Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The last time we received a text like that from my dad was when Mama decided to stop pursuing treatment for the aggressive cancer that stole her from us far too soon.
My hackles are fully extended as I park in front of my childhood home.
We have family dinners weekly, but Dad doesn’t plan them and never requests that we all attend.
Something happened—and I don’t know what, but it has to be big.
As I close the door to my black GMC Yukon, I take a deep breath before walking up the front steps as the sense of dread intensifies in my gut.
I walk in to find Savannah and Vivian buzzing around the kitchen, getting plates, and quietly discussing something between the two of them. The scene is entirely normal, until they both freeze when they notice me in the doorway. “Okay, you two are not helping my nerves. What is going on?”
Vivian shoots a look at Savannah. “I don’t know, Ryan, and she won’t give me anything.”
Savannah shakes her head. “I promised Daddy I would wait. It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“Jack said the same thing, and Liam did, too. So, you three all know what’s going on?
What is this, an oldest versus youngest situation?
” Jack is the oldest sibling, followed by Liam, then Savannah, me, Finn, and Vivian.
It wasn’t often that Jack, Liam, and Savannah battled it out versus me, Finn, and Vivian—but it has been known to happen.
We have some strong personalities and all tend to be competitive.
“That’s not it at all, son.” Dad claps me on my back as he nods to the dining room. He looks like shit. His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair is all out of place. It’s like he has aged ten years since I saw him last week. “We’re just waiting for Finn, and then we’ll get started.”
Like summoned by our father, the front door slams and Finn cries out, “I don’t know what happened, but I swear, it wasn’t me this time!”
Dad has a sad look on his face and nods to the dining room again. “Come on, grab a drink and take your seat.”
Jack and Liam are already seated when I enter the dining room, and I take my usual spot as I try to decode whatever secretive bullshit those two are up to.
Dad starts dishing up pieces of pizza and passing it out, but I can’t eat until I know what the hell is going on.
I refuse a plate and shake my head. “I’m good. ”
“Come on, Ryan. Just take a plate,” Savannah pleads. I roll my eyes but take it and drop it in front of me.
“Okay, fine, we all have our pizza, now what the hell is going on? This is freaking me out, and I really hate that half of my siblings clearly already know what the fuck is going on.”
Liam huffs and looks up at the ceiling—which is exceptionally strange for my usually very controlled brother.
Dad raises his hand to interrupt Jack who was about to respond to my slight temper tantrum. “No, it’s okay, Jack. I’ve got this. It’s my fault we have to have this conversation, so I should take the blame.”
“What did you do?” Finn asks without preamble.
Savannah’s eyes fill with tears before she fills the silence. “It’s okay, Daddy. You didn’t know.”
Dad hums, and I am getting more pissed off by the second. “Will someone just tell us what happened? Or who died? Or who’s in trouble?” My voice is slightly louder than I intended, but I want whatever it is out in the open.
“It’s no secret that I wasn’t a perfect husband to your amazing mother,” Dad begins, but that’s not news.
Any facade I had about my father being the perfect husband came crashing down the summer when I was seventeen years old.
The night before the Fourth of July, Mama received a phone call from a friend telling her she needed to come down to the town’s Irish pub, O’Dell’s.
Mama went to discover our father was on the patio—with another woman sitting on his lap.
She fetched her husband, and when they got home, she read him the riot act behind the chicken coop, so they didn’t wake any of us.
That night was more like a match that lit the damn wildfire, though, and nothing was safe.
We would come to learn that the fact that Murphy Callahan cheated on his wife was one of the worst kept secrets in our small town, but no one had the guts to tell my mother.
He had been stepping out on her for years, and I still don’t know if it was related to drinking or not, but he stopped drinking, promised to be better, and did the work.
He and Mama attended individual counseling and couple counseling, as well as a few family counseling sessions.
If it wasn’t hard enough to reconcile that our entire town knew what had been going on and no one said anything, it was topped off by hearing how the man I respected most in this world had made multiple mistakes over the years and betrayed our mother and our entire family.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Vivian’s soft voice interrupts my trip down memory lane. Mama’s been gone for five years, so it’s not like he would be cheating on her now, unless…
“Dad, did you meet someone?” I ask.
His eyebrows go up, and he pauses before he replies, “I did, but not like that.”
“It wouldn’t be cheating on her now, Daddy. Mama wouldn’t want you to be alone. It’s okay if you’re ready to start dating again,” Vivian adds, clearly following the same train of thought.
But Savannah, Jack, and Liam all look disgusted at that thought.
“I … I don’t even know how to say this. I’m sorry.” He looks to Jack and Liam, then Savannah.
“Maybe just start from the beginning,” Savannah offers.
Dad nods. “Okay, so the summer … uh … the summer everything came out was, what … twenty, twenty-one years ago?” He looks at Jack, who nods in response. “Right, so from that night on, I was faithful to your mother. I swear on everything that I value, I was from that day forward.”
He doesn’t have to plead his case; we saw the change in the man and in their marriage.
“Wait, so who did you meet?” I ask Dad but then look to my siblings.
“There are a lot of details that I still don’t have, but unbeknownst to me at the time—and I swear, I had no idea—the fall after that summer, a little girl was born.”
What. The. Fuck?
“And she has the same green eyes that I got from my mother, and the same vivid green that you have, Vivi.”
“Dad, what are you saying?” Finn asks.
“I’m saying that this morning, I was informed that I have … I have a daughter I was unaware of.”
“What?” Vivian whispers, but she might as well have yelled at the top of her lungs.
“Viv, I promised Daddy he would tell all of us. I only found out because I came over last night to borrow something from Daddy, and Jack and Liam were having it out with him in the kitchen.” Sav reaches over and squeezes Vivian’s arm, but I get it. I feel a little betrayed, too.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us? Wait, how did this all come to light in the first place?” I have so many fucking questions right now. “And where is she?”
“I confirmed the hunch I had with a DNA test and took Jack to go talk to her two nights ago,” Liam informs us.
“Where is she?” Vivian asks again, her wide eyes brimming with tears.
“Well, right now, she’s at work. But later, she’ll be at my penthouse because she’s staying with me,” Jack answers.
“She’s local? Who is she?” Finn beat me to it.
“You’ve probably met her, but her name is Cameron Walsh, and she’s the manager at Java Jive.”
“But she goes by Cami,” Liam adds.
“The pretty redhead, wait. Ew. I thought she was pretty.” Finn’s face is scrunched with a mix of disgust and shock, and I’m right there with him. I can’t say I ever checked her out, but I never considered that I could have siblings walking around that I didn’t know about.
“Why is she staying with you, Jack?” Vivian asks.
“She sure as hell wasn’t staying in that death trap,” Liam answers instead, but I don’t understand why he’s so mad.
“It’s not a death trap, it’s just not … the safest accommodations. Cami lives in an RV at a park over near the baseball fields.”
“That’s being generous. That thing is not drivable, which feels like a very basic criterion for something to be considered a vehicle.
It wouldn’t start, it didn’t have heat, and I’m pretty sure a raccoon could break the meager lock on the front door.
” Liam has a personal vendetta against this RV that I’ll have to decode later.
“With the temperatures dipping into the thirties at night in December, it isn’t safe for her to be out there without heat,” I add.
Liam points at me. “Exactly! The entire thing is a death trap.”
Jack gives him a look. “Stop. We didn’t leave her in the RV; hence, why she’s now staying in one of my guest rooms.”
“For how long? And is that why she moved to Forrest Falls? Does she want to meet us? Does she know we know? Why didn’t she say anything when she first got here?
I’ve always felt like she was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Oh my God, does she hate us?” Vivian is spiraling, and now amplified by her pregnancy hormones, the tears are running down her face.
“Take a breath, Vivi. It’s okay. We don’t necessarily have all the answers yet, right?” Sav asks Jack and Liam who nod in agreement.
“She knew our father’s name and hired a private investigator to find him, which lead her—and the RV that she is very fond of—to Forrest Falls.” Jack clearly wants Liam to back off the RV digs, but if it’s a safety issue, I’m with Liam.
“Why didn’t her mother tell her where he was? Did she keep her from us?” Finn chimes in as Dad shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think so. But apparently, her mother passed away when Cami was … what did you say? Twelve?” Dad asks Liam, who nods.
“Yeah.” Liam’s back to being pissed—and this time, it’s not about an RV.
“What aren’t you saying?” I ask him directly.
“After her mother passed away, Cami didn’t have any other family members to take her in, so she became a ward of the state and entered foster care.”
“She what?!” Vivian cries out. “Why did that happen? She should have come here to us. We never would have let her go into the system.”
“That’s what I said, too, Viv. But she didn’t know about all of us, let alone how to navigate that as a child.”
Jack goes on to explain how our sister—I now have three sisters—went into foster care until she turned eighteen, then used her savings to purchase the RV that Liam has a personal vendetta against. Most of her life, Cami knew the name of her father, but also that he had a family and she had siblings out there.
“Did you know?” I ask my father. I know what he said, but I need him to address this head-on.
“I promise, I did not know. I never, ever, would have left her alone like that. You know that. The fact she was in foster care, let alone some of the bullshit she’s had to face alone over the years, I never … I would never.” Dad doesn’t hold the tears back that spill down his cheeks.
Savannah and Vivian get up from their chairs and wrap him up in a hug from both sides. “We know that, Daddy. You’re a great dad,” Savannah tries to console him, and I get that he’s upset, but I’m not ready to rush to his side just yet.
“Does she know that we are all finding out?” I ask the table as a whole.
“I told her that we would be telling you all soon, and she was okay with it. I mean, she didn’t say not to, so I’m assuming she’s okay with it.” Jack looks at Liam who gives a slight shrug.
“Okay.” I get up and push away from the table.
“Where are you going?” Jack calls out to me.
“She’s been on the outside by herself since she was twelve years old. We can sit here and hash out how awful this is, or I can go and talk to her—and fucking meet my sister.”
“Maybe you should take a breath, Ry,” Savannah calls after me.
“Nope, I’m good.” I walk out of my childhood home and hear someone behind me. It’s not until I get into my truck that I see Finn getting in the passenger seat of my SUV.
“Wait!” Vivian yells at us from the porch as she makes her way down the steps. “I’m coming with you.”
I hop out to help my pregnant sister get into the backseat, and the three of us make the quick drive into town to go meet—officially—our youngest sibling. None of us say anything on the drive until we’re parked in front of the coffee shop, which closes in fifteen minutes.
“Let me talk first, okay? I’ve actually had multiple conversations with her,” Vivian tells us as I turn the car off.
“Hey, I’ve talked to her a bunch of times. In fact, if she knew she was my sister, she really could have given me a heads-up,” Finn argues.
“That energy isn’t going to be helpful right now, Finn. This isn’t about should have or would have or could have, this is about us opening the lines of communication and not scaring her off. Okay? Both of you?” Vivian points at both of us.
“Your mom voice is eerily close to Mama’s,” I tell her as I get out of the car and reach for the handle to help her out of the backseat. My SUV isn’t that high off the ground, but I’m not taking any chances with her carrying those twins.
“Thank you very much.” She proudly nods at my comment as she takes my hand, and the three of us walk in to face this situation—together.