31
Thad tilted his head back and let the warm water cascade down his face and shoulders. Gone were the days of three-minute showers. After the hours he’d put in at the Bywater house today, and the dust and grime that stuck to him like a second skin, he needed a minimum of ten minutes under this spray.
He finally got out and changed into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Puddin’ was waiting at the bathroom door, his way of telling Thad that it was time to feed him his damn dinner.
“I’m coming,” he told the dog, who took off for the kitchen.
He fixed Puddin’s food, then made himself a sandwich and grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry. He ate both perched against the kitchen counter, washing it all down with a bottle of beer from a microbrewery in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Switch the poodle out for a boxer or a Great Dane, and he would be the epitome of the bachelor cliché.
That had never bothered him before. But after several days of only seeing Ashanti when he picked Puddin’ up in the evenings—and sometimes not even then if she was busy in the back with other dogs—Thad was more than ready to turn in his bachelor card.
If she would have allowed it, he would have been at her house waiting for her every single night this week, but he understood her need to stick with a slow approach. She was raising teenagers. He got it. He didn’t like it, but he got it.
Thad finished off his beer and snapped a picture of the label before tossing it. He wouldn’t mind serving this one at The PX. He grabbed a Little Debbie Fudge Round from the pantry and went over to his computer. Von had emailed a revised bid from another contractor. Time was moving at lightning speed; if they didn’t find someone who could provide an enormous crew soon they could forget opening on Veterans Day.
It wouldn’t be the most devastating thing in the world to have to push back their opening date, but he had imagined a Veterans Day celebration filled with a crowd of former military friends from the moment he came up with the concept of The PX. Thad was ready to do all he could to make that part of his dream happen, even if it meant paying a contractor to do more than just the electrical and plumbing.
One thing he could count on was the crowd. He knew the support would be there based on the way their new social media platforms had blown up in the days since he’d come back from New York. His biggest problem now was that Von was as concerned with filming content as he was with getting the damn bar built.
Thad opened his email and immediately closed his eyes.
Shit.
Another one from the woman in Alabama was waiting in his inbox. Thad had hoped she’d given up, but it was obvious she wouldn’t stop until she got money out of her newfound family. She had yet to make her pitch, but he knew it was coming.
He opened the email and scanned it.
“Wait. What?”
Thad frowned, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward and read the email more closely. He sat back in his chair, the sandwich he’d just eaten suddenly feeling like lead in the pit of his stomach.
“What the fuck,” he whispered, dragging his hands from the back of his head and down his face, finally resting his fingers against his lips as he stared at the photo the woman had attached to the email. It looked as if he were staring at his own mother.
But it wasn’t his mother. According to her email, this was her mother, who was one of three children her grandmother shared with her grandfather.
Hisgrandfather.
This couldn’t be real. That picture had to be the result of some kind of artificial intelligence bullshit.
But where would the scammer have gotten a picture of his mother to feed into an AI generator? The way his mom escaped the camera was a running joke in his family. She was always the one taking pictures, never in them. And she detested social media.
It was starting to seem less likely that this woman would go through so much trouble to scam his family, especially when she had yet to ask for money.
But if this wasn’t about money…
Thad swallowed hard, trying to push down the knot of anger that instantly clogged his throat.
All those long trips. Dry cleaning conventions. Sales meetings.
Bullshit.
They had all been excuses so his grandfather could see another woman. Thad threw his head back and closed his eyes tight, struggling to stave off the tears that suddenly burned his eyes. He could think of a thousand other things his grandfather could have been involved in—embezzlement, underground gambling—and none would hurt as much as this.
“How could you have done this to Grams?” Thad said. He pushed the computer aside and propped his elbows on the table, then ground the heels of his hands against his eyes. His stomach clenched with the abrupt onset of nausea.
He felt like a kid who’d just found out his favorite superhero was really the villain.
Thad picked up his phone to call Nadia. He couldn’t keep this from her any longer. He clicked into his favorites, then set the phone back on the table.
This wasn’t the type of thing you shared over the phone. His sister would be here in less than a week for Reshonda’s wedding. His conversation with Nadia could wait.
But he couldn’t. He had to talk to somebody.
Thad picked up the phone again and sent Ashanti a text.
Puddin’ is missing Duchess. You think she’s up for a walk?
The fact that his mind went to Ashanti instead of Von was telling. He’d fallen far past deep when it came to this woman. He was in the Mariana Trench.
I’ll meet you at Crescent Park, came Ashanti’s reply.
It was just after nine p.m. when Thad pulled into the parking lot next to the crescent-shaped bridge that led to Crescent Park. He saw headlights flash in his rearview mirror a moment before Ashanti’s SUV slipped into the spot next to his. Some of the ache that had settled in his chest immediately started to dissipate. She was better than aspirin.
They opened their doors at the same time. While he retrieved Puddin’ from his harness, she did the same with Duchess. They met at the spot between their two front bumpers.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
“Can I kiss you before we talk?” he asked. “I haven’t done that in far too long.”
“Is someone hurt?” she asked.
“No,” Thad said, shaking his head. Just his heart.
She nodded. “Okay, you can kiss me.”
He leaned forward and captured her lips in a slow, sweet kiss, like the one he had been aching to give her for days.
“That’s better,” Thad said once he finally released her. “Let’s walk, and then we can talk.”
They crossed over the bridge and into the park that ran along the bank of the river. Thad had never come here before, even as a kid. He was blown away by the beautiful view of the city skyline.
“This is nice,” he said.
“I love this park. So does Duchess.” She bumped him with her elbow. “My plans were to take the dogs at Barkingham Palace for walks here if I’d bought the Bywater House.”
“The other one is directly across from a park, though, right?”
She sighed. “I’m not getting that house, Thad. I can’t afford it.”
“I told you not to count yourself out.”
“I don’t even want to talk about it. It depresses me. What about you?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
After that kiss and this nice stroll, he hated the thought of polluting their time together with the news he’d found out. But that was the reason he’d asked her to join him in the first place.
Thad started from the beginning, with Nadia sending him the DNA test kit, then told her about the emails from the woman in Alabama.
“I thought it was a scam,” Thad said. “I’ve been playing along, waiting for her to make her pitch for money, until the last email, when she sent an actual picture.”
“What was it?”
“A photo of her mother.” He looked over at Ashanti, not even bothering to hide the hurt in his eyes. He couldn’t even if he’d tried. “She looks as if she could be my mom’s twin.”
“Oh, shit,” Ashanti said.
Thad grinned at her curse, despite his somber mood.
“Yeah. Oh, shit,” he said. “It looks like my grandfather has an entire second family in a little town just outside of Mobile, Alabama.”
“Oh my goodness,” Ashanti said. “How could he do such a thing to Mrs. Frances?”
Her gentle outrage on his grandmother’s behalf sent a wave of reassuring comfort washing over him. It felt good to know he was justified in his anger. Not that he had any doubts that his rage was warranted.
But it wasn’t the anger that was eating him up; it was the disappointment.
“That’s the thing that keeps gnawing at me,” Thad said. “I can’t believe he would do this to Grams. I was young, but I was still aware of the sacrifices she made for the business. Sutherland Dry Cleaning wouldn’t exist if not for her. To now know that he was off fucking some other woman while my Grams was holding down everything at home and at the dry cleaners?”
Thad clenched his fists so tight Puddin’s leash started to dig into the fleshy part of his palm.
“It feels as if everything I grew up admiring about my grandfather was a lie.” He huffed out a laugh. “And to think he used to call my dad a cheating bastard—which he was. That asshole doesn’t get a pass here. But it looks as if Gramps was just like him. And that kills me, Ashanti.” Thad pressed his fist against his stomach.
“Everything that I am—every virtue, every principle—he is the foundation of it. Every significant decision I’ve ever made, I made it with him in mind. I would always ask myself, ‘What would Gramps think about this? Would he approve? Will this make him proud?’” He shook his head. “I feel like a fool.”
“Thad, you had no way of knowing. Your grandfather kept this from everyone.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Thinking about what this will do to my grandmother kills me.”
Ashanti asked the question that Thad had been asking himself for the past hour. “Do you have to tell her?”
He brought his free hand up to the back of his neck and massaged the muscles there.
“I don’t know,” Thad said. “My gut says no. What good would it do to devastate her like this? But then I think about his other family. What if it does become about money? What if they try to make some kind of claim for the house or my grandfather’s estate? Grams made a good profit when she sold the dry cleaning business. Are they entitled to any of that? I don’t know how this shit works.”
“I don’t know either,” Ashanti said.
She took Puddin’s leash from him and wrapped it around the hand where she held Duchess’s. Then she took his hand and entwined their fingers.
Thad closed his eyes again and welcomed the peace her touch brought him.
“Come home with me,” he said. He didn’t know where the words had come from and cursed them the moment they left his mouth. She’d told him about her aunt’s threats. He knew she wouldn’t risk losing her sisters, even if those threats were bullshit in his view. It wasn’t fair to put her in this position.
Yet, instead of apologizing, he added, “Please.”
It felt as if a thousand years passed before she made him believe that not everything in his world was lost with one softly spoken word.
“Okay.”