Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AEROSMITH, “DREAM ON”
Isaac
She knocked me on my ass.
I couldn’t believe it. How did she know? And if she knew, who else knew?
When I entered the machine shed, Dad was sitting on an overturned bucket. He looked up at me and quickly wiped his eyes with his fists. I couldn’t imagine why he was crying.
“What do you need?” he asked, clearing his throat and standing to busy himself with the equipment.
“Sarah Jacobson knows. How the hell does she know?”
“Knows what?”
“Don’t be such an old, stupid fucker. You know damn well what I’m talking about.”
“I know what you think she knows, but it’s not that.”
“Keep telling yourself that, but she said she knows about the affair. And you’re running out of land to silence people. And I don’t think you can bribe her. She’s better than you. And she’s better than me.”
With his back to me, he rested a hand on his hip and set his gaze on the ceiling. “You ever been in love?”
“Don’t give me this. You didn’t love Danielle Harvey.”
“No, but your mom loved Clyde Jensen.”
I squinted. “Who’s Clyde Jensen?”
“The man your mother was engaged to when I met her.”
“You said a mutual friend fixed you up.”
“That’s true. Your mom and Clyde had a big fight. And she decided to teach him a lesson by going on a date with me. Of course, I didn’t know that, so I held nothing back. I liked her from the moment we were introduced. She tucked her chin and curled her hair behind her ear as she blushed when I told her how beautiful her eyes were.”
I loved a girl with beautiful eyes.
He turned toward me. “She had every intention of going back to him, but after that night, I made her realize that she needed to rethink things. We were married a year later, and nine months later, you were born.”
“What does this have to do with Danielle Harvey?”
“Five years later, Clyde contacted your mom. He was in St. Louis for the weekend, and he wanted to see your mom. Of course, I said no. And that prompted an argument over my not trusting her, so she went to St. Louis, leaving me to take care of you. The timing was awful because we’d been fighting. Not that it was an excuse, but it just …” He shook his head. “The timing was awful for us.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I did the math and read between the lines, even if I hated the sum of my calculations and speculations. “Matty’s not your son,” I whispered.
My dad shifted his gaze to me, and I didn’t want to feel his pain. He didn’t deserve my sympathy. Yet, I had a weak moment that stole some of the momentum I’d had when I entered the barn, ready to unload on him.
“Does Clyde know?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his temples. “But he had a wife and two-year-old daughter at the time, so he wasn’t interested in ruining his marriage.”
“Why are you telling me this? Do you expect me to think that you deserved to have an affair too? And why wait thirteen years to even the score?”
“I wasn’t planning on evening any score, but Clyde contacted her, asking to meet Matt. And I said no. She wasn’t happy, and that made me not trust her. So I followed her to one of Matt’s baseball practices, and Clyde was there, watching him practice from afar. She never introduced him to Matt, but she stood by his side the whole time. That sent me down a self-destructive path. And Danielle had worked for us for several summers, and she was always attentive . A girl with a crush on her boss.” He deflated with a resigned sigh. “When she turned eighteen, I thought, why not?”
I furrowed my brow. “Does Mom know?”
He shook his head.
“How did Sarah find out?”
“She didn’t.”
I shook my head. It made no sense.
He didn’t respond for a long moment. “Clyde was at Matt’s graduation, lurking in the back of the gymnasium as if he had the right to be there. And he wore this fucking fatherly pride expression. Your mom invited him. And again, I lost it. Do you want to despise me more than you already do?” he asked .
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. And I don’t despise you.”
“Well, you should.” He clenched his jaw like Matt had done, fighting his emotions.
The last time my dad cried in front of me was when Danielle Harvey told him she was pregnant with his baby. Why was he crying again?
He swallowed hard. “The Friday before the Fourth, we had champagne and orange juice, but she had mostly champagne. We were celebrating while sitting on the tailgate of my truck in the middle of nowhere, watching the sunrise. She got an entry-level job at a news station in Houston. And I thought it was good timing because I wanted to move on as well. Put the past behind me once and for all. Forgive your mother.
“I asked her if she was okay to drive, and she swore she was fine. She only had three miles to drive on roads that were pretty dead, especially that early in the morning.”
He looked at me, but I wasn’t following anything.
“You think Sarah knows about Danielle Harvey,” he said. “But she doesn’t. She knows I was having an affair with Brenda Swensen.” He broke down, pinching the bridge of his nose while he silently sobbed.
Jesus …
“W-what?”
Brenda killed Heather and Joanna because she was drunk.
She was drunk because she was fucking my dad, and they were celebrating the end of their affair and the beginning of her minimum-wage job at a newsroom.
He was right; I despised him.
“You need to buy me out of my share of the land, or it’s all going up for sale,” I said, harnessing every bit of control I could find because I wanted to end his miserable life.
“What’s going on?” Mom asked as soon as I opened the front door.
I removed my boots, keeping my head bowed. “You’ll have to elaborate.”
“Matt ran into the house, very upset. I tried to ask him what was wrong, and he told me to ask you.”
Lifting my head, I studied her. My parents were deeply flawed, and maybe I had every right to blame my indiscretions on them, but I was twenty-four. Blaming anyone else for my actions was cowardice.
“I took something he thought belonged to him. Don’t worry about it. You have enough on your plate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Well I’m meeting Janet to help prepare food for after the service.” She slid her purse onto her shoulder. “You and Matt will ride with your dad to Joanna’s funeral.”
“I didn’t know Joanna.” I stepped past her toward the stairs.
“But Sarah did, and someday she’s going to be family. So, we need to be there for her.”
I closed my eyes just before heading up the stairs.
When the front door clicked shut behind my mom, I knocked on Matt’s door.
“Go away.”
I grabbed the key from the ledge of molding above the door and poked it into the lock .
“Fuck off,” Matt said, staring blankly at his ceiling, legs dangling off the end of the bed.
In the Army, they shared information on a need-to-know basis. As I gazed at my brother and grappled with recent revelations about my father, I made a decision. Matt deserved everything, and what he did with it was up to him.
I had no intention of telling my mom about Brenda Swensen or that I owned half the family’s land because her husband impregnated a young woman. She started it. And I wanted to wash my hands of everything. I felt no loyalty to anyone.
“Once you’re done tripping over your ego, you’ll see that she was never going to marry you. And even if you and everyone else managed to guilt her into it, the marriage would not have lasted. And she said you two broke up. You can’t suffocate someone’s dreams without losing them. But more than all of that, it’s time for you to grow up and deal with reality.”
He clenched his jaw. “You mean that you’re an asshole? And Sarah is a?—”
“Careful,” I warned.
Matt drew in a long breath and let it out just as slowly.
“Your reality is this,” I said. “You have a bright future ahead of you if you choose to pack up your belongings and never look back. But you’re going to struggle with it because what I’m about to tell you will hit you harder than finding out your ex-girlfriend likes another guy, even if that guy is me.”
“There’s nothing you could tell me that would feel worse than that,” he mumbled.
“Mom was engaged to another man before she met Dad. Nine months before you were born, she drove to St. Louis to visit her ex-fiancé.”
Matt rolled his head toward me, brow furrowed as he slowly sat up.
“Your biological father’s name is Clyde Jensen. And no, I haven’t kept this from you. I just found this out today.” I slid my hands into my pockets. “If you’ve had either of our parents on a pedestal, I suggest you take a few seconds, right now, to set them on the ground. Make them human. Open your mind to see their flaws, knowing that someday you will inevitably fuck something up, and you’ll beg for understanding and forgiveness.”
Matt didn’t move, not a blink.
“But you won’t get there today. So it’s okay to be pissed off. It’s okay to act out. It’s okay to say things that might be hard to forgive. Six years ago, Dad let twelve year’s worth of resentment turn into his own affair. He got Danielle Harvey pregnant.”
Matt’s head jerked back before he adamantly shook it.
“It’s true. However, I drove her to get an abortion. I took the fall. And Dad signed over half of the land to me in exchange for being the fall guy and enlisting in the Army for a minimum of six years.”
“You’re lying.” Matt continued to shake his head.
I returned a painful laugh. “I wish I were. Even now, I’m still struggling with my decision because no matter how much I stood to gain from the deal, no amount of money took away the resentment that I felt toward Dad for doing what he did. And I resented you for being the protected child. Then, when I returned, you had gone from the protected child to the perfect child. They support your dreams. And no one has ever asked me about mine. Do you really think it’s my dream to take over the ranch? I had a fucking band in high school. Was it not obvious to everyone what I wanted to do with my life?”
Matt’s eyes reddened, and I couldn’t tell if he was drowning in anguish or fighting the urge to kill something—someone.
“Do you want the rest?” I asked.
He swallowed hard, quickly wiping his eyes.
“To be honest, I wish I knew none of this. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I can leave you with a shred of bliss, or I can go ahead and fuck up the rest of your world like what’s been done to mine. Your choice.”
Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, he looked away. “Did you have sex with her?”
Sarah.
My little brother rarely surprised me, but it was admirable that he asked about Sarah in the midst of everything I’d just told him. He gained back a little of my respect after I thought he didn’t really care about her. He loved her enough to hide from the truth when it was right in front of him.
Her shirt and bra were on the ground in the barn, and she was in the tack room. She didn’t tell him it wasn’t what he thought, because it was exactly what he thought.
Yet, there he was, bleeding out, begging for me to tell him otherwise because, in his darkest moment, he needed her. But he needed to believe that she didn’t cheat on him like everyone else in his life.
That was the first time I let myself feel actual guilt.
Not regret.
Not remorse.
I did something that hurt someone else, and I felt bad, but regretting it wasn’t an option because I loved the girl. And I believed I loved her more than he did because I loved all of her.
Her fears.
Her dreams.
Her insecurities.
Her everything.
Matt loved the version of her he made up in his head.
“Yes,” I whispered.
His face scrunched while he choked on his emotions. “Go,” he croaked.
“There’s more?—”
“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” He stabbed his fingers into his hair, panting out of control.
I stepped toward the door. “Get ready for the funeral. After today, you won't have to see me again. But for the next few hours, we’ll pull our shit together and pay our respects.”