Brooke had been trying to get in touch with her father ever since the night her grandfather had died, but no one ever answered her calls until now. Her parents were still living in the Philadelphia area so she knew they’d have time to make it for the funeral if they wanted to. She really hadn’t wanted to leave a message about his death, so she kept calling, figuring if she didn’t connect before the funeral, then she would leave a message. When her father finally answered the phone, she sighed in frustration when he reacted the way she already knew he would.
“I said I’m not coming to the funeral. I told you they were dead because they are, at least to me. The fact he really has died doesn’t change anything for me, Brooke.”
“Dad, I really wish you’d reconsider. Grandma needs her family now more than ever. He’s gone. Can’t you see past your anger enough to let it go?”
“No, and I’m not discussing this anymore. If you really cared about him, then I truly am sorry for your loss, Brooke, but I stopped caring about either one of them long before you were even born.”
“What happened to tear this family apart so thoroughly?” Brooke knew he wouldn’t tell her because he never had before, and this was far from the first time she’d asked about it.
“Ask your grandmother, though I doubt she’ll tell you the truth. I need to go. I’m working the night shift this week. I love you.”
He hung up before she had the chance to respond. She fought the urge to throw the phone across the kitchen and turned to find her grandmother waiting in the doorway.
“That was your father,” she said—a statement, not a question. Her eyes were as cold and distant as her tone. Without waiting for any kind of confirmation, she poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Is he coming to the funeral?”
“He refuses, Gram. I wish someone would tell me why things are so bad between you and him. When I was growing up, he told me his parents were dead.”
If Brooke’s revelation surprised her, she never showed any outward sign of it. Brooke watched in silence while she sipped her coffee at the ancient table she’d probably had for decades. After what seemed an eternity, her grandmother leaned back in her chair and motioned for Brooke to take a seat across from her.
“Is it really so bad you can’t see your way past it and forgive him? Maybe if you called him he’d talk to you.”
“It’s not about me forgiving him, dear.” Her grandmother rearranged the flowers sitting in the middle of the table. “It’s about him forgiving me, and I know it will never happen.”
Brooke sat back and folded her arms across her chest, deciding she wasn’t going to move from her chair until her grandmother told her the whole story. To her surprise, she didn’t have to wait long.
“Your father was a hell-raiser and a troublemaker from the time he was old enough to walk,” she said quietly.
Despite the harshness of her words, Brooke caught the undercurrent of affection in her tone. Her grandmother stared at some point on the wall behind Brooke. Brooke had the feeling she was calling forth old memories. She just hoped they weren’t too painful for her grandmother because she had enough to deal with.
“His first scrape with the law came when he was twelve. He and a friend stole a bottle of whiskey from the friend’s father’s liquor cabinet and proceeded to drink themselves into a stupor. The police picked him up and brought him home. We were told if it happened again we’d be getting a call telling us he was in jail. Your grandfather was livid, Brooke. We grounded him for a year after that, but nothing was going to stop him. By the time he turned fifteen, he’d been arrested seven times. Four of them were for drunk driving. We kept bailing him out and paying for lawyers to defend him, and he swore to us he’d never do anything wrong again. He always did though. We were at our wit’s end. We even sent him away to a boarding school for troubled boys, but he got expelled before the year was out.”
“Jesus, how bad do you have to be to get kicked out of a school for troubled boys?” Brooke was reeling after learning these things about her father. He’d told her about an idyllic childhood. Of course, she’d learned that much wasn’t true when she’d found her grandparents. Once she knew they were alive, his story changed, and Brooke was told they’d been horrible parents and he didn’t want anything to do with them. “I’m sorry I interrupted you, Gram, please go on.”
When her grandmother failed to say anything for a long moment, Brooke was worried she wasn’t going to get the rest of the story after all. Her grandmother continued to move the spoon on the table a millimeter to the left, and then back again. When she started talking again, her voice sounded trapped in the past, quiet and lost.
“When he was seventeen, he was arrested for raping a fifteen-year-old girl. Your grandfather and I agonized for days over what to do about him. We finally decided we were done helping him because it was obvious we were only making it possible for him to get more and more out of control. Who knows? If we’d bailed him out, the next time it might have been murder.” Her grandmother looked at Brooke then and wiped her eyes. “He was tried as an adult and was convicted. He spent ten years in prison. The only time we ever heard from him was the day you were born. He got our number by calling information, and he only called us to let us know we had a granddaughter we’d never have the opportunity to get to know. You were born three years before he was released from prison.”
“How…” Brooke started, but she didn’t even know what question to ask. Her mother told her she’d met her father at a concert when they were both twenty-two. But the story her grandmother was telling put him in prison until he was twenty-seven. She shook her head.
“Your grandfather had a friend do some investigating and we found out your mother was one of those women who sympathizes with prisoners and started writing to your father in jail. After they corresponded through the mail for a couple of years, she finally went to visit him. From what I understand, they were married for a few months before you were conceived. She apparently wasn’t using her real name when she went to visit him because there’s no record of her outside the prison. When your father was released, it was as if they fell off the face of the earth. We wanted more than anything to find you and get you away from them, Brooke. We knew there was no way they’d give you a stable upbringing. But we couldn’t find you.”
Her father was a convicted rapist. Brooke really didn’t know how to process the information. They drank too much, yes, but there was never any doubt both her parents loved her dearly. It certainly hadn’t been an ideal childhood, yet she’d never wanted for anything.
The grim reality took hold. Her entire life had been a lie. Nothing about her parents’ pasts were real—at least not the pasts they’d talked about with her. Brooke felt dizzy and was afraid she might pass out.
“Marlene never told me any of this,” Brooke said.
“Why would she?” her grandmother asked. “She was only six when he went to prison, and we never talked about it around her. All she knew was what happened between us and her brother was so bad it could never be fixed. We never saw the need to tell her about the things he’d done, and eventually, she pretty much forgot about him. It wasn’t like we ever went to visit him in prison. She only found him when she came across your name in admissions at Temple. And I’m so happy she did.”
“Logan said she never knew you had a son.” Brooke was stunned and she knew it was obvious in the way her voice shook when she spoke.
“We moved here a year after he was arrested. Before then, we were living near Harrisburg. We had to get away from the people who knew what he’d done.” Her grandmother was staring at her hands but finally tore her gaze away to look at Brooke again. “We needed a fresh start. We wanted to raise Marlene in an environment where she wouldn’t be ostracized simply because of something her brother had done. No one in Oakville knows anything about your father.”
Brooke stood without another word and made her way to the front porch. She was dazed, there was no den
ying that. She felt like she should be incredibly angry upon hearing the truth about her father, but the rug had been pulled out from under her and her whole world was askew. She was glad he refused to come to the funeral. She really didn’t think she could face him right now. Not after everything she’d learned.
“Hey, Brooke,” Jack said when he came out the front door. Brooke apparently looked like she needed a shoulder to cry on because he came to sit next to her, concern etched in his face. “Are you all right?”
“Just family bullshit.”
“Listen, I’m meeting Logan for a couple of drinks. Come with me. It’ll help you relax.”
“Marlene’s going to be here soon, and I really shouldn’t leave my grandmother alone.” Brooke wanted to go, but she knew running away from the things she’d been told about her family wouldn’t help anything. Then again, maybe some mindless drinking could help her forget about all the lies she’d been told while growing up. But did she really want to see Logan when she was so raw? She didn’t have to think about it for long. Logan was the one person she wanted to see.
“Peggy can take care of herself until Marlene gets here.” Jack nudged her with his shoulder and she couldn’t help laughing. His grin was contagious. “Come on, you know you want to go.”
“Okay.” She finally relented, already looking forward to seeing Logan. “Give me a minute to grab a jacket.”
*
“Where are you?” Jack asked loud enough so Logan had to pull the phone away from her ear. “I’m already a couple drinks up on you, so you’d better hurry.”
“How many women are buying you drinks?” Logan asked as she locked her door and headed for the entrance to the only bar within twelve miles of their home. It was a halfway decent place, although Logan would have preferred a restaurant in Riverside or even Erie over the dive Jack suggested.
“Aside from the fact Cynthia wouldn’t be happy about it, I don’t think anybody in this place even knows who I am.”
He sounded a little stunned by the revelation, and Logan laughed as she entered the place. She saw him sitting at the corner of the bar and put her phone away without responding as she walked up behind him.
“I highly doubt that, brother,” she said with a hearty clap to his shoulder. “You’re like a god around here.”
“Yeah, well, nobody’s said anything. Not even the bartender. She’s kind of cute, but she seems more interested in Brooke than me.”
“Brooke’s here?” Logan was taken aback at the rush of arousal she experienced at just the mere thought she was actually there. Ever since the night in the hospital when Brooke had agreed to have dinner with her, she’d been all Logan could think about. She scanned the room and stopped when she saw Brooke. The bartender was indeed interested in her, and Logan felt a pang of what could only be jealousy. She didn’t like the feeling, and it was appearing more and more where Brooke was concerned. Jealous meant you cared enough about someone to experience the feeling, and she never cared about anyone that much. At least not until now. “Why is she here?”
“She was dealing with some family bullshit,” he said. When Logan looked at him, he shrugged. “Her words, not mine. She looked a little down, so I invited her along. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Why would I mind?” Logan asked with more bravado than she felt. “She certainly doesn’t look like she’s down now.”
“She’s been chatting up the bartender for quite some time.”
Logan felt her ears burning, and she knew Jack was watching her watching Brooke. She forced herself to pull her gaze away from the two women and looked at him, one eyebrow raised in question. She hadn’t told him about the date she and Brooke had yet to plan because she knew he’d tease her about it. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right about the attraction between them now.
“Are you jealous?” he asked with a smirk.
“Of what? We’re friends, Jack.” She waved a hand in dismissal and turned her back on them. She took a deep breath to try to calm her thundering heart. She grabbed Jack’s beer and downed half of it in one gulp.
“Except for the fact you both want each other. But you go right ahead and keep telling yourself you’re just friends, because I, for one, don’t believe a word of it.” Jack laughed and turned his attention to the sports news show on the television behind the bar.
Logan clenched her fists to keep herself from slapping him in the back of the head.
Chapter Twenty
Logan placed the cooler beside her chair and took a seat on the front porch. She’d stayed at the bar long enough to have one beer with Jack. Then she’d left him with the directive to not leave without making sure Brooke had a way to get home, since Brooke hadn’t left her conversation with the bartender the whole time she was there. He’d laughed at her. She couldn’t explain to him yet the way she was feeling about Brooke, and him laughing at her really rubbed her the wrong way.
She unscrewed the cap from her first bottle of beer just as the front door opened on the Colliers’ side of the porch. Logan smiled when she saw Shane, Marlene’s fifteen-year-old son emerge. He’d been ten the first time she’d met him. He’d been sitting on the front porch with her father drinking a root beer while her father drank a real beer. The kid was older than his years, and they’d had some pretty deep discussions.
“Hey, Shane,” she said. He turned to look at her with a weary smile.
“Hey, Swift,” he said.
Logan reached into the cooler and pulled out a bottle of the root beer she’d picked up on the way home from the bar. She knew Shane would be there and wanted to be prepared. He stepped over the railing and took it from her as he collapsed into the other chair with a sigh. They sat in comfortable silence watching the light snow falling.
“How are you holding up?” she asked after a few minutes.
“I’ll be okay,” he said before taking a swig. He turned his attention to her and she looked away quickly. She didn’t want him to see how sad she was. He had enough to deal with. “I didn’t get to see you over Thanksgiving. I’m really sorry about your dad. How are you?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“I really liked him. He never treated me like a kid, you know?” Shane sat back and took another drink from the brown bottle. Her dad had always given him the bottles so he’d feel more like an adult. “You never did either. Not like some people do.”
“You never acted like a kid, Shane. I’m not sure I believe you’re only fifteen.” Logan grinned when he laughed. They were silent again, and as the silence went on, Logan couldn’t stop her mind from wandering to Brooke. “How come you never told me about your cousin Brooke?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and stared at the bottle as he turned it over and over in his hands. “She had a really bad breakup with her girlfriend earlier this year.”
“She told me a little about it. How do you know about it?”
“I listen. People tend to forget there’s a kid around when you spend more time listening than talking. I overheard a lot of phone conversations between my mom and Brooke.” Shane cocked his head as he looked at her with a lopsided grin. “Do you like her?”
“I don’t really know her very well.” That wasn’t entirely true. She knew enough about her. She was obviously a family oriented person, just like Logan. She also knew she cared deeply for her, but it wasn’t something she intended to share with Shane. “I’ve only known her a little over a month.”
“She’s worth getting to know. She’s been spending a lot of time with us since my dad died.”
Logan felt tears welling up at the mention of Shane’s father’s death. He’d died only six months earlier, and Marlene had asked Logan and her father to try to help Shane through the loss. He’d only been fifty when cancer took his life. They hadn’t even known about the cancer until three months before the end. It had been hard for Shane to understand, and Logan expected it was even harder for Marlene to move on. But they both seemed to be d
oing well now, which made Logan happy. It made her inexplicably pleased to think Brooke had helped them get to where they were now.
Logan couldn’t stop her smile when she noticed Brooke’s car pull up in front of the house. But nothing could have prepared her for the tirade she was about to face.
“Logan? What the hell?” she asked as she stormed up the steps. She looked at Shane and the bottle he held in his hand before refocusing on Logan. “Do you have any idea how old he is?”
“Of course I do.” It was all Logan managed to get out before Brooke started again.
“Really? You know he’s fifteen, yet here he is sharing a beer with you? How irresponsible can you be?”
Logan placed her bottle on the ground next to her chair before standing to face Brooke. She knew it looked like she was trying to intimidate her, but damn it, she hadn’t done anything wrong, and she wasn’t about to let Brooke rake her over the coals for nothing.
“Logan,” Shane pleaded, but Logan ignored him, instead focusing her energy on Brooke.
“Yes, I’m drinking a beer,” Logan said, the calm tone of her voice in stark contradiction to the anger she felt rising. How dare Brooke think she would give Shane a beer? “However, he’s drinking a root beer. Take a sip if you don’t believe me.”
Brooke stared at her for a moment, and Logan could see the turmoil going on in her eyes. Brooke never broke their eye contact as she reached for the bottle, which Shane handed to her before storming off to the house next door.
“You know the difference between you and my mother, Brooke?” Shane asked before going inside. “My mother trusts me.”
Logan couldn’t help the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth at the thinly veiled jab, but when she saw the fire ignite in Brooke’s eyes, she regretted it. Brooke slammed the bottle down on the railing without tasting it.
“What this is doesn’t matter. What matters is it’s almost eleven o’clock at night, and you’re out here drinking with a minor.”
Trusting Tomorrow Page 14
