My hands ripped from where they were holding Jordan’s, and I shook my head in disbelief. “No…”
“Yes,” Jordan said, and he spoke the words out loud that I knew we were both thinking, but I was too afraid to breathe to life. “Sydney, I think Patrick Scooter murdered my father.”
Those words hung between us like the razor-sharp blades of a thousand knives, like if either of us moved a single centimeter, we’d be sliced to ribbons.
I couldn’t be sure how long the silence stretched between us with my vision fading in and out of blackness before I leaned back, letting out a long, cooling breath and pressing a hand to my forehead.
“I know,” he said. “It’s a lot. I think this is why Dad was writing his entries in Latin. I think he was covering his tracks, in case someone found his files and tried to read them.”
I shook my head, speechless.
“And I need to tell my brothers,” he continued. “But… I couldn’t tell them yet. Not today. Not when we’re celebrating Noah and Ruby Grace.”
“When will you tell them?”
“Tomorrow,” he said, definitively. “At least, I think. I mean, I don’t know how I could sit on this any longer. It’s not proof, by any means,” he admitted. “But… it’s something, right? It’s written evidence that Patrick knew about the Will, that he has never told us about it even though he knew, and that he’d asked my father to meet him in that office on the evening of his death.” He shook his head. “I’m no lawyer, but I’d say there’s a leg to stand on there somewhere.”
My gut twisted, and I sat upright, facing Jordan again as I steeled myself. “Jordan, there’s something I need to tell you. Something that… oh, God,” I said, tears flooding my eyes as I pressed my hand to my forehead again. “Something I can’t be entirely sure of, but that I feel like I have to tell you.”
His brows bent together, and he pulled my hands into his again. “What is it?”
I blew out a breath, holding onto the next. “That night… the night of the fire. I… I was pregnant, and Randy came home late, and he was talking on the phone to someone in the kitchen, and… I don’t remember everything, okay? And it’s all a little fuzzy and I don’t know if this even means anything, and—”
“What did you hear, Sydney?”
I swallowed. “He was just… he was so angry when I asked him questions. I wanted to know how that was the only room in the whole distillery that burned, how your dad was the only one who died. And I didn’t understand it being caused by a cigarette, you know? I mean, was he sleeping? Or so focused on something that he didn’t see it catch fire? And when it did, wouldn’t he have fled the room? Like… was it locked?”
“These are all the questions my family and I have plagued ourselves with for years. For an entire decade.”
“I know,” I said, and my voice was strangled with emotion. “And… Jordan, I swear I heard him on that phone call… I heard him say something about homicide.”
Jordan’s face washed over, all emotion gone before his nostrils flared and he scowled hard. “You heard that?”
“I think… No, I mean, I know I did. Yes.”
For a long moment, he was quiet, and I wondered if he was angry with me. But then, he smiled, shaking his head as he released my hands to run his back through his hair.
“Sydney… do you know what this means? We have something. We have my dad’s entry, and now, your testimony. This is it. We can get a lawyer, we can—”
“Testimony?” I echoed, already shaking my head. “Jordan, I can’t… I can’t testify against Randy.”
Jordan’s frown grew. “Why the hell not?”
“You know why,” I told him. “You know how he is, how he’s controlled me, the hell he’s put me through even after our divorce.”
“He doesn’t own you.”
“He might as well!” I argued back, fear crippling me in a completely new way now. “Look, I told you what I told you so you can have reassurance, so you and your family can hold onto that and… and… I don’t know, work with a lawyer to find out more. But, I can’t testify.”
“But, it’s the right thing to do. You have to!”
“I can’t!” We both looked around, lowering our voices again. “What about Paige, huh? You know she comes first in my life. How could you even ask me to do this?” I shook my head. “He is a white male in a position of power, Jordan. The goddamn Chief of Police,” I reminded him. “Do you not see how at his mercy I am? How he could turn this story around on me in a snap, make it look like I’m crazy, like I’m an unfit mother and take my daughter from me forever?”
Jordan opened his mouth to argue but I stopped him.
“And even if it somehow works, we go to court and I testify and the judge rules in our favor. Then what? Randy goes to jail for life, and Paige has no father?”
Jordan’s mouth closed again at that.
“Don’t you see how complicated this is?”
“If he goes to jail, it’s because he deserves to. And Paige is strong enough to understand what’s right and what’s wrong.”
I scoff. “That’s a very naïvely simple way to put this situation.”
He gawked at me incredulously. “It is simple — right or wrong. There is no in-between.”
My bottom lip trembled as I tore my gaze from him, crossing my arms over my racing heart. He didn’t understand. He didn’t feel every motherly warning going off in my body, every cell of my existence flying into self-preservation and survival mode at the thought of confronting Randy with this.
“You know, I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Jordan said, standing and turning his back to me. “If there’s any risk involved, you’re out, right? Just like with us. We can be a team in secret, fuck in secret, love in secret, but when I need you to be my teammate for real, it’s too much, isn’t it?”
He turned on me then, and I shrank under his hard gaze.
“It’s okay for me to sacrifice, for me to give, for me to put my values on hold in order to be what you need. But when I need you, and you have something to lose, suddenly, you don’t want to play?”
My nose stung, and tears blurred the details of his face. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not, but it’s the truth.”
I shook my head, and Jordan dropped back to the bench, grabbing both of my hands in his and pulling me forward desperately — into him, into us.
“I need you right now, Sydney.” His eyes flicked back and forth between mine as a tear slipped free and rolled down my hot cheek. “Please.”
Moments before, I’d been ready to look into those eyes watching me and tell this man I loved him. It was all I could think about all day long.
Now, my body warned me of a threat, of danger for myself and my daughter, too.
And those two emotions went to battle inside me, breaking down everything in their path to fight for who would win out.
It was too much — the discovery Jordan had made, the confession I’d told him thinking he would understand, the demand he was making of me, the guilt I felt that I couldn’t give it to him, the island I was stranded on as the only one between us who understood my choices, who knew what it was like to give everything to protect Paige.
I couldn’t make the decision in this state — not now, not tonight.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, and I pulled my hands from his, covering my mouth as my eyes squeezed shut and released another flood of tears. I was already up and off the bench, flying through the garden and across the lawn to where I’d parked my car, and I didn’t look back to see if Jordan was following me.
Maybe because I knew he wouldn’t.
I’d gone into that evening with the intention to hold his heart in my hands, to promise to keep it safe, to tell him I wanted him — all of him — and I wanted him to take all of me, too.
I was supposed to tell him I loved him.
I was supposed to claim his heart as my own.
Instead, I’d left it shattered on the sto
ny path of a cold, dark garden.
And I’d never hated myself more.
Jordan
The next evening after Sunday dinner at Mom’s, I sat at the firepit in her backyard surrounded by all my brothers, and I told them what I’d found.
I felt numb going through the story, telling them what I’d already told Sydney the night before and feeling my heart split open a little more with every thought of her. I wished she was there with me, telling her side of the story, but I kept that to myself.
Even if I didn’t understand her choice, I respected it.
I wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d told me.
Still, I knew now, and the fact that she’d overheard Randy on the phone that night talking to someone about homicide only fueled my justice fire.
We were going to take someone down for my father’s death, though I wasn’t sure who yet.
But we had to be smart about it.
We had to have a plan.
“We can’t tell anyone else about this,” I told my brothers after their initial outbursts at the news and the silence that had followed. I waited until each of them were looking at me to continue. “Least of all Mom. She’ll kill him.”
“Are you kidding me? I might fucking kill him,” Noah seethed, fuming like a dragon.
“That would solve nothing,” I reminded him, bluntly but as gently as I could. “The biggest mistake we could make right now is letting our emotions get the best of us. We have to be smart.”
There were quiet nods, though I could tell by the way my brothers wore identical scowls and flat-lined lips that no one was happy about the agreement.
“And I want to tell Mom just as badly as you guys do, but it wouldn’t serve her any good right now. Until we have someone in handcuffs or substantial proof, she doesn’t need to know.”
“I just don’t understand,” Mikey said, shaking his head. “How could Patrick murder someone like that? A father, just like him — and someone who grew up with him in that distillery? Someone his own father loved?”
“Maybe that’s just it,” Logan said. “I mean, you heard what Jordan found in Dad’s last entry. Patrick never really liked Dad. He saw him as a threat.”
“And look at all the illegal shit Patrick Scooter does without blinking an eye. His underground casino has gotten half this town into debt they’ll never see the other side of — Ruby Grace’s dad included. I mean, he found a way to pay it off, but he’s the mayor. What about everyone else?” Noah shook his head. “I think, in his eyes, he owns this town and everyone in it, and he can do whatever he damn well pleases.”
“He had to have known that Will existed,” Mikey chimed in.
“I don’t know,” I volleyed. “If he did, why would he have had Dad working in that office knowing there was a Will hidden somewhere in there? And besides, we don’t know that Patrick is the root of this. All we know is that he asked Dad to be in that office at the end of the day.”
We all fell silent at that.
“Wouldn’t Robert’s lawyer have had the Will, too, though?” Logan asked after a while. “I mean, it has to be notarized. I imagine someone had a copy — a lawyer, a financial advisor, whoever. That one in his old office couldn’t have been the only one.”
“Money speaks, brother,” Noah said quietly. “My gut tells me if Patrick didn’t want that Will being read by anyone, he’d pay just about anything to get agreement from all involved that it never existed.”
Again, silence.
It was a tornado of emotions for each one of my brothers, one that had already ripped through me. I was on the other side of it, sitting calmly in the rubble, thinking of how to rebuild. But right now, they were in the thick of the storm, and I knew all too well how disconcerting that was.
“I think I need to tell Mallory,” Logan said after a moment.
I frowned.
“It’s her father, for Christ’s sake,” he pleaded with me. “I don’t feel comfortable making a plan to confront him without her being in on it.”
My chest tightened at the thought of someone outside of my brothers knowing what I’d found, but I understood what he was saying. Mallory’s father was the main subject of the discovery. It was only fair that we told her what we found.
“Alright,” I conceded. “But, I think right now, we need to all stay calm and quiet about this. I’m going to look into getting a lawyer, see what our options are.”
“It has to be someone outside of town,” Noah said. “I don’t think we can trust anyone here.”
“Definitely,” I agreed, then I ticked through the list of what we each needed to be doing. “Logan, you fill Mallory in, maybe she’ll know something more about that night, or at the very least know how we can get Patrick to admit to whatever happened. Mikey, I want you to comb through the last few journal entries, make sure I didn’t miss anything. And Noah,” I said, looking at him last. “You are going to go on your honeymoon and forget about this until you get back.”
He scoffed, ready to argue, but I shook my head firmly.
“I mean it,” I said. “You just married the love of your life. There’s nothing to be done right now, not until we get a lawyer and make a plan — and we won’t do that while you’re gone. Okay? I know it’s going to be hard to do, but you need to focus on Ruby Grace and enjoy your time with her.” I exhaled long and slow. “I have the State Championship game on Friday night. You’ll be back from your honeymoon on Sunday. Let’s just agree to meet up then, and we can talk through the next steps. We’ve waited ten long years, guys… we can wait another week.”
My brothers all exchanged looks, but in the end, they nodded in agreement. One thing I’d learned as the older brother was that it was my responsibility to help them see reason when all they wanted to see was red. It wasn’t always an easy task, but they trusted me — and as long as that was true, I knew they’d listen, even if they didn’t agree.
“I need to come up with a reason why Kylie and I can’t go back to New York,” Mikey said.
“No, don’t do that. Go back. You have work and she does, too. We need to keep everything normal. But I’ll book you a flight to come back home next Sunday, okay?”
He frowned, but nodded. “I want her to come, too.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get you both a ticket.”
We were silent for a long while, each of us staring at the fire where its flames licked away at the evening settling in around us.
“Do you think we’ll get what we need to take him down?” Logan asked after a long while. “I mean… do you think we’ll actually get justice for Dad?”
No one answered, because none of us knew for sure.
All we did know was that we had to try.
I hadn’t realized how much of my focus had been on what I’d found in my dad’s journal until I’d finally told my brothers and relieved myself of being the only one who knew.
As soon as I did, every ache inside me turned its attention to the hole Sydney had left.
The week passed by in slow agony, with my days spent working with my athletes in weightlifting class, my afternoons spent at practice getting them ready for Friday, and my evenings spent on the phone with one or more of my brothers, trying to calm them and reassure them that everything would be alright. Before I knew it, it was Friday night, and I was on the field watching my team warm up in preparation to play the biggest game of their lives so far.
And while I should have been focused on that, I could only think of Sydney.
I could only feel numb.
The naïve part of me thought that if I kept busy all week — and I did — there wouldn’t be time to be broken up over Sydney.
But she didn’t need to be the center of my day to be present in every moment of it.
She was like a slow leak, forcing her way between all the crevices of my broken heart and slowly, centimeter by centimeter, wearing it down and causing it to rust so much so that I wondered if a stiff inhale would make it shatter altogether.
Every afternoon when I walked into my office, she was already set up in hers, working away and getting our boys in top shape for the game on Friday. We didn’t speak about what had happened Saturday night at the wedding. Hell, we didn’t speak at all other than in staff meetings or in the locker room when everyone was present and she needed to update me on an injury.
We avoided each other at all costs.
But when our eyes did meet, it was like standing in a blue-flamed fire.
I knew she was hurting. I knew she couldn’t have been sleeping or eating much more than I was managing to. I wanted to ask her a million questions. I wanted to hear her say a million things that would take what happened at my brother’s wedding away and give us the chance to start over. I wanted to pull her into my office, pull her into me, hug her and kiss her and tell her everything would be okay.
But I couldn’t, because nothing was okay right now.
We were both fucked up, but what mattered even more than that was that we were both set in our ways.
She believed she was right.
I believed I was right.
And there was no in-between, not for either one of us.
I struggled with understanding her, especially after everything she’d told me about what Randy had done to her over the years. Here was the perfect opportunity to get him to answer for his evil, and she was too coward to stand up and make him pay.
I knew Paige complicated things, and that she was worried his power was too much, that we could never win.
But Paige was smart. She was kind-hearted. She knew right from wrong, and I believed in my gut that if she knew the full story, if her mother explained it to her, she would be okay. Maybe not immediately — but eventually. She was a tough kid like that.
Then again, did I have a right to say that, to believe that, when I’d never been a father? How could I ever fully understand the position I’d asked Sydney to put herself and her child in? How could I know what it feels like to make a decision that affects not only you, but a growing child, who will likely grow up differently because of that decision?
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