Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DELANEY
While Brewer dragged Kel out of the house by the elbow, I made my way downstairs in a dreamlike state. Think treacly-sweet Disney princess twirling through the forest… mixed with a dash of Wile E. Coyote after the anvil fell on his head.
I realized in a distant sort of way that this was concerning, or should be. I’d never in my life exhibited any kind of mushy, lovestruck behavior and would have been highly annoyed had anyone suggested I was even capable of it.
But it turned out, being kissed senseless by the man you had strong feelings for after hearing him declare to a known gossip that you slept dependently had a remarkably settling effect on a person.
Ten out of ten, strong recommend.
I couldn’t even work myself up to more than a mild annoyance about Kel’s emergency preventing me and Brewer from having our talk… and our jam cupboard reckoning. After the way he’d made love to me last night, after everything we’d almost said this morning, I was confident Brewer and I were building a future on an unshakable foundation.
Silly me.
After I grabbed some coffee from the kitchen and fed Brewer’s dog, I opened my laptop, more determined than ever to finish Empire Ridge one way or another and put it to bed once and for all. I was surprised to find a new email from Amber at the top of my inbox.
“Well, well. Harmon Construction—Background Photos,” I murmured to Teeny, who’d flopped on the floor at my feet, apparently deciding we were best friends now. “Amber’s been a busy woman overnight.”
Curious, I opened the attachment.
The first shot was a black-and-white photo of a tall, smiling, broad-shouldered man in work clothes and a diminutive woman with a bouffant hairstyle, standing in front of a Queen Anne Victorian with a sagging front porch. The caption read: Harmon Construction Founder Barney Harmon and his wife, Elsie Brewer, outside the family home, 19 Halifax St, Southbourne, 1963.
The man’s smile beamed with so much pride I wanted to smile back… but found I couldn’t.
The Halifax Street property Anthony had sold to Empire Ridge had been his family home, the one he seemed to have grown up in.
My brain kicked into gear, trying to find the angles here. Why hadn’t Anthony mentioned that? Anthony’s goal in getting me to write this article was to make himself a sympathetic figure—the little guy corrupted by the big, evil corporation. So why withhold information that supported this claim? It was so counterproductive it had honestly never occurred to me to go looking for this kind of thing.
I quickly reopened the email from last night and perused the deed of transfer again. Belles Pivoines Trust had owned the property. Why did that name seem familiar? I’d need to go through Anthony’s financials again and see if it had been there. But who’d put the property in trust—Anthony or Barney? Who’d been the beneficiary? Why hadn’t I explored any of this before?
Frustrated now, I shot off an email to Amber asking if she could find any information about the trust in the heaps of research we now had.
Then I flipped back to the Background Photos email and kept scrolling, looking for answers.
The next items in the document were snippets from newspaper announcements, and I wondered idly if Southbourne’s library had digitized their old newspapers.
Announcement of Marriage: Mr and Mrs James Brewer are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Elsie to Barney Harmon of Southbourne.
I frowned at the clipping for a moment—Elsie Brewer ? — before shaking my head at my own foolishness. This was one of those weird synchronicity things. Think of Brewer, find all the Brewers.
The two next clippings announced the arrivals of Elsie and Barney’s children, B. Anthony Harmon and Catherine Harmon.
And the one after that?—
My breath caught as my eyes landed on an obituary from ten years ago.
SOUTHBOURNE, NY - Barnum “Barney” Harmon, 87, beloved craftsman and founder of Harmon Construction, passed away peacefully…
Born February 3, 1930, to William and Martha Harmon, Barney founded Harmon Construction in 1962…
He was preceded in death by his wife, Elsie Brewer Harmon. He is survived by his son, Brewer Anthony Harmon, daughter Catherine Harmon Lovatt, and grandsons Brewer Harmon and Hayes Lovatt, all of Southbourne…
Shock turned my fingers ice-cold, and the edges of my vision went black.
Hand shaking, I somehow kept scrolling, wanting to find something—anything—that showed it was all a misunderstanding.
But the next image was of a short piece from the Southbourne Courier . The headline read: “Father-Son Team Expanding Family Legacy.” Below was a photo of two men in tool belts standing side by side, grinning at the camera: an older man with graying hair I recognized as Anthony… and a younger man with a happy tip-tilted smile.
“Brewer,” I whisper-moaned to the empty room. “Oh, fuck.”
I pushed my chair back from the desk, and Teeny lifted her head in concern.
How was it possible I was writing an article about Brewer’s father? More to the point, how was it possible that I hadn’t known all these weeks?
My brain started putting pieces together, trying to make it make sense. Coincidences like this were practically impossible, weren’t they? So had Brewer known I was writing an article about his father and then decided to?—?
No. I dismissed the idea as quickly as it formed. I had approached Brewer about the renovations because he’d been recommended, and I’d hired him well before I’d ever heard of Anthony Harmon.
Besides, Brewer wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t.
I thought about calling Brewer right away, but I needed to get a little clearer on the details. He was estranged from his father, and his father was Anthony Harmon, the man I was trying to defend in my article.
Before I talked to him about it, I needed to get the facts straight in my head.
In a daze— not the Disney princess kind anymore—I scooted my chair back toward the computer and kept scrolling. The article detailed how Tony Harmon and his son Brewer were expanding the family business, honoring Barney’s legacy of quality craftsmanship while taking on larger projects.
Two years later, there was another small newsprint clipping stating that the historic Harmon family home had been sold to Empire Ridge Development Corporation for an undisclosed amount. Plans were underway for a new housing development.
Brewer’s words rushed back to me. The stories of him helping his grandfather renovate his house. And then, from that night, we unearthed Elizabeth Winters’s paintings: I’m not close to my family aside from Hayes. My father gave away something that was mine, and I’ve never forgiven him for it.
Jesus Christ. Was it possible he was talking about the house?
What if the grandfather who’d loved him and taught him so much wanted Brewer to have his house? And Anthony had sold it before Brewer had a chance to inherit it.
And then they’d razed it to the ground.
My breath caught in my lungs.
If so, this wasn’t just a story about corporate corruption, about fighting for the little guy. It was a story about Brewer.
And Brewer hadn’t shared it with me.
When we’d been tangled in my sheets, talking about Empire Ridge, I’d asked if Brewer knew anyone who’d had dealings with them. He’d said he had… but he hadn’t explained it had been someone in his own family . Brewer had stiffened physically and emotionally. He’d pulled back—his default response when he felt vulnerable. He hadn’t let me in.
Which begged the question, how much did I still not know about this man who’d somehow become the center of my universe?
The idea that the man who’d told me from the beginning to trust me, Delaney might not trust me burned in my chest.
I wanted to call him, right that fucking minute, to confront him and demand to know what the fuck was going on.
But just as my anger caught fire, a tidal wave of sympathy and indignation on Brewer’s behalf broke over me and snuffed it out.
What must it have been like for Brewer—having his own father sell his grandfather’s house to a big developer? The place must’ve been full of memories, presumably happy ones in which his grandfather had given him a love for craftsmanship. To watch his father hand over his grandfather’s legacy to Empire Ridge must have felt like a betrayal.
Christ, no wonder Brewer had built his walls so high.
No wonder he kept people at arm’s length and pulled back when he felt vulnerable.
When the person who’s supposed to protect you betrayed you like that, how did you ever trust anyone again?
It made my chest physically ache to think about how it must have been—might still be—for Brewer. The man who measured things in Delaneys, who sang Broadway show tunes while grilling steak, who’d crafted parts of my house with those talented hands… had lost his own home. And he’d carried that wound alone.
Did Brewer have the same facts his father had given me? Had Brewer chosen not to believe his father? Did he know something I didn’t?
If I was able to prove the case I’d been trying to prove, would that matter to him? Would it help ?
I rolled my eyes at myself. Why the fuck was I sitting here and wondering what Brewer would want… when I could just call Brewer ?
He hadn’t talked to me about his family, and I didn’t want to push him, but at the very least, I needed to tell Brewer the article I was writing was about his father. Now that I’d discovered the connection, I couldn’t and wouldn’t keep it a secret.
I scrambled for my phone and dialed Brewer’s number expectantly.
A second later, the muffled sound of Brewer’s ringtone came from upstairs.
“Fuck,” I groaned, knocking my head on the desk. “He left his fucking phone? Now what?”
I briefly considered calling Kel, but… whatever he had going on seemed like a true emergency. This… wasn’t. Technically. No matter how hard my heart was beating.
I’d wait for him to come home so we could discuss this in person, with context and care. Because he wasn’t a fucking source for an article; he was Brewer .
The man I was falling for.
And while we were talking, I was going to tell him that, too. Tell him about my feelings, no matter what his reaction was.
Then, if I was very, very lucky, we’d get to the part of the day with the jam closet because Brewer had promised we’d execute his plan?—
I froze in my seat, hearing Brewer’s deep, woodsmoke voice in my head. We’re just reconfiguring it slightly. A tiny tweak to the blueprints. The architect never has to know .
“The architect never has to know,” I told the dog, recalling the words Brewer had spoken. “The architect never has to know!”
Teeny lifted her head curiously.
All this time, I’d been lamenting the fact that Anthony Harmon couldn’t prove he’d seen a second, detailed set of official site plans that Empire had used to manipulate him, that Cornerstone Development insisted didn’t exist. But what if they’d used a different company to develop those plans?
I pulled out a notebook and began googling urban planners in Upstate New York, then contacting all the likely candidates. It was on my third phone call that I finally got a hit.
With shaking fingers, I typed out a text to Brewer.
Hey! Hope things are okay with Kel. Got a lead on my story and I need to check it out. I’ll tell you all about it later. Be back by dinner.
Then I said goodbye to Teeny, grabbed my keys, and ran out the door.
Because there wasn’t a question in my mind that Brewer was my priority here. Brewer was the person I wanted to make things fair and right for.
I didn’t know if getting this evidence would fix things for the man I cared about, but I was damn well going to try.