Falling for the Brother
Page 14
That made complete sense to her. It didn’t explain why Grace had said Harper had pandered to Bruce—but you saw what you looked for. And bits of the truth strengthened perceptions, too. In her case, there’d been some truth in the fact that she’d tended to be more compassionate, often letting Bruce have his own way because she’d felt guilty about ripping his heart out. Felt guilty about the person with whom she’d been unfaithful.
I’d had nothing to be faithful to that night. The words came to her unbidden. Before she could follow the reasoning, Mason spoke again.
“It wasn’t just her time with Grace. Gram still called her, they still saw each other most days, until about a year ago. Grace said that Bruce was gradually sucking the life out of Gram by stopping her from doing chores she was perfectly capable of doing. Like carrying the laundry downstairs, for instance. She said it started out with little things like that, and Gram would gush about how great it was to have a chivalrous and caring man in the house again. But then it became less helpful and more controlling. I guess one day he got home from work and saw her on a ladder changing a lightbulb and lit into her. Grace was on the phone with her at the time and heard the whole thing, but Bruce didn’t know that. Gram had been talking on the Bluetooth Bruce had bought her, so she could answer the phone anytime he called, and could always call for help if she fell or got into trouble. Grace’s theory is that after you left, Bruce fixated on Gram and was petrified of losing her, too. Over time, he continued to curtail activities until she started to feel like she wasn’t capable of doing very much anymore. Grace invited her to a retired cops’ par three golf outing, and Miriam said that she’d never make it around the course. Didn’t want to tire herself, or risk putting a strain on her heart.”
“Miriam loves golf!” Harper had meant to listen from a safe emotional distance. By the time she’d interjected she’d been completely pulled in.
She didn’t blame Bruce. She understood. And, unlike Mason, saw a pattern of loving, not abuse.
“It sounds more to me like maybe Miriam’s getting older, has less energy and wanted to conserve it, just like she said,” she added. “We both know how much Bruce loves her. I can see him being overprotective—”
“The final blow between Gram and Grace came last year, when Gram suddenly announced that she couldn’t drive across town to Grace’s house anymore. She said Bruce didn’t think her reflexes were quick enough and she could get in an accident.”
That was a little much. Unless... “Did he have reason to think so? Had she had any accidents? Any fender benders or near misses?”
“Apparently not. Grace had ridden with her the week before, in downtown rush-hour traffic, and said Gram had maneuvered like a pro. Like she always did.”
“She’s a strong-minded woman. There must be some reason she didn’t stand up to him.”
“Grace is certain that he beat her down so much, she’d lost all confidence in herself. And when she tried to tell Gram, she said Gram hung up on her. They talked again a couple of times, but Gram said she wasn’t going to listen to Grace maligning Bruce anymore and Grace couldn’t watch what was happening to her friend and say nothing. Eventually their phone calls stopped.”
The sadness that momentarily consumed her...for both women...had to be pushed aside. This was business.
Harper looked Mason in the eye. “Miriam just climbed out a window to preserve her sense of independence and control. Don’t you find the idea of her giving in to Bruce due to a loss of confidence a little hard to believe?”
His lack of an answer was an answer in itself.
He’d come to her for the information she could give him. Harper felt the responsibility acutely. She said, “Look, Mason, I see some of what you’re saying. Bruce can be a bit controlling. Maybe he does embellish to elicit sympathy sometimes, but there’s got to be more going on here. Miriam not seeing Grace for a year... That can’t just be because Bruce was getting overprotective. Grace has known Bruce all his life! Why not talk to him?”
“Grace said she tried. He gave her a heartfelt testimony of his love for Gram, insisting that he only wanted what was best for her. He said he hadn’t told her not to do her volunteer work, that she’d sworn she wanted to be at home, caring for him.” He paused, looked down at his hands, then back at her. “She claimed he had tears in his eyes when he said it.”
“But you just said that, according to Grace, Bruce did tell her not to do volunteer work.”
“Another reason I need to speak with Gram in the morning.”
She didn’t miss the “tears in his eyes” reference, reminding her of the night Bruce had begged her to marry him. She even experienced a second of discomfort, until she realized that of course Bruce would have been emotional. His grandmother’s oldest friend had accused him of mistreating her, doubting his devotion to her.
“And none of this even remotely hints at Bruce hurting Miriam. Her arm’s broken. Those bruises on her face...that’s not mental manipulation or emotional abuse.”
“Grace said that that one time Miriam was changing a lightbulb and Bruce got home... His tone of voice was not loving or kind. He asked her if she’d lost her fucking mind. Called her an idiot. Grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the ladder, dropping her in her chair. Grace could hear most of it and Gram filed in the rest, insisting that Bruce was just worried and trying to keep her safe. He’d gone in to shower right after, never knowing that Grace had been on the phone the whole time.”
Nausea didn’t visit her often. But when it did, it came abruptly. Harper took a deep breath. Relaxed her stomach muscles. Went to the cooler for a paper cone of water.
She’d given Mason the facts she had to give him. As Grace had. There was no more she could do.
“I can’t comment on that, Mason. I wasn’t there,” she said when her stomach settled, needing him to leave.
He approached her slowly, stopping a foot away. The urge to hold him hit her as suddenly as the nausea had. Water wasn’t going to settle that one.
If she had to use Bruce as a barrier between them, she’d do it. For all their sakes. “Clearly, I’m not a victim of Bruce’s manipulations,” she told him. “I’m here. I left him. As Grace put it, I was the only one who didn’t let his love control me.” Or something to that effect.
Again he looked as though he wanted to say more. He studied her instead. If he wasn’t going to leave on his own, she’d show him out. Heading to the door and to the hall, her unfinished workout didn’t matter anymore.
Mason stopped her just short of the front door, turning her to face him.
“Please be careful,” he said, his expression reminiscent of early morning hours in the moonlight, giving her the false impression that nothing mattered more to him than she did.
“I’m armed every day,” she reminded him. “And I’m always careful.”
“Be careful with Bruce. Don’t accept things at face value. If your leaving changed him, just think what losing Gram could do to him. He has no idea she’s protecting him...”
“If he didn’t do this, he won’t figure she’d need to protect him.”
“But if he did do it...”
She’d hate to imagine the walking and staring he’d be doing. The walking out and returning hours later. Except, who would he walk out on? And return to?
“You don’t really think Bruce is going to do something as stupid and bold as to try to get into the Stand? To Miriam or me?” Or Brianna?
Her vision reddening around the edges as fear engulfed her, Harper felt weak in the knees for the second it took rational thought to return.
“Not unless he thinks he’s on the verge of being reprimanded—if he was suspended from work, for instance—but he wasn’t. Still, because he’s shown up in Santa Raquel for the very first time right now, while all of this is happening, I can’t just put his presence here down to coincidence.”
“I know. And he hasn’t been to see her once in those weeks, until two days after I brought Miriam to you.”
She had no argument, so she promised to be careful, looking at his lips as she told him good-night.
And felt his gaze linger way too long on hers before he opened the door and let himself out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AFTER A RESTLESS night in a nondescript motel room, with a bed like many of the others he’d slept in around the country, Mason was eager to unwrap his little bar of complimentary soap and jump in the shower Thursday morning.
Three days ago, life had been...predictable. Fine. Just the way he’d established it. Normal.
That morning, other than the leather satchel that served as his bathroom cabinet and dresser, he hardly recognized anything. Least of all himself.
As a guy who moved through life analytically, he wasn’t prone to emotion. Or spending nights lying awake in the dark, questioning himself.
Was he wrong about Bruce? Had five years of suppressing questions gotten to him while he was busy with other things? Was his perception so clouded by an unrequited desire for the one woman he could never have?
Was he Brianna’s father? Missing out on the most incredible experience he’d ever know?
Was he after his brother because, only by proving that Bruce wasn’t worthy of his family, could Mason step in and claim what was his? Or rather what he wanted to be his?
But Harper wasn’t, and never had been.
The family, though... Gram... Brianna...
Bruce.
Bruce was his family. His closest family.
The one way his brother would come through this without a smudge was if Mason proved his innocence before anyone else knew about the report sent from urgent care and started asking questions.
Shaking the water out of his hair as he left the shower, he determined to realign his thinking. Darkness was gone. The light of day had arrived.
And with it came sense. Clarity.
Gram had been abused. He hadn’t conjured up that fact. His job was to find out who’d hurt her and make it stop.
An hour later, he was at the Stand, already sitting at their usual table, with coffee and doughnuts he’d brought in from a shop down the street, when Miriam came in at seven, just as they’d arranged. Hair and makeup done, wearing white capris and a short-sleeved light blue cotton top he’d never seen before, she looked small walking toward him. And yet putting on a good face. Her below-the-elbow cast caught his eye, renewing his anger at whomever had hurt her. He stood, pulled out her chair and set her coffee—black and mild as she liked it—in front of her.
“I brought you old-fashioned plain. Your favorite,” he said, taking a doughnut out of the box and putting it on a napkin.
“You’re a good boy, Mason.” She didn’t quite pull off a smile, but it looked as though she’d tried.
She nibbled a little of the doughnut. Mason watched, figuring the bagel he’d purchased for himself would wait until the drive to Albina.
“It’s my turn to make breakfast at the house this morning,” she said, when he mentioned her lack of appetite. “I’ve got to be back soon.”
He didn’t know whether to celebrate the fact that she seemed to be engaged with her temporary life circumstances, or to point out that they didn’t have long to talk. He’d let her know the day before that he needed time with her. She could have rescheduled breakfast duty.
She was using it as an excuse, flimsy at best, not to have to talk with him for long. Watching her, he wished his father was alive and could translate Gram’s actions for him.
“How did it go with Brianna yesterday?” He started there to put her at ease.
“Great.” Her smile was genuine this time, and she met his gaze. “We made chocolate chip cookies for her to give to the kids in her class today. She insisted on doing all the measuring herself—said her mom showed her how—and needed very little help in getting it right. We just had to increase the ingredients because we were doubling the recipe.”
A four-year-old who grasped the concept of measurement? He felt the news with a sharp stab of—
No. This wasn’t about him. It was about taking care of his family. Taking care of Gram and Bruce.
“I should’ve been teaching her when she visited on weekends, but I didn’t want to take her away from Bruce. She’s his only child and he has so little time with her...”
Instincts on full alert, Mason said, “I had a chat with Grace yesterday.”
The doughnut captured Gram’s full attention. Fingers picking at it, she was creating a small pile of crumbs.
“I was shocked when she told me the two of you haven’t spoken in almost a year.”
More crumbs. No words.
“She misses you.”
“She knows my number.”
“You know hers, too.”
Gram’s nod wasn’t encouraging. It disclosed nothing of what she was thinking.
“Don’t you miss her, too?”
That got Gram’s attention. “Of course I do,” she said, bringing some crumbs to her mouth.
“So...what happened?”
Gram shrugged. Ate another small piece. “People change.”
“Almost a whole life of being friends, and now, in your seventies, people change?”
“She wants me to be like her—free from family responsibility, doing whatever she wants when she wants it.”
“Grace has never seemed like a selfish person to me. As far as I can tell, she still spends most of her time volunteering at church, and with the women’s auxiliary.”
Gram nodded.
“You used to love doing those things, too.”
“I have a home and family to take care of.”
“Bruce is a grown man who lived on his own long enough to know how to take care of himself.”
“It’s a big house.”
“So hire some help.”
She shook her head, frowning, and he knew he’d overstepped on that one. Gram would never be happy with someone else running her home. She liked things done her way.
“She says Bruce wouldn’t let you drive at night anymore. Is that true?”
She’d driven herself to urgent care.
“He gets nervous. And I don’t like to be out alone at night. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”
Leaning his elbows on his knees, Mason bent toward her, wishing he could take her hand in his and not have her pull it away.
“Did he tell you not to drive at night anymore?”
“I don’t like to be out at night alone.”
Yet she’d climbed out a bedroom window to take a walk in the dark. Alone. To prove her independence.
Because Bruce had stripped her confidence in herself—maybe even without meaning to? Or had he purposely replaced a sense of independence with fear as a way of controlling her?
“Did he forbid you to go out at night, Gram?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look at me, please.”
A few seconds of silence passed, accompanied by another few crumbs of doughnut going to her mouth, and then she looked at him.
“Did he forbid you to go out? At night or any other time?”
“I’m a grown woman! No one can forbid me to do something.”
“Did he try? Did he ask you not to drive at night anymore?”
Her gaze dropped as she shook her head and Mason knew she’d just lied to him.
* * *
HARPER WASN’T EVEN out of the shower when Bruce called Thursday morning. Brianna answered the phone and came into her bathroom.
“Daddy
needs you!” she called through the steam.
Fear shot through Harper and she yanked at the shower curtain and peered out. Brianna stood there, still in her short-sleeved princess nightgown, hair all askew, holding Harper’s cell phone.
Thank God. The phone.
Had she really thought the man had shown up at her house and that Brianna had let him in?
She was letting Mason get to her. That had to stop.
Grabbing a towel, she dried her hand, wrapped herself and took the phone, an eye on her daughter as she did so.
What had Bruce said to Brianna?
The four-year-old seemed as happy as always.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Bruce said to her, his tone affable. Kind. “I got called back for a job. Looks like I’m going to be on it all week. But...it’s been too long since I’ve seen my little girl. Is there any way you could bring her up here? Just for a few hours, if that’s all you can spare.” He suggested hours during each of the next three days, saying he could be free from his assignment then.
“We could do something, the three of us,” he continued. “Maybe have a picnic on the beach.”
Picnic on the beach. That was what he’d done on his second date with the woman he’d been sleeping with for weeks before they were married. Mason had said that Bruce’s report stated he’d slept with her on their second date—during a picnic on the beach.
“Harper?”
“I...” Have Friday off. The next day. With Miriam at the Stand, she’d been planning to go in—so Brianna could spend time with her great-grandmother. To keep Miriam satisfied and to give Mason an opportunity—to...clear Bruce?
“Sorry, I was just getting out of the shower,” she told her ex-husband, trying to focus. To think.