Chapter 3
Jason
The guys are out front. Rowan is inside. And I’m trying to hold my shit together behind the shed after leaving a message for my lawyer, Lenard Pheil, to call me.
That bomb Rowan dropped leveled me, knocking me back with its potential for utter devastation.
For a minute there, my heart was in my fucking throat. A wound so raw and deep opening inside me, I couldn’t breathe through it. Because… How? I don’t understand how my dad, my hero, my best friend could—
But then? Nope.
Just… No.
He wouldn’t. I know my dad. We were close. Despite the fact that his marriage to Marsha resulted in a physical distance once I moved out, emotionally, we never drifted.
We talked all the time. He visited regularly. He was there in all the ways that counted. And this place was ours.
The executors of Dad’s estate sent me the damn keys.
But even if they hadn’t, he would never have left something he cared so much about… that I cared so much about… to a woman who’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t care about it at all.
Simple as that.
Less simple? How to sort this out.
I circle around the house rather than walking through. I need a minute before I deal with Rowan again. A minute to remind myself that while my dad loved her like crazy, I don’t actually know her at all. I meet the guys at the edge of the clearing.
There’s a cloud bank pushing in, and the warmth of the afternoon sun has been replaced by a brisk breeze coming off the water.
I should be unpacking with these guys, enjoying watching World War Three break out over who gets the trundle beds in the office behind my dad’s room. But it looks like none of this summer’s cabin plans are going as expected.
“So wait, is she, or is she not, a stri-ehh-exotic dancer?” Lattner shoots me a panicked look, his hands coming up. “No judgment, man.”
“She works in hospital administration. I think.” Fine. I know she does, or at least, she did. Dad loved to brag about her, and apparently, I’m still pretending to be as indifferent about her as I wanted to be.
Wexler is still staring at our youngest teammate with a look like he can’t believe the guy’s parents let him stay out past curfew. He turns to me. “What can we do, man?”
“I appreciate you wanting to back me up here, but there’s not a lot even I can do until my lawyer calls. His firm is out of New York though, so they’re already gone for the day.”
Huska nods, shoving his hands into his pockets. “What about the team’s legal? With them, you may not have to wait until morning to put things in motion, but…” He trails off, and we all get it.
Except Lattner, who just blinks.
“It means involving the organization,” I explain to him. “Don’t get me wrong. There isn’t anything inherently bad about that… I mean, they’re a phenomenal resource to have behind us.”
Wexler shrugs. “But no one wants to be the guy making the radar because of his personal life. You want to stand out for your game and how positively you reflect on your team. You want to be the asset bringing the most to the table, yeah?”
No idea if the kid gets it, but eventually he will.
I look to Huska. “I’d rather go through my own guys. For now, anyway.” See if I can resolve it quickly and quietly, without giving Marsha any kind of opening into my professional life.
“So what about your— the girl?”
I turn back to the cabin where I catch a glimpse of her pacing through the window. I can’t believe she’s here.
I can’t believe any of this.
I shove my hand through my hair. “We’re going to need to sort this out. But until we do— Shit. I’m sorry, guys.”
Wexler steps in to grip my shoulder. “Don’t be. Coming up here the first time since losing your dad is hard enough, but finding out your stepmom is after the estate? The last thing you need is the three of us underfoot.”
But of course he gets it. The guy lost both his parents when he was a kid. It’s one of the reasons I asked him along this week. “Thanks for understanding.”
“’Course, man. Just wish there was something I could do.”
“There is.” I muster a grin. “Go flirt with the local girls. Take these two out tonight on me. Bruce’ll tell you where to go to get the best fish boil you’ve ever had. Hotel’s one town over, and tomorrow… Hell. Just have a good fucking week.” I meet each of their eyes. “And go easy on the rookie.”
There’s a round of back claps, fist bumps, and bro hugs, and then my guys head down the path it feels like we just came up.
Bruce about loses his mind when he finds out Rowan’s here. Not sure if he’s more upset about Marsha claiming ownership of the island or the fact that her daughter hired some other outfit to get her across the lake.
But he’s already on his way out of the harbor to come get my teammates before I hang up. Time to hash this out with Rowan.
“Did you speak with your attorney?” she asks when I walk in. She’s pulled on a pair of jeans and is rubbing her hands together in that classically nervous way that used to turn me inside out, make me want to pull her close and prove I could make everything okay. As if she ever wanted that.
“Look, obviously, there’s been a mistake,” I say flatly, tamping down the dual needs to take her hands to warm them up and call Marsha, her mother and a woman I know deep in my bones to be a seriously shitty human being, a conniving thief. “A misunderstanding.”
“I wish it was.” There’s a waver in her voice, like what she’s saying hurts her as much as it hurts me. “I know you don’t want to believe your dad would let this happen.”
“He wouldn’t. My entire life, he talked about this place belonging to our family, being part of my heritage. He couldn’t wait to teach my kids to swim off the dock like Gramps did with me and to someday see me teaching my grandkids the same thing.”
He’d had plans.
“Rowan, there is zero chance in hell that Dad would have left this place to Marsha. She hated it. Came once, couldn’t get a signal to shop from her phone, and left two days into a ten-day trip.”
Initially, I’d felt genuinely bad for my dad that the woman he’d share the rest of his life with “didn’t care for the outdoors” the way she’d thought she would. But then, after everything that happened… I was grateful.
Grateful to have one place that was still ours. And while he’d never say it out loud, I knew he was too. Dad’s loyalty knew no bounds, so his wife would have been taken care of. No question.
But the cabin? No way.
And Lenard will confirm it tomorrow.
She takes a slow breath and asks, “Okay, but… I mean, you don’t have any legal documentation that shows he left it to you?”
“Not on me, Rowan,” I snap back.
“You’ve seen it, though?” she presses.
And here’s the rub. I haven’t seen it for myself, because when I lost my dad, the last thing on my mind was parsing out his estate.
I didn’t need his money, hadn’t thought of his house— the house I grew up in —as mine since Marsha moved in.
And the island never even made my radar as a question mark.
I didn’t want to read through his final will and testament because I didn’t care where his various assets were being distributed.
The only thing I cared about was that my dad was gone.
“No. I haven’t seen it.” I rake my hand through my hair. “My lawyers handled the estate interactions.” Then. “Stop looking at me like not seeing the words means they don’t exist.”
Rowan shouldn’t be buying into this bullshit.
Yeah, it’s been more than a decade since I could claim to know her at all. And even then, I’m not sure I was thinking straight about the beautiful girl I found alone in the rain that night. But still, how can she accept Marsha’s claim?
More than that, how can she be actively participating in something she knows is wrong? Asking me for proof I don’t have this minute, like without it, she’s just going to get on with packing the place up so her mom can sell it right out from under me. Challenging what I know to be true about my dad.
It makes me angry.
Angry because my dad loved Rowan like a daughter, and he deserves better.
Angry because this doesn’t fit with my stupid fantasy about her.
Angry that I care about what kind of person she is at all, when the only fucking thing I should be angry about is that her mom is trying to steal my family’s cabin.
“Jason, more than anything, I wish Ed was still here and we could ask him why. But he’s not and we can’t. All we can do is—”
Ri-Ri-Ring, Ring…
She cuts off at the stuttering sound of her phone alerting her to what I’m guessing are multiple messages along with a call.
The signal’s spotty enough in town, but it’s even worse across the lake over here. So it’s not uncommon for a flurry of notifications to land all at once after a dead spell.
She leans over the counter where her phone is lighting up like the Fourth of July… and pales.
“Everything okay?” I step in for a closer look. “Marsha.”
My jaw clenches, and the temperature in the room goes up as a highlight reel of all the bullshit that woman has been behind rolls through my memory. The lies. The things she took from my family.
What she’s trying to take now.
Rowan casts me an uncertain look. “I-I’ll call her back.”
“Not up for a chat?” I reach for the phone. “How about I take a message?”
Rowan
“Don’t!” Swiping the phone off the counter before Jason can touch it, I shake my head.
Jason’s nostrils flare. “Then answer.”
I heave a breath, digging deep to sound normal. “Hey, Mom, sorry, it’s not a great time. Can I call you later?”
There’s a weighted pause. And then, “Not a great time? Did your husband die, leaving you with this disaster of an estate to sort out? Rowan, has it ever occurred to you that I might have more to do than wait for you to find a convenient moment on your island vacation to reply to my calls and messages?”
Confused, I check my notifications. Sure enough, there are six texts and three missed calls, all with the same timestamp of one minute ago.
Standing close enough that I can feel his bristling energy, Jason mouths, “No signal.”
Because even without being on speakerphone, he can hear her.
“It’s the signal, Mom,” I say, turning the volume down, but knowing it’s not enough. “You know how it is out here.”
I need space. Privacy. But my pleading look and staying hand as I walk outside don’t work.
He follows, matching me step for step. Almost like he’s made a career of refusing to let his opponent get by.
“Hmm.” Disapproval pours through the line.
“Mom, I—” I look at the man beside me, knowing this is the moment I should tell her that he’s here.
But I can’t do it to him. I know how she’ll react, what she’ll do.
This sucks so much, for so many reasons.
I thought this time on the island would be a chance for some closure.
Peace. A goodbye in the only way I have left to give it.
I’d thought I’d have time to myself to regroup.
To think and plan. And I thought I’d finally reached the point where the leverage my mother always held over me has come to an end.
I thought I might be able to put my guilt aside.
I thought wrong. And while I know that none of this can compare to what Jason must be going through…
So instead, “I’m, umm, just getting settled.”
“Settled? You asked for this. It was your idea. And you assured me you understood the necessity for expedience.”
Jason blinks.
That couldn’t have sounded worse. I try for some damage control.
“Mom, I know how hard losing Ed has been.” I’m desperately hoping she’ll embrace the role of distraught widow instead of diving into a laundry list of affronts she suffered being married to a man who, in my estimation, was the kindest, most generous and loving man on the planet.
Depending on her mood, it could go either way. “It’s completely understandable to want to close this out so you can begin to move on. But why don’t you give me a couple days to get organized. When I have a better sense of what I’m working with, we can talk… maybe Tuesday?”
“What you’re working with…” She gives me a caustic laugh that has my stomach turning to quicksand. “…is a pile of rotting sticks filled with tasteless trash, sitting dead center on a multi-million-dollar property.”
In the periphery of my vision, Jason stops dead.
I can’t even bring myself to look at him or to whisper the apology that won’t make a dent in the words my mother just said. But I can feel the rage and betrayal coming off him in waves.
Heart sinking, all I can do is listen as she goes on. “I want the list you promised, not excuses. Itemize anything of value. You know the drill. Photos. Estimates. The rest, I want gone. Find some pay-by-the-ton junk removal service. There has to be one, even if it is some backwoods isla—”
I stare at my finger still pressed against the screen, half stunned that I just hung up on my mother and half wondering why I didn’t have the sense to do it earlier.
I can deal with the fallout from her later. Blame the spotty signal for the dropped call.
Jason though?
I swallow hard, bracing for the worst. But when I turn to face him, to try to explain… the spot where he was standing is empty. And when I look up to the cabin, it’s to see the screen door swing shut behind him.