Chapter 12
Bess
“Feel free to test your experiments on us any time you like.”
Arno hums as he licks the sugar off his fingers.
Doug looks after the guests and the rooms, but Arno is the chef. This morning when he served me a simple but delicious breakfast, he noticed my notepad with ideas for new menu items and offered me the use of the kitchen and its pantry.
I wasn’t able to take him up on it until I tackled another list in my notebook; the index of dreaded phone calls I compiled last night when I, once again, couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d be busy with those all day, but I was lucky and it went pretty fast once I got to it.
With my checklist complete, it didn’t take long for my mind to start spinning. I ended up downstairs in Arno’s well-equipped kitchen to give my hands something to do.
An inventory of his staples led me to the pumpkin-spiced cruller donuts he and Doug have been snacking on. It’s not really the right time of year for pumpkin, but I found a leftover can in the pantry, and was trying to come up with some seasonal pastries.
Earlier, I tried out a spring strawberry and rhubarb crumble muffin, and for summer I came up with a lavender peach custard tart with a shortbread crust. Both of those also received high praise from the couple.
“I appreciate it. It certainly helped me from climbing the walls today,” I admit with a self-deprecating smile. “By all means, feed those leftovers to the guests,” I suggest, indicating the remaining pastries.
I’d made a dozen of each, so there was plenty left over.
“I’ll set them out with afternoon tea at four,” Doug offers.
It’s one of the charming features The Carriage House offers that seems terribly out of place in the Columbia Mountains but works.
It makes perfect sense when you meet Doug McShire, who is a Scot by birth, was raised in the English Cotswolds, fell in love with a Dutchman, and built a life in eastern Washington.
I love how they were able to stay connected to their heritage, while fully embracing and engaging in life in Silence. Their individual and joint histories can be found all over the large and ornate farmhouse.
As I go up the oak stairway to my room, I let my eyes drift over a collection of pictures and art pieces covering the wall; a patchwork of cultures creating a meaningful gallery.
I would love to feel some connection to the Korean part of my ancestry, but it wasn’t something my mother valued or even tolerated. She despised the heavy accent she never seemed able to shed, and claimed to have nothing but bad memories of her life before she emigrated here.
The other half of my genetic pool is a bit of a mystery, although my mother tells me my father was Caucasian.
That’s all I know. I have no idea of his heritage.
I’ve thought about trying one of those DNA test kits that can give you an idea of your ancestral origins.
As intriguing as it seems, I’m not so sure I want to find out more about any possible family. The one I had—have—is taxing enough.
This community has more than made up for my lack of family though.
Nobody seems to care where or who I came from; I’m accepted here for who I am.
But there are still those rare times—mostly when I’m alone—when I miss that sense of belonging only family can bring.
A grounding connection from the past to the future.
Instead, I have a half brother, who appears to pose a real threat to the modest life and legacy I’ve built here in Silence. The more I think about what I stand to lose, the darker my sense of doom returns.
Shaking my head, I try and stop the endless string of thoughts that seems to start up when my hands still, and inevitably sucks the air from the room, leaving me to feel like I’m drowning.
I turn the TV on in hopes it’ll dull the noise in my head, and flip through channels to find something that can hold my attention. I’ve just landed on a home improvement show that looks interesting when someone knocks on my door.
I don’t hesitate opening it, expecting one of the guys, but it’s Hugo standing in the hallway.
God, how I wish I could give in to the urge to throw myself in his arms, grab the few moments of bliss I know I’d find there. But that wouldn’t be fair to him, since I know whatever happens between us has a very limited shelf life.
Not that it wouldn’t be good, because it would. In fact, I have no doubt it would be perfect. I’ve harbored feelings for this man for so many years, it’s hard to remember when it started.
“Is it okay if I come in?”
His somewhat amused question snaps me into the here and now, and I quickly step away from the door I realize I’ve been blocking. He steps inside and pushes the door shut before leaning in for a kiss that tastes bittersweet to me.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, suddenly worried something may have happened to prompt this midafternoon visit.
“Fine,” he responds, taking off his coat and folding his large body into one of the dainty-looking Queen Anne chairs across from the love seat where I was sitting. “But there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
I return to my spot and wrap one of the throw pillows in my arms, bracing for whatever is coming.
“We had a case briefing earlier on the break-in and fire at your place. It’s basically a meeting with everyone involved in the investigation, where we go through each piece of evidence and any and all information we’ve pulled together to see where we’re at,” he explains.
“I want you to know I brought up your brother’s name. ”
Suddenly I’m free-falling, the shaky ground I was trying to balance on abruptly gone.
Part of me knew this was coming, but I spent so many years burying the past, I almost deluded myself into believing it never happened. This is only the first layer, but it will lead to the next one, and the next, until there’s nowhere left to hide and I’m completely exposed.
I want to be angry at Hugo, but what would that accomplish? Besides, it isn’t like he had any way to understand the ramifications, or could’ve stopped the truth from coming out. It always finds a way.
So I simply nod, resigned to the fact I no longer control my history.
“I looked him up,” he confesses. “I had a sense there was more to the estranged brother. I’m sorry, but you seemed scared after that phone call, and I didn’t quite buy in to your story.
” He shrugs. “It’s the investigator in me.
But knowing his background, his connection, plus the fact he only recently was paroled, I couldn’t sit on that information. Not when you may be in danger.”
Of course, he was looking out for me. It’s the kind of man he is: kind, caring, protective, dependable, and honest to the core.
God knows I don’t deserve him.
Hugo
I’m surprised at how calm she seems.
Not sure what I was expecting, but definitely some level of upset.
Instead, her voice is level as she opens up about her brother.
A lot of the factual information she shares I was already able to pull together on my own, but she puts the facts in context, providing me with a more complete, three-dimensional story.
I hear the love she still feels for her brother, or at least the brother he used to be.
I can tell how painful it was for her to cut his toxicity out of her life, and how conflicted she is now he’s trying to force his way back into it.
Listening to her gives me a better understanding of her motivations for keeping all this information hidden, even from me.
“So, he’s after money from you so he can skip the country?”
“Yeah,” she confirms. “Except everything I own is invested in the coffee shop.”
“Did he explain what he’s running from?”
She shrugs, and her gaze drifts to the TV, which is on but muted. “I know it probably has something to do with his gang.”
The Lotus Squad. Jesus. I’m pretty sure we’ll need to draw on the FBI for at least some intel on a violent gang like that.
Maybe they have picked up rumbles of something going on in their routine surveillance that might explain why the newly released Lotus Squad member is in such a hurry to leave the country.
It could be anything; a rival gang Ken Choi wronged at some point in time, or perhaps he knows something damaging to his own gang members, or he owes money to them. I don’t particularly like any of those options, because they could all put Bess in the crosshairs as well.
Hell, it could be the guy is just milking his sister for what he might see as easy money, using some hyped-up story about being in danger to apply to her good heart.
It might have even been him who set the fire, hoping to get the insurance money from his sister.
He could’ve taken the notebook, laptop, and phone records to eliminate any possible connection to him, or maybe just to reinforce his fabricated story someone is after him.
“Do you still have his number?”
“I blocked it after that last call,” Bess admits. “He hasn’t tried to call me from another number.”
“There would still be a record of the number in your phone,” I suggest.
She gets up and grabs her cell phone off the little table by the door, and unlocks it before handing it to me. Then she walks over to the window and crosses her arms over her chest as she stares outside.
I easily retrieve the number from her call log on the date we had dinner at Fusion and copy it into a message for Rick Althof with a brief message. Next, I get up and close in behind Bess, putting my hands on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble in her hair, recognizing none of this was probably easy for her.
“Why would you be sorry?”
“For making you feel as I imagine you might after sharing all that information.”
She turns and lifts her face to me, placing her hands on my chest.