his shirts, and he leaves clothes in the dryer. He doesn’t change his sheets. And he’ll dump his dirty dishes in the sink until he runs out.”
He was sorry to hear all of that. A bit surprised, too. He’d had no idea his younger brother was such a slob. From what he’d heard, at work he was meticulous about every detail—from the way he filled out his reports to filing. The few times he’d gone into the precinct to see him in the past, before Harper, he’d found Bruce’s desk to be almost OCD neat.
He thought about offering to hire a housekeeper for her so she could relax during her time here, but stopped himself at the last second. Taking away Gram’s sense of purpose would not serve any of them well. Especially her.
“Bruce is a grown man. If he wants to wear wrinkled shirts, that’s his choice.” He told himself not to belabor the point. Gram needed to be needed. “I know it’s not ideal, Gram. I know it’s causing more work for you on the other end. But I can’t let you go back there until I can guarantee you’re going to be safe.”
“You planning to take away my stepladder? Force me to stand on a chair?”
The doctor had shown him the pictures from his grandmother’s scans. Explained about bones and types of fractures. “The break in your arm was not caused by a fall.”
“I fell off the stepladder.”
He wasn’t going to put her any more on the defensive. “Do I have your word that you’ll exit your bungalow by the front door, or do I need to pay to have officers on all four sides?” he asked now.
The thought of Gram climbing out a window in the dark still made him want to grin. And to cringe, too. She could so easily have fallen—broken something else. She could’ve lain out there in the dark.
But not for long. Harper’s staff had found her missing within the hour, based on their reports.
“No more guards than I already have,” Gram said. “Please.”
“Then you’ll play by the rules you volunteered to follow?”
“I will.” She didn’t seem very happy about the idea. But he believed her.
“Thank you.”
She met his gaze again, looking more fragile. “I don’t want Brianna to think I’m weak. Or unable to care for myself.”
“Oh, Gram, she’s not going to think that!”
“You have no control over what she thinks. She was patting my cheek and telling me everything would be okay.”
He was out of his area of expertise. So far out of it, he felt like a prisoner in his own scenario.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe she’s a mini you?” he asked as the idea occurred to him. “You’re a nurturer, Gram. The best caregiver ever. It comes naturally to you. That’s not something everyone has. Or does well. But Brianna...she’s a natural, too. Some of that had to come from you.” He’d never even met the kid.
“Don’t try to charm me, Mason Thomas.”
Don’t confuse me with Bruce turned into “I’m not the charmer in the family, Gram. I’m just thinking that during these two weeks, with you right here, maybe you could teach her to cook a few things. And maybe give her some tips on how you do what you do around the house. She’s a bright one. I’ll bet she’d pick it up fast. And if I’m right and she’s a little version of you, she’ll probably love every minute of it.”
He was coming up with aces all over the place.
“She’ll go home and tell Harper I’m making her clean toilets and then Harper won’t let me see her anymore.”
Another statement that Mason tucked away for Sara.
“I’ll talk to Harper,” he assured her. “Leave it to me.”
For the first time that morning, Gram’s smile made it to her eyes. “Thank you.”
He got up to go. Gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Gram.”
“I love you, too.”
He was halfway to the hall—on his way to see Harper before heading back to Albina, when he heard her say, “Mason?”
He turned.
“I fell off my stepladder.”
CHAPTER TEN
“SOMEONE’S GOING TO have to go.” Harper, in her uniform with her holster at her waist, sat behind her desk, facing the woman sitting calmly in the chair on the other side.
Lila, in black capri pants and a black-and-white floral print top, didn’t express disagreement.
“Whether she was trying to make me look bad or not, it’s clear that my staff and I failed to do our jobs. But if she’s bent on showing me up, I’m not going to risk her safety or her life by staying here. I’ll just go. Whatever you and Brett choose to do in the meantime or even the long run is your call. I’ll abide by whatever it is. I just can’t place a resident at risk.”
“Brett and I choose to work this matter out in another way,” Lila said.
Harper’s breath caught. If Lila had already talked to her son, their silent founder, she obviously considered the matter of utmost importance. Even in this new world where Lila interacted with all her family members, she still ran the Stand as autonomously as always.
“You’ve talked to him?”
“I wanted his opinion.”
That didn’t sound good. In a day that already stank.
She loved her job. Loved helping these women, protecting them. Loved being able to have Brianna on the premises all day. Safe and secure and close by.
“I’ve spoken to Sara, a
s well.” Sara Havens Edison, the Stand’s top counselor. Lila would have filled her in, for Miriam’s sake.
“None of us will even entertain the idea of you stepping back, so please let’s get that off the table now.” When Lila’s eyebrows rose, something she’d never seen before, Harper found herself nodding before she’d even had time to think.
“Good. As soon as Mason Thomas gets here, we’ll see what he has to say and go from there...”
Harper nodded again. “Tasha’s really beating herself up about this,” she said. “She wants to quit. She thinks she let us all down. I assured her that she hadn’t, but she was still pretty upset when she left.”
“Survivors are sometimes still affected by the way their abusers made them feel—as though they aren’t good enough,” Lila said, watching her. “It’s not uncommon for them to revert to victim mode—where they retreat, rather than stand up and fight for themselves.”
“She’d fight with every ounce of her energy for any of these residents,” Harper said. Tasha was tough. Emotionally strong. “I’d bet my own life on her.”
Lila’s nod told her the other woman had something on her mind. You might not always know what she was thinking, but you could count on the fact that she was thinking. That she saw more than she let on.
“And so would all of us here,” Lila said. “Is she scheduled back this evening?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have Sara call her in for a chat before her shift. We aren’t any more eager to lose her than we are to lose you.”
Lila’s glance seemed to carry more than her words were saying. But if there was a message for her there, she wasn’t getting it. Before she could pursue the matter any further, or even decide if she wanted to, there was a knock at her door.
As Harper stood, Lila let Mason in, indicating the seat next to her as she sat down again. He glanced at her, and then away, exchanging a polite “how are you” with Lila as Harper sank back into her chair.
He looked...so good. His short, thick hair a little askew, as though he’d been scratching his head, his strong features with their permanent honeyed tan, the polo shirt that hugged muscles she knew intimately, and...well, she didn’t need to look at his khakis. Didn’t need to look at any part of him.
“My grandmother wasn’t trying to make the Stand’s security look bad,” he said, starting right in. “She needed to prove to herself that she still had her independence, that she was still capable of being her own boss. Unfortunately, in order to do that, she chose to act like a child. I suspect the way I initially handled this might have made her feel like one. She climbed out of her bedroom window. She’d intended to climb back in, but Tasha found her first.”
Harper’s heart was pounding in her chest. Her knees were weak, and she felt a sudden need to weep. None of which made any sense.
“Because our security measures are good,” Lila said, turning to Harper. She nodded. The strange moment passed.
“I have to admit, a seventy-five-old woman climbing out her window was not something my staff or I considered when we discussed how best to keep Miriam safe on the premises.” Somehow, she came out sounding one hell of a lot more professional than she felt.
“She gave me her word that she’d follow the program from here on out,” Mason said.
Lila stood. “Good, we’ve got things resolved here. I’m going to have a chat with Sara and then I’ll be in my office if either of you needs me.”
And just like that, a meeting Harper had expected to be painful was over in less than five minutes and she found herself alone with Mason. Again.
He’d made a four-hour round-trip because his grandmother had climbed out a window and Harper and her top-notch team hadn’t known a thing about it.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“I was about to say the same thing. You all have so much to do and you’ve wasted your time on what turned out to be a childish prank. I’m embarrassed.”
“As you probably know from your time with the FBI, Miriam’s sense of a loss of personal power is a key element of abuse,” she explained. “A victim’s power is taken away a little at a time, whenever her abuser lashes out, whether physically or verbally. It’s a slow process, because there are usually times of love and kindness between the incidents, and because the abuse comes from someone the victim trusts, so she’s often not aware that it’s happening until she finds herself feeling completely powerless.” She was giving him basics—a very elementary version of what she’d learned during her victim advocate training with The Lemonade Stand.
He watched her. “I know I didn’t help when I all but kidnapped her and gave her an ultimatum to make her stay.”
“From what Lila told me, you tried to explain it to Miriam. To get her to see reason—even just to give you a little time to clear Bruce’s name. But she couldn’t or wouldn’t see the reason.”
“It’s so unlike her.”
“But not an unusual reaction for a victim. Whoever’s hurting Miriam has convinced her that the breakdown is her own fault.”
“She continues to insist that she fell off a damned stepladder. If I hadn’t met with the doctor, seen the physical evidence in the images he showed me, I’d believe her. She’s convincing.”
Harper’s stomach dropped. “I’ve seen that kind of behavior before,” she told him. “In some of our more severe cases here. But I’m not the expert. You really should talk to Sara. It could be that Miriam’s been manipulated to the point that she believes she fell off a ladder...”
Then something else occurred to her. A thought she kept to herself. It was awful.
“What?”
She shook her head. She had no expertise whatsoever when it came to this part of the Stand’s business.
“You know something you aren’t telling me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What were you just thinking?”
His gaze held hers and she had the strongest urge to give him everything he wanted.
Had to be left over from the night she’d felt like dying and he’d found her. Taken her with him, rather than let her sit alone in her misery. He’d been kind to her that night. A good friend.
A good brother.
She was the one who’d turned the evening into something completely different.
“Please, Harper. I’m out in the cold here, I’m doing this one solo. I’d like to know what you’re thinking.”
“I have no professional experience, just basic training so I can protect our residents.”
“I understand. Full disclaimer noted.”
“We had a resident one time, an older woman, older than Miriam. She’d accepted the abuse because she’d been afraid that if she said anything, she’d end up in a nursing home. Her abuser, a niece, threatened her, telling her she’d ship her off if she didn’t mind her p’s and q’s.” P’s and q’s. Harper could remember the woman’s tone of voice. “What made me think of it now is...this resident confided the whole thing to me late one night. She’d called security for a chaperone so she could take a walk. She’d been crying, feeling completely powerless. She was petrified that when she got out of the Stand her family was going to put her in a home.”
“Did they?”
“I honestly don’t know. I didn’t ask.” And she had to admit, “I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t do anything to help her, couldn’t do anything about the outcome. I have a job to do. I have to maintain a certain distance, keep boundaries, so I don’t miss something.”
The compassionate look in his eyes reminded her again of the night they’d shared. Maybe the problem was that it was the only real memory she had of him. The few other times they’d seen each other had been brief. With Bruce running the show. Somehow, that explanation soothed her.
“What I do know is that Lila and her staff are the absolute best and have only the health, happ
iness and interests of our residents at heart. If it had been at all possible to keep her out of a home, they’d have helped her make that happen.”
“I have another favor to ask you.”
If he kept looking at her like that, he could have anything he wanted.
She shook her head, denying herself that thought even as it came to mind. Mason Thomas was so far off-limits, he could be on another planet. For a lot of reasons.
Many of them starting with Bruce. She was not going to risk his ire, creating problems that could directly affect Brianna. They’d managed to divorce and stay cordial enough to raise a happy, secure little girl who loved both of them. And who didn’t have to choose between them.
“Could you at least hear me out before you refuse?” He was kind of grinning, but not really.
It took her a second to realize that she’d shaken her head—although she’d directed the gesture at herself.
“I’m listening.”
“Miriam’s entire life has been centered on her role of family caretaker. She’s feeling like a failure here because she’s not taking care of her home—which, these days, means her house and Bruce.”
“I completely agree. What’s the favor?” She kept a clean house, but could always use a little help. It wasn’t as though Miriam could move in with her, though. Or would, even if she could.
“It occurred to me that if she could spend her afternoons with Brianna teaching her the art of nurturing, of caretaking—you know, as if she was passing on her family traditions and values—then she’d settle in to being here. She’d quit fighting us. She might even want to stay.”
His idea had some merit. For Brianna, too. “She’s definitely a little ruler of the house,” Harper told him. “She’s always underfoot, wanting to help sweep and mop and—” She broke off. “What kind of things did you have in mind?”
“Stuff like that.” He nodded. “I thought we could leave it up to Gram. But maybe, cooking and baking, too.”
She remembered the Miriam she’d known and the older woman’s eagerness to teach Harper family favorite recipes. And she thought of Brianna, who wanted to know how to do every single thing Harper did. She imagined the two of them, Miriam and Brianna, with hours to spend together every day Harper worked over the next two weeks...
Falling for the Brother Page 9
