by Helm, Nicole
Then she turned her gaze to him. She fixed him with that calm I know everything look. “Sit. We have a lot to talk about.”
Chapter Thirteen
Pen had spent most of the night going over what she wanted to say, how she wanted to say it. Addie’s tantrum had fractured her focus though—half of her brain was mulling over what the two girls could have had such a heated argument over on Christmas Eve.
Which unsurprisingly was what Ethan was focused on.
“I shouldn’t have interfered.”
“Why not?”
“I… I’m not their parent.”
“No, but last time I checked this was family by committee. You’re a part of that.”
“I—”
“Whether you want to be or not. You’ve braided Brynn’s hair. Watched all three girls when I went to visit Dad in the hospital. You’ve been buying birthday presents for them since they were born. You, Colt, and Bracken—you’re all a part of the conglomeration of adults that has raised them and loved them through good and bad. So. Step in. Be there. Offer advice. If I don’t like it, you’ll be sure to know.”
She could tell he wanted to argue, but he nodded instead. How many times in their lives had he done that? Swallowed down his arguments and objections? Because it was easier to go along. Not like some kind of pushover. No. Ethan gave the illusion of doing what other people wanted.
In the end, he usually did what he wanted anyway.
She admired that about him. It kept the peace, and avoided a lot of pointless arguing.
But sometimes peace wasn’t the answer.
“Did you have anything else to say before I tell you how wrong you were about last night?” she asked, doing her best to sound regal and sure even while her heart thundered in her chest with nerves and fear she’d say all the wrong things.
But she was Susannah Martin’s daughter. She’d find a way to get through to this man, just like her mother had when Ethan was a boy.
“My father is getting out of jail next month.”
Pen opened her mouth to say something, but since she hadn’t even considered he would come up with that, she could only shut it. That must have been what was weighing on him last night.
Very carefully he linked his fingers together in front of him on the table, and he stared at those links. Once upon a time she’d mistaken that for calm, but it wasn’t. Just like her he held himself the most still when the storm raged within.
He had to let the storm out.
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” she offered, and it was genuine. She might not have been around, or know the details, but she knew what his father had done hurt Ethan. Shamed him, even if he had no real connection to Abe Thompson beyond biology.
She couldn’t pretend she knew what it was like to suffer through parents like Ethan had, but she failed to imagine why he was bringing this up now, especially when he was usually so private about his family.
“I don’t need your sympathy. I need you to understand.”
But she didn’t. At all.
“I know you think last night was right, and maybe if nothing else existed in the world it would have been, but things exist. People exist.”
“Is this supposed to be news to me?”
He sighed, some of that composure slipping. “I have to tell you what happened between Susannah and my father and then maybe you can understand.”
“All right.”
“No one knows this story. Fritz might, but he’s never given me any indication he did.”
“And you’ve never asked him.”
Another piece of his iron composure moved. “Well, no, but…” He shook his head, his fingers linked so hard together his knuckles were white. “It doesn’t matter.”
Pen figured it proved her point, but she’d let him have his piece before she made it.
“I have a sister—I had a sister. She passed away around the same time your mother did.”
Pen blinked. She’d known he had secrets, but to have such a big piece of his life be such a surprise rocked her.
“She was four years older than me, and when I was ten, my father had her involuntarily committed. He said she was…all sorts of things that weren’t true. Even at ten I knew they weren’t true. But he’s a convincing man who knows how to manipulate people, and my mother always supported him. Amy didn’t want to follow his rules, she wanted to escape him, but she wasn’t a danger to herself or anyone else. Not until he put her in a facility.”
He spoke so calmly, clearly a practiced speech. But he couldn’t practice the anguish out of his eyes.
“When she turned eighteen, she got out, but then she seemed hell-bent on proving everything he’d said about her. She died of a drug overdose.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan.” Pen reached out and put her hand over his linked ones. “I had no idea.”
“My father broke her. He really did. And I was young, but I could see what he was doing even before he had her committed—when he started talking about it that’s when I started… I didn’t want to end up some place I didn’t choose. So that’s when I started stealing, fighting, trying to get in real trouble that would take me away before he could send me away. Instead, Susannah found me. And she promised to keep me safe.”
“She kept that promise.”
“She did. But she had to lie to do it.”
Pen withdrew her hand, couldn’t help the way surprise made her want to run away. She wouldn’t, but she was starting to worry this was going to be even harder than she’d thought—and she’d known she had a battle in front of her.
“She couldn’t get concrete evidence to hurt my father no matter how hard she tried, and she tried. She didn’t want me to know, but her and Fritz were starting to fight about it. How much time she was spending on this extracurricular project. How much time it was taking away from you girls.”
“Ethan, they were always fighting about her job, and they always made up. Because no matter how much Dad struggled with the way she dedicated her life to her job, he understood it was…part of her. Important to her.”
“Well, regardless, she felt like she had to keep that promise to me. So, she went to my father and told him she had evidence she didn’t have, and that she wouldn’t arrest him if he left town, and left me behind. She knew enough about the women he’d harassed to make it seem like she had concrete proof, but she didn’t.”
“And he left?”
“Not without threatening revenge.”
“He never got that revenge.”
“Only because she died, Pen. I need you to understand that. After she died, my father contacted me and said how lucky it was Susannah had died, because he’d finally found what he’d needed to get her removed from her job.”
“He was lying. Mom never did anything that would have jeopardized her job.”
“He wasn’t lying. She lied to him to save me—that’s jeopardizing.”
It was such a strange thing. Sadie saying Mom swore when Pen didn’t remember her mother being less than perfect had been confronting in the moment, but this was… Mom had lied. It was completely incongruous with the mother she remembered, the lectures she remembered.
She believed Ethan though. Mom had lied, but for a reason. For this man. Because she’d wanted to save him. No matter what Pen remembered as a child or young teenager, she could understand that truth wouldn’t have mattered to her mother if someone needed saving.
“How do you know your father wasn’t lying about the revenge?” Pen asked gently. “From the way it sounds to me he’s an expert liar, and saying something like that to you was the perfect manipulation.”
Ethan opened his mouth, but instead of words coming out he only shut it, forehead wrinkling in confusion. “It doesn’t matter,” he finally said, as if he could say it fiercely enough to make it true. “The point is, my father doesn’t forgive and forget no matter how often I’ve heard him preach it. He believes in retribution—and I’m an integral reason why he’s in jail. The girl he assaulted
—her parents had been intimidated into not supporting her. Into encouraging her not to press charges. He’d gotten to them, but he couldn’t get to me.”
“So, you think when he gets out he’s going to try and enact some kind of revenge?”
“I’m certain of it.”
She might be better at understanding Ethan underneath the stoicism, but she couldn’t work her way through this. “What… What does that have to do with last night?”
“Anyone I’m close to is in the line of fire.”
“So?”
“So. So, I won’t put you or your girls in that line of fire.”
She tried to ignore the irritation simmering inside of her. This was what he genuinely felt. Even if it was stupid and wrong. “But you’re here,” she said, pointing at the table though she meant bigger than his physical here. “You’re part of our family. If he’s going to hurt you, he’s going to hurt us.”
He looked at her like she’d spoken some foreign language, and as hard as Pen had known this was going to be, understanding these boys and their simple refusal to believe in love when they’d been offered so much of it baffled her.
But she’d been loved from the very beginning. There’d never been a question if her parents were supportive or cared. She’d always known.
So, the fight she had ahead of her wasn’t against the man he was. No, it was against the scared, lonely, unloved boy he’d been.
She had to start where Mom had left off.
*
“No, I—” Ethan shook his head against Pen’s arguments. They seemed so rational, but that was just emotion talking. It wasn’t reality. “You don’t understand.”
“You think you’re doing this noble thing to keep me separate, to protect my girls, but that doesn’t make any sense.” She grabbed his hands as if she knew he was five seconds from bolting. “You’re part of us one way or another. You have to know that.”
Whether he did or not, he ignored that statement. “You don’t understand him.”
“No, I don’t, but neither do you. You’re a good man, Ethan. You can’t possibly understand why he does the things he does—and you can’t possibly predict the things he’ll do.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t understand the man his father was, which made it all that much worse when he saw him in the mirror or heard Abe’s voice in his own. But he knew enough. Because of that, he understood better than she ever would. “I know he’ll try to hurt me. That I know. Which makes my connection to anyone dangerous. Maybe if it was just you, Pen, that wouldn’t be such an impossible thing to fight. But you have those three little girls, and I can’t… I can’t handle bringing them into this. Not this.”
“You’ve really convinced yourself that this is the reason you’re balking at an us,” she said, folding her arms across her chest just as Addie had done in the barn, but he couldn’t find any humor in those connections because she didn’t believe him.
Why that shook his foundations didn’t make any sense to him. She didn’t have to believe him. “It is the reason,” he said making sure to enunciate, to hold her gaze. To prove it to her.
To yourself.
“No. No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it makes sense in your head—but we all love you, would do anything to protect you. Me, Colt. My father. All of us. Whether you love me or not, him coming after you doesn’t change what we’d do. Years ago or today—you’re a part of us.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You keep saying that, but I do. I think I understand it better than you do. Because this isn’t about protection, Ethan. You would have left us a long time ago if that were true. Cut ties if you ever truly thought you were a danger to us.”
“I wouldn’t let him ruin my life.”
“Bull. What are you doing right now? You’ve created quite a story, but it doesn’t ring true. You’re not trying to protect us. This is about protecting yourself.”
“From what? From you? From the way you’ve convinced yourself you’re in love with me?” The words were harsh, but of course he should know by now she didn’t wilt at his harsh.
“No. It isn’t about me. I’m the culmination of your issues, but it started a long time ago. It’s about you, Ethan. You want to believe you’re protecting everyone else, but the truth is you’re only protecting yourself from all those big emotions. Keeping yourself just enough separate that things don’t have to hurt so badly.”
He turned away from her, which he realized was a mistake after his body had already gone through the motions. It was cowardly. He had to look her down. Prove she was wrong. But he couldn’t make himself do it.
“It’s easy to give half,” she said earnestly.
Each word felt like a wound, like an attack. If it hurt this much, it couldn’t be right. She couldn’t be right.
“Easier than running away. Easier than giving it all. You gave it all to my mother and what happened? She died.”
Ethan whirled on her abruptly. “I’m not Colt. Don’t put his issues on me.”
She stood there looking so calm he wanted to scream and rage and throw things, but her eyes held him in place. Because there was a sadness there.
One you put there.
“Yours aren’t all that different. You don’t think you’re poison like Colt did. I get that. But you think you can save yourself from the hurt. Not because of anything you deserve or not, but because you’re afraid. You want to save yourself from it by giving just enough you don’t have to hurt.”
“I hurt.” The words came out on a rasp, as painful as all of what she was saying. As painful as all that had come before.
She moved to him, and even when he pulled away from her hand she reached out to touch his face. To hold it steady so he looked at her while she spoke.
“Of course you do. We all do. Life does. That’s why you let love in. But you have to acknowledge what’s wrong or it festers, and nothing gets in but fear and pain. I know we’re not the same person, but that’s where I was last month. Bottling it up and holding it in and telling myself all that panic and pain was something else—because the something else was easier than dealing with all that grief.”
“What magical hurt do I need to acknowledge, Pen? What thing can I chant to fix everything for me?”
She kept hold of his face, kept her gaze on his as if he hadn’t been derisive at all. “Losing Mom. Losing your sister.”
“She’s gone. They’re both gone. That’s life.” Painful life. One that seemed to bloom around them. But it was what it was. “What is there to acknowledge?”
“That you loved your sister and couldn’t protect her. That my mother was the first person you trusted and loved, and she died. Too soon and with too little warning.”
“I know all those things,” he returned, thinking it would be easier to be stabbed than to deal with this. He so desperately wanted to leave. To separate himself from this, but it would prove her point and if he did that, he’d never…
Keep her and the girls safe from his father. That was all he wanted to do. None of this other…made-up stuff she was pushing at him.
“It was hard for me to lose her, of course, but I was surrounded by love. Always. Day one to this second. Losing her, even losing Henry, those were terrible, painful losses that I’ll always grieve, but that’s life. They weren’t traumas to bookend other ones.”
“I don’t have any traumas.” He refused to admit anything that had happened to him was a trauma. It was life, too.
“Everything you just told me about your father, what little I knew about him in the first place, that’s a trauma. What happened with your sister? It’s a tragedy. Your tragedy.”
“It’s just life. Same as yours. Susannah saved me. That’s all that mattered.”
“No.” Pen shook her head. “You can’t ignore those traumas. You think you can erase your beginnings, but—”
“You’re damn right I can erase them,” he exploded, jerking away from her touch.
From her. “Those first thirteen years don’t exist. I don’t think about them. It’s nothing to me. My life started when Susannah brought me into this house.”
Tears were shining in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “But that isn’t true, no matter how much we all want it to be. Those years were your foundation. They’re part of who you are. You can’t build your life without a foundation. Good or bad.”
“I did. I do.” And that was it. He had. He would continue to do so. “I told you the truth. It’s not my problem if you can’t believe it.”
“Ethan—”
But he was done. Let it prove her point to her. He knew the truth. He was protecting her and her girls. He didn’t care enough about himself to protect himself.
Chapter Fourteen
“How you feeling, kiddo?” Dad asked, poking his head in Pen’s bedroom door.
Pen looked up from where she was sitting on her floor, frowning at the terrible wrapping job everyone in her family had done for the Santa presents she’d have to smuggle downstairs after the girls went to bed.
“Close the door,” she instructed.
He did so, stepping inside her room and closing the door.
“They’re not going to think Santa did this.”
“Well, I guess you should’ve taught Sadie or Mack how to wrap better.”
“Neither of them will listen to me. Then or now.” Pen sighed. Maybe it was silly to worry about something as foolish as wrapping paper. Addie might notice, but Brynn and Daisy would be too excited about presents and candy.
“Wrapping wasn’t quite what I meant when I asked how you were feeling.”
“My arm is fine.”
“Pen.”
She looked at her father then, really looked at him. He looked…sad. Which she didn’t understand.
His expression turned sheepish and he cleared his throat. “I may have overheard a few things this morning.”
“Oh.” Her father had listened to her argue with Ethan. “Oh.”
“Not the whole thing. Mostly the tail end. Right before he busted out of there.”
