A Sinclair Homecoming (The Sinclairs of Alaska)

by Kimberly van Meter - A Sinclair Homecoming (The Sinclairs of Alaska)

  “We’re not asking you to hold our hands. We’re asking you to help us pull Mama out of a really bad situation that you helped put her in.” Wade couldn’t help the rise in his voice as his temper got the best of him. “What you’re doing is hiding, not helping. Don’t try to tell yourself anything different. You can sit in this jail cell and pretend that you’re doing everyone a favor but the truth of it is, you’re being a coward. I’m sorry but there’s just no pretty way to say it. Take responsibility and help us to help this family. Do you think that it doesn’t hurt to see Mama pushing away every single person who loves her because she’s swimming in grief? Grief that you won’t help heal?”

  “What am I supposed to do about it, boy?” Zed’s cheeks colored as he leaned forward, his eyes flashing with a hint of his former spirit. “I’m no therapist! Don’t you think I have my own issues? Am I in any shape to be helping anyone else with their pain? If you can’t see that I would make it worse, then you’re blind.”

  Wade clenched his fist. “No, you’re wrong. You locked yourself in that shed and you buried yourself in drugs to escape your shame for letting down this family. I get it but you can come back from that. You don’t have to wallow in self-pity forever. If you don’t watch out, your wife will be dead before you come to your senses. She almost died in that house as it is. Do you hear me? She almost died! And where were you? Sitting here in this jail cell. How is that helping your wife? How can you continue to let down your family? The man I knew, the man who raised me, he wouldn’t have stood for this bullshit. Do you hear me? Bullshit!”

  Wade had never spoken to his father in that way but he couldn’t help it. What was going on wasn’t right and Zed had taught him to stand up for what was right, and sometimes that meant going against the stream.

  Whether Zed was rattled by Wade’s impassioned speech, it didn’t show. The man was a rock and a stubborn mule to boot. “Have you said your piece?”

  “Would it matter? Does anything I have to say matter to you anymore?” he retorted bitterly.

  “I’ve done a lot of wrong and I sure as hell have no authority to throw stones, but you have a helluva lot of nerve coming in here and pointing fingers when you walked away from the family eight years ago. You skipped off when we all needed the family to rally, so don’t sit there and point your fingers and raise your voice as if you are innocent in any wrongdoing. You hide behind your excuse that you had a job to go to—but what you did was run away. Don’t try to sell it to me any other way.”

  Wade opened his mouth to protest but what could he say? His father was right. He’d run as quick and as fast as he could. How could he stay after what had happened with Simone? After he had failed to find her? How could he look his father in the eye and not see failure staring back at him every single time?

  “I shouldn’t have left the way I did,” Wade admitted quietly. “I didn’t know what else to do. If I’d stayed in this town I would’ve lost my mind. So I left. Is that what you want me to say? Well, there you have it. My confession. Yes, I bailed. I bailed on my family because I couldn’t handle the thought of confronting Simone’s ghost around every corner. I failed to find her. I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her. But I failed. I couldn’t live with myself if I’d stayed.” Wade leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. Pain, sharp and unrelenting, sliced across to his heart as he suffered the echo of his guilt and suffering but it was a wound that needed lancing. It’d taken eight years for him to admit that he shouldn’t have bailed and a weight fell from his shoulders that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.

  “You didn’t fail,” his father said roughly. “Bad things happen and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Simone got caught up in something terrible and we might never know why. Don’t bear that burden, son.”

  Wade scrubbed his face and ground the moisture from his eyes. “You don’t blame me?”

  “Why would I? No more than I would blame Trace or Miranda. It was just Simone’s time and that’s the part that we have to get right with.”

  “I can’t get right with it, Dad. I just can’t.”

  “I know, I know. Getting right with it...that’s the struggle. Every day. Why did such a sweet girl get cut down so young, so brutally? The questions kept me awake at night. While your mother fought nightmares, I fought insomnia.”

  God, Wade knew insomnia well. Seems he’d inherited that particular trait from his father. Whereas Wade used work to occupy his brain, his father had resorted to marijuana. What a slippery slope it is managing emotional pain.

  “At first, the dope helped me sleep. And then it turned into something more, something I needed to function but then I wasn’t really functioning. I was just existing. And I didn’t have the strength to hold your mom up because I didn’t have the strength to hold myself up. I turned down Rhett’s and Trace’s offers to pay my bail because I knew I needed to be here. I needed this time to get my head on straight—to let the smoke clear from my brain. And for the first time in a long time I have clarity. But with that clarity comes the realization that I don’t deserve to ride in on a white pony to save the day.” Wade stared in shocked silence at Zed. He couldn’t fathom his father’s position but he could plainly see Zed’s pain. “I’m a burden to your mother—just one more thing for her to worry about at the end of the day. And I never imagined I would be that. But I am. I’m trying to give your mother time without adding to her burden, don’t you see that?”

  “But you’re not doing that, Dad. She’s drowning without you. You’re standing on the shore and watching her go under water saying ‘I can’t save her. I can’t save her’ but you can. She needs you, more than any time in her life. She’s turning into a bitter, angry woman.” Wade took a deep breath. “And she’s killing Miranda—your other daughter. Mom’s squelching Miranda’s spirit and stomping on all the love that a mother is supposed to have for her children. It’s as if she can’t help herself and all sorts of mean things come popping out of her mouth at Miranda’s expense. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

  “She’s always been harder on Miranda,” Zed agreed in a soft, aggrieved tone. “I don’t know why.”

  “It’s gotten worse. Please, Dad...please come home.”

  A torturously long moment stretched between them, and for a second Wade was hopeful that his father might finally agree, but Zed gave a slow, definitive shake of his head and Wade’s hope plummeted. “I can’t. I’m not ready. I wish that I were, son. I really do.”

  “Tomorrow they’re doing the cleaning on the house. She’s going to need you more than ever. We need you. We’re all going to be there. You know it’s going to be difficult for her to have people going in and out of the house looking at all of her embarrassing mess. But if this cleaning doesn’t work, they’re going to condemn the house permanently and Mom will have nowhere to go. Do you understand? This is bigger than your pride. This is your wife’s home. The place where she raised her children. The place you built! It has to mean more than your pride. It has to mean more than your shame for failing her. I need you to rise above all of that and be the man you once were. The man I remember. The man I miss.”

  In all of his life Wade could remember his father crying on three occasions. The first time was when they’d lost his favorite hunting dog, Butch, to a bear mauling. The second time was when Trace broke his leg skiing and had to be airlifted to Anchorage in order to save his life. And the third was the morning that they found Simone. But as Wade watched, a tear snaked down Zed’s cheek, and Wade knew his father wasn’t going to budge. Wade was looking at a broken man—a man whose soul had been crushed by circumstance with no hope of survival—and it was all he could do not to cry himself.

  There was nothing more he could say. The situation was out of his hands. His father had made up his mind that they were better off without him, and Wade didn’t know what to say o
r do to change it. His dad had already admitted he had demons to slay, and he thought the best place to battle them was behind bars.

  Wade let out a heavy sigh and pushed away from the table. “I came here to change your mind. When I set out and walked into this place, I swore I wasn’t leaving without you. But I can’t really force you to do what’s right. You think that your family doesn’t need you and you think that your wife is better off with you in here. All I can say is you are wrong. There was a time when I thought of you as the wisest of all men. And I know it’s unrealistic for fathers to remain their sons’ heroes for the rest of their lives but I never thought that you would stop being my hero. But today, you did.”

  Wade stood on stiff legs and walked away. There was a wealth of pain crashing over his heart, crying out for his father but he had to accept that his father had made his choice. He would have to do his best to be the stand-in head of the household for his family. If his father were thinking clearly that’s what he would’ve wanted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “PERFECT,” MIRANDA MUTTERED, glancing up at the dark skies overhead as the cleaning crew and organizers gathered in their parents’ yard. Wade followed Miranda’s gaze and nodded in agreement. That’s all they needed to make things worse: rain. Already their mother was glaring at everyone as if they were the enemy and she was the lone defender of her property. Miranda sighed and looked to Wade. “Might as well get this show on the road, right? It’s not as if it’s going to get better.”

  Wade gave a minute shake of his head but he agreed. There was no sense in putting off the inevitable. Jennelle was going to pitch a fit no matter what.

  Morgan pulled up and he used that excuse to break away from Miranda. He wanted to be anywhere but here at the moment. Maybe Morgan could give him some words of wisdom to bolster his resolve.

  Morgan’s cheeks instantly pinked in the biting cold, which only gave her porcelain skin a fresh hue that immediately made him think of the other times he’d made her blush—and moan—and he had to shelve those thoughts before he made a fool out of himself in front of God and country. “Hi,” he said, smiling. “Ready for this?”

  “Are you?” she countered with a small smile of her own but she was the consummate professional both in her manner and her expression. “This kind of cleanup is hard on everyone, not only the hoarder. There are bound to be some memories that pop up as we go through the process.”

  “I’m not sure how. That house is not the same house I grew up in. I don’t even recognize it anymore.”

  “You will. Once we dig down to the bones, you’d be surprised what comes up. It can be very cathartic but it can also be very painful,” she warned him in a gentle tone that warmed him in places it shouldn’t. He didn’t know if she was this way with every patient’s family or if he was special but he’d like to think it was the latter. “How is your mother today?”

  “Ornery as ever. Bound to insult or offend someone before the day is out,” he answered. “But the doctor said she’s healthy enough to participate as long as she doesn’t do any lifting.”

  “Well, we have people for that so no worries there. And how are you doing?”

  “Terrible,” he admitted, tapping his chest. “I think I might have a heart attack, myself. There’s a tightness right here that makes it hard to breathe. I don’t know why this is stressing me out so much.”

  She graced him with another soft smile. “Because your subconscious knows that house has both painful and beautiful memories. You haven’t been dealing with any of them since you left. Today is the day you will. It’s natural to be apprehensive. Just don’t run from it.”

  “Funny, ’cause that’s exactly what I feel like doing and then I feel like a jerk for even thinking it.”

  “It’s natural,” she assured him. “If at any point you need a breather, let me know. This is about the family’s process, not just your mother’s.”

  He nodded and knew he should keep the conversation professional but he suffered the overwhelming impulse to reach out and touch her. He knew that wasn’t appropriate, and she likely wouldn’t appreciate him drawing attention to their private dalliance so he kept his hands to himself. But his gaze must’ve burned with hunger for Morgan’s breath caught and she gave a slight shake of her head. “You must’ve read my mind,” he murmured so only she could hear him.

  “I guess I did,” she admitted, glancing away, searching to catch any stares their way. “We need to keep it professional. I don’t need anyone finding out about us.”

  Us. He wished there was an us to discover. “I know.” You look beautiful today. The words danced on his tongue and nearly tripped from his mouth. “Assuage my ego and tell me that I’m not the only one feeling something here.”

  She laughed softly as her gaze darted with guilt. “You are not alone. But I can’t do this here. You and I need to be professional right now.” She took a tiny step forward, acting as if she was flicking something from his shoulder so that she could whisper, “But tonight I’m free if you want to come by...I’ll even cook.”

  He grinned. “Can you cook?”

  “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “That’s a date, Ms. O’Hare,” he promised, his mood lightening. “Anything I should bring?”

  She met his gaze boldly. “Condoms. Lots of them.” And then she left him to struggle with his sudden erection as she went to talk to his mother. Crafty woman...oh, he would delight in the payback—and so would she.

  * * *

  HAD SHE REALLY just told Wade to bring condoms? She pressed a gloved hand to her cheek, unable to believe she’d been so saucy. Ohhh Lordy...what was she doing thinking about sex with Wade when she was supposed to be focused on the task at hand? Get your head on straight.

  She approached Jennelle Sinclair, whose expression hovered somewhere between horrified and mortified as total strangers converged on her property, and her daughter, Miranda, who looked ready to go into battle. “Good morning, ladies,” she started with a smile but only Miranda returned the gesture. Jennelle merely sniffed and looked away. A work in progress, that woman. “How are you feeling, Jennelle?” she asked, drawing the older woman into the conversation. “This is a big transition, and I want you to feel comfortable that nothing is being done without your consent.”

  “That’s grizzly poop and you know it,” Jennelle spat, embarrassing Miranda.

  “Mom, stop it. Don’t start off the day with your sharp tongue,” Miranda warned, shooting an apologetic look Morgan’s way. “I’m sorry. She’s impossible to wrangle on a good day much less a stressful one.”

  “Don’t apologize for me. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m the one being forced to suffer strangers going through my things, riffling through my underwear drawer and passing judgment on my life just to satisfy some government agency’s opinion that I am safe to live on my own.”

  Miranda’s face showed her frustration, and Morgan stepped in to intervene. “May I have a word with your mother privately?” she asked Miranda.

  “Be my guest. Maybe you could dose her with something to change her personality?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jennelle said with a scowl. “Go on, make sure those people don’t trample my yard.”

  Miranda grumbled and walked away, leaving Morgan with Jennelle. “I know this is very hard,” she started but Jennelle cut her off.

  “You don’t know anything, girlie. You don’t know what it’s like to be forced from your home or to lose something so precious you don’t know how you’ll ever recover. Don’t patronize me with your doctor speak. We both know I have no choice in the matter. I just want to get it over with so I can return to my life.”

  “Jennelle, you won’t heal if you don’t commit to the process. You have the opportunity to start fresh and heal the wounds with your children. Isn’t that worth the sacrific
e?” Morgan withheld a sigh when Jennelle didn’t respond. The older woman was too stubborn for her own good. Empathy for Wade’s family’s situation bordered on the unprofessional as she fought the urge to sharpen her voice with the older woman. “Well, the cleaners and organizers are here so let’s meet with them and see how the day is going to go. The weather is not on our side, it would appear, so we need to use each moment afforded to us.”

  “Then I’ll hope for snow,” Jennelle muttered, which Morgan ignored. Jennelle was not an easy woman on a good day. It made her wonder what she’d been like before life dragged her down to this bitter place.

  They walked over to the assembled group and to Morgan’s surprise, Jennelle kept her mouth shut when Morgan thought for sure she’d have a few gems to share as they detailed how they were going to go into the house, room by room, pulling everything out and placing it in piles to sort and toss.

  Morgan’s gaze found Wade’s, and a tingle erupted in her stomach at the banked promise in his eyes. Lord, that man was sexy. He did crazy things to her sense of self that she didn’t quite trust but she craved just the same. For those reasons alone she should’ve rescinded her offer for tonight but she knew with a certainty wild horses couldn’t force her to say those words. For the first time in her life, she felt out of control of her own emotions and it was addicting.

  An hour into the cleaning process, as multiple cleaners dressed head to toe in hazmat suits and breathing apparatuses worked like bees to clear out the residence, the first meltdown occurred.

  “What are you doing? You’ve ruined an heirloom!” Jennelle screeched, her hands shaking as she held a broken porcelain figurine. Wade, Miranda and Trace were around her, trying to calm her down but she was quickly gathering speed and Morgan rushed over to help. “You said they would be careful! You promised!” Jennelle cried to Miranda, and Miranda looked chagrined at the oversight.

  “Jennelle, come talk with me for a minute,” Morgan encouraged her, drawing her away from her children so that the woman could gather her wits. Sometimes patients needed to remove themselves from the situation and those associated with it in order to calm down. “Talk to me about the heirloom.”