Chapter Twenty-One #2
And now I owed Tim a favor because my father looked guilty as hell. I stepped closer to the table. “Dad, what the hell did you do?”
“He deserved it,” my father said immediately.
The chief’s eyebrows lifted as if he’d heard that line in court a thousand times. “Mr. Burke—”
My father glared at him. “Don’t think I’m not going to have a long talk with your parents after this, Tim. They raised you better than this.”
The chief didn’t blink.
I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose and forced myself to stay calm. “How serious is what he did?”
Halvorsen let out a sigh. “Three-cruiser serious. Not for safety, but for paperwork if this can’t be resolved.”
My father muttered something under his breath that sounded like it included the word Holliston and at least one other word my grandmother would’ve smacked him for.
Leaning over the table like an interrogator, I said, “Start from the beginning, Dad.”
His jaw tightened. “Holliston started it.”
Losing his patience, Chief Halvorsen said, “Your father punched him in the face. There were witnesses.”
My father’s gaze snapped to me. “He deserved it.”
I stared at him. He stared back.
“It’s still assault,” the chief explained.
My father countered, “What? A man can’t speak with his hands in New Hampshire? What happened to Live Free or Die?”
I groaned at that. “You can’t punch people, Dad, not even if you think they deserve it.”
“I’d punch him again if he were standing here now,” my father muttered.
The chief nodded at him. “Holliston is pressing charges. At least, he’s threatening to. I’m hoping if I can convince your father to apologize to him, we can de-escalate this.”
“Let him press charges,” my father growled. “I have just as many lawyers as he does, as well as a few judges who owe me favors.”
“Dad, stop,” I demanded.
He wasn’t like this before my mother died.
I was beginning to believe he wanted to make this situation worse for himself, maybe to get himself the punishment he felt he deserved.
I rubbed a hand over my forehead and started running scenarios through my head—some that resolved the situation, and some that ended badly.
Beside me, the Chief sighed. “I didn’t put him in a cell. I asked him to come here, sat him down, and offered him a solution.”
“I’m never apologizing to that fuck-tard,” my father muttered.
Why had no one warned me that parenting a parent was like trying to talk sense into a teenager? “What happened?”
My father’s lips thinned. “First, to be clear, he was trespassing.”
That didn’t sound like Gabe. Although our properties bordered one another along the river, neither family went anywhere near the other. Instead, the feud was maintained with business rivalry and heated stares.
“It was a poor choice,” the chief interjected, his voice dry.
My father’s eyes flashed. “Then he threatened me.”
That had my attention. “About what?”
Looking as much like a petulant child as a man in his sixties could, my father said, “Nora.”
Silence dropped. I rose to my full height. Bella or no Bella, if I found out that Gabe’s issue with my father had somehow spilled over to Nora, I would do a hell of a lot worse to him than bruise his face. “He threatened Nora?”
“Not outright. He said Nora is chasing after Brady and he told me to keep her away from him.”
“Did he say anything else?” My tone was restrained despite my rising fury.
My father’s hands tightened on the edge of the table. “He thinks Nora isn’t good enough for his son. Nora not only has better grades than Brady does, but she could probably also kick his ass in a fight.”
The officer behind my father chuckled, then quickly stopped and looked away apologetically.
I understood. Every summer, Nora had practically lived in the barn and run wild through the town.
If she’d ever had a problem with someone, I’d never heard about it.
She was scrappy, to say the least. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t wage war against anyone I thought was even considering harming her.
“What did Gabe say, Dad? Tell me word for word.”
“He said . . . I should save Nora the heartbreak because no Holliston would ever settle for a Burke.”
“And?” I held my breath.
“That’s it. You don’t come to my house and tell me my daughter isn’t good enough. Not unless you want a taste of my knuckles, and that’s what I gave him.”
Rolling my shoulders back, I let the scene play over in my head before turning to the chief. “He’s not going to apologize.”
Tim said, “I can only do so much. Your father punched someone and that someone wants him arrested. If you’re here, I’ll release your father with home confinement orders for forty-eight hours, but then I have to write this up.”
The news cycles would love that. “I’ll handle it. Thank you.”
My father scoffed. “Home confinement.”
“Follow those orders or I can get you an ankle monitor,” the chief said, deadpan.
My father’s mouth tightened. “You wouldn’t.”
He looked my father right in the eyes. “I’d personally attach it.” Then his chin rose. “My parents raised me to keep my hands to myself, unless not doing so is for the safety of others. Trust me, they’d approve.”
That shut my father up for half a second. I interjected, “Thank you, Chief Halvorsen. Do I need to do anything before I take him home?”
“No.” He looked as tired of this situation as I already was when he turned back to my father.
“Sir, I’m trying to keep this quiet. We all make mistakes.
I got in a few fights when I was young and stupid.
Hell, even today if anyone talked poorly of Nora to me, I might slug him too.
But if you and Mr. Holliston decide to make this into some billionaire pissing match, I respectfully ask you to take the fight to the city.
We don’t want that kind of trouble or spectacle here. ”
I felt sorry for my father as he stood there, opening and closing his mouth as if he, too, couldn’t believe the man he was becoming.
The loss of my mother was my first brush with death, but I’d always thought grief lessened with time.
It had been two years, and it was festering in my father, settling into his bones.
Nora was changing as well, taking bigger risks than she would have in the past. Was she trying to get herself hurt, or did she think if she saved someone, that would make amends for not saving the one none of us had?
And me? I thought of Bella again, the way she’d looked as if she were trapped in her role as the fixer in her family. How do I help any of them?
Free them from this hamster wheel of grief.
Free myself?
I wanted to be the man who ended the nonsense and created space for something real. But standing in that police station, watching my father unravel and hearing what Gabe Holliston had said, I realized something ugly. Running a business was a whole lot easier than dealing with family.
When it came to negotiating contracts or dealing with governmental red tape, I could take control and sway the outcome. But this? How does anyone fix a thirty-year feud between two grown men who could afford to be anywhere in the world but chose to summer in the same small town every year?
How did Firebrook Valley become a Burke-Holliston curse? I’m sure the locals have asked themselves the same thing more than once.
I wanted to be angry with my father, but as he stood and gathered his things, he looked like a man who’d been beaten to the ground, gotten up to continue the fight, and was about to hit the dirt again. “Come on, Dad,” I said gently. “I’ll drive you home.”
He nodded and followed me out. When he didn’t even ask about the G-Wagon, I knew he was in bad shape. He slid into the passenger seat of my rental, clipped his seatbelt, and refused to look at me the whole ride back to the farm.
I didn’t say it, but the silence was a gift. It reminded me of a video I’d seen with a mother who said she would love to be threatened with a time-out or being sent to bed early. I’d swiped on past that video, not relating to it then.
I finally understood it.