Chapter 16
Linsey
I’m standing at the kitchen counter with a piece of toast in my hand when my phone rings. I pull it out of my back pocket with my free hand. When I see the call is from my cousin Shelly, I answer immediately.
“Hello, Shelly. What’s up?”
“I’ve got some news for you. Is this a bad time?”
Sabre walks across the kitchen with a piece of bacon in his hand, because we’re both feral when it comes to walking around eating in the kitchen. I put the phone on speaker so we can both talk to her.
I’d texted Shelly after Dylan got arrested and updated her on the situation.
Seeing as she had warned me that he might come looking, I wanted to keep her in the loop.
“It’s never a bad time for you. I’m making breakfast but I’ve put you on speaker.
Sabre’s here with me, is it okay if he listens in? ” I ask her.
“Sure, now you’re with him it could affect him too.” I can hear a door close on her end. “I figured out how Dylan found you. It was our family.”
I freeze with my piece of toast halfway to my mouth. “Wait. What? Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
“Aunt Dorothy died two months ago.” Her voice sounds pained when she talks about Aunt Dorothy. “About a month after the funeral, your mama and daddy came down to clean out her house. That’s when they found the letters.”
Aunt Dorothy was Aunt Carol’s sister. When my aunt left Billings she told me that she didn’t speak to any of the family anymore. That’s why I felt she’d understand why I had to leave too. I’m confused, so I ask, “What letters?”
“Aunt Carol’s letters. She and Aunt Dorothy wrote to each other for years. I guess they kept in touch secretly. Aunt Dorothy kept every single one of them in a big tin with her other keepsakes.”
I look up at Sabre. He stops chewing.
“Aunt Carol wrote to Dorothy,” I say slowly, trying to work this out in my head. “Since when?”
“They go back ten years.”
I consider what she’s just said. Aunt Carol took me in when I showed up on her porch with a black eye and a suitcase.
Carol, Dorothy, and my father are siblings, but couldn’t be less alike.
I don’t know the full story as she didn’t like to talk about it, but I did know that Aunt Carol had a falling out with my father which resulted in her leaving the community when I was a child.
She always said that she never told anyone in that family where I was because she didn’t trust any of them. But Dorothy wasn’t just anyone, she was Aunt Carol’s sister. I wonder if me turning up on her doorstep made her reach out to her sister?
“What was in the letters? Do you know?” I ask.
“She spoke about you and Noah. How she loved having you both staying with her.” Shelly’s voice goes soft.
“She talked about his birthdays, how smart he is, and how he’s crazy about military history.
She wrote about you being a chef. She even talked about the classes you teach and the little catering jobs you take on the side.
She was so proud, saying it was thanks to you, that the restaurant you worked at back in LA got a Michelin star, and how she wouldn’t be surprised if The Gilded Fig got one too. ”
I can feel myself tearing up as my emotions get the better of me. “She was bragging on me and Noah and pretty much told Aunt Dorothy everything about us, right?”
“Yeah. Of course she did. She’s so proud of the two of you and it really showed in those letters. You turned out to be the family she never had.”
Sabre’s hand comes out and squeezes my arm. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s letting me know that he understands how bittersweet this news is.
“We love Aunt Carol as well,” I tell her because I want her to understand it’s a two-way street.
“I never met her because she left before I was born, but she sounds like a great woman. Aunt Dorothy loved her and she kept her promise never to tell the family about you and Noah. Anyway, when your father found the letters, he sat everyone down in Aunt Dorothy’s front room and passed them around.
Uncle Gerald sat in Grandma’s chair and just listened to it all, but I think he’d read them already.
Otherwise, why would he have made such a big deal of it? ”
“That’s my dad, all right,” I tell her. “He likes to make a production of situations like this.”
“He went into a rant after they were finished, saying you lied to your own family for ten long years and kept their grandchild from them.” She pauses for a couple of seconds and then adds, “Nobody said anything back. Nobody ever does when he gets wound up like that.”
I can imagine how that went down in my mind’s eye. I’ve seen him get fired up like that a hundred times growing up. No one ever argued when my father was in one of those moods because that’s when he could get unpredictable.
“Then what happened?” Sabre has the presence of mind to ask. It’s the first thing he’s said, and Shelly answers right away.
“Then they started looking for Linsey. They had the name of the restaurant and the town and the school, all of it right there in the letters, so they got on the computer at the library and they found everything. They made notes of her work hours, her class schedule, Noah’s school information, and where Aunt Carol lives.
” She makes a disgusted sound. “They were excited, like tracking down all the pieces of Linsey’s life was some kind of scavenger hunt. ”
Sabre’s hand tightens around my arm and he tugs me closer, in some kind of protective gesture that I don’t think he even realizes he’s making.
“They called Dylan the next day,” Shelly continues.
“Of course they did,” I mumble.
“That answers the question of how he found you and how he knew about Noah,” Sabre whispers.
“Finding Dylan was easy because his parents still go to their church. He was in a halfway house outside Billings. They told him he had a son, that you’d named him Noah.
Said if he had any self-respect, he should take what’s his and bring you back to the love of your family.
” She snorts a laugh. “They sicced that asshole on you and called it love.”
“Did any of them come here?” I ask. “Have any of them been to California?”
“Not that I heard, and they are pretty loose lipped around me. They just think I’m a na?ve kid who doesn’t understand what they’re talking about.
They trusted Dylan to sort out his own family business.
” Her voice hardens. “When he made his one call, after being picked up by the police, it was to his parents. When they told everyone, it was decided that Dylan was being persecuted all over again. Can you believe that? Anyway, that’s why I called you.
I got sick of listening to them feel sorry for that asshole. ”
I close my eyes for a second. My cousin is seventeen years old and has a better grasp of right and wrong than the adults around her.
“Thanks for letting me know. I mean that. You just supplied all the missing pieces of information that made this make sense for us.”
“You’re welcome,” she says, sounding a little more lighthearted. “When I’m gone, maybe those busybodies can whine about it and console each other about it.”
“Gone?” I ask.
“I’m still planning on leaving as soon as I turn eighteen. I want to head to LA and go to college,” she says.
“Well, if I can ever help you with anything just ask.”
“Thanks,” she says. We say our goodbyes, and I end the call knowing a whole lot more about how this whole thing happened than I did before.
***
The brothers spend the next two days comparing Shelly’s report to everything we already knew about Dylan. It matches up point for point.
We go over Zen’s latest report together at the kitchen table.
Sabre tells me, “Zen got a hold of the report outlining Dylan’s parole violation.
Come to find out, that meetin’ with his parole officer the day before he broke into Aunt Carol’s house was a virtual meetin’.
He used a VPN number to make it look like he was still in Montana.
Normally they would have caught that, but their system was glitching because of a tornado the day before.
Dylan told his parole officer he was visitin’ extended relatives in the southern part of the state. ”
“I’m sure he got in extra trouble for lying,” I say. “It seems like he exploited every advantage that came his way to find us.”
“Yeah, all that time we went back and forth about whether or not it could be him was a gigantic waste of time. This is the last piece of the puzzle.”
“I’ve always wondered where he got the money to make the trip when he’d only been out of prison for a few weeks,” I say.
“Zen figures it was working at the church. He was doin’ maintenance work for them, janitor and handyman, that kind of thing. And his phone records show a whole string of calls with your people before the trip and durin’ it.”
“Even if he had a job at the church, he would have needed that money to survive on. Now, it’s pretty clear that my father probably gave him the money.”
He sets the report down on the kitchen table. “I don’t doubt it. Your parents told him where to find you and Noah. Zen also says his phone records reveal they kept talkin’ to him the whole way here.”
I sit back in my chair and put it together out loud.
“So, Aunt Dorothy dies. My parents clean out her house, and my dad finds Aunt Carol’s letters.
They read them and learn Noah is alive and where we live.
They hand all of it to Dylan and wind him up, convincing him that he was somehow wronged by me. ”
Sabre picks it up when I leave off. “Then Dylan makes the poster, gets to Noah through that history forum, drives out here, breaks into Carol’s place, thinkin’ he can convince or force the two of you to return to Billings with him.
When neither of you are there, and the brothers show up, he takes off.
Out of pure desperation he sets up a meetin’ thinkin’ he can sweet-talk you in person.
Unfortunately for him, when he shows up at the Rusty Anchor, he gets arrested.
That’s game over. Now he’s sitting in lock-up waitin’ to get extradited back to Montana if he hasn’t been already. ”
“For the first time since all this started, there isn’t a single question left,” I say.
“What about your family?” Sabre asks. “You don’t think they’re gonna want to meet their grandkid?”
I shrug. “They didn’t care about me running off. They didn’t care that Dylan was beating me. To be honest, the fact I have a kid is probably of no interest to them. They probably see me as spoiling the family bloodline.”
“I guess you know your family better than anyone else,” Sabre says quietly. Something about his tone of voice makes me wonder if he’s really going to let it go that easily.
***
I’m in the shower a day or two later, thinking about a new seasonal menu for the restaurant, when my mind wanders to the last time that I had a period.
I count backward once in my mind and when I don’t like the number I come up with, I begin to think that strange feeling in my stomach and the episodes of nausea might be something more than unresolved anxiety from everything that’s happened.
My period isn’t just a few days late. I haven’t had one since I’ve been with Sabre. . I’ve got the house to myself this morning, because on Saturdays, Sabre takes Noah to the clubhouse. After I get changed, I drive to the nearest drugstore and grab a pregnancy test kit.
When I return, I head straight to the bathroom. Taking the kit out of my purse, I read the directions twice. Three minutes turns out to be a really long time when you’re waiting on an answer that can impact the rest of your life.
When the timer on my cell phone goes off, I pick up the test. There are two pink lines, dark enough that there’s no reason to doubt the positive result.
I sit there for a few minutes, still holding the test strip. My mind fills with a ton of serious questions. Will this baby be a boy or a girl? How will Noah take the news? I even find myself wondering what a little Sabre would look like.
The one question I never ask myself is whether to keep it.
I’m already feeling those same mama bear feelings for this baby that I felt when I was pregnant with Noah ten years ago.
This child is mine. I’m not going to let anyone take it away from me.
I’m now part of a family of three, four if Sabre opts in.
Right now, I’ve got a good man at my side.
My hand comes up to rest against my leather-clad belly.
I’ve been wearing Sabre’s property cut since the day he gave it to me.
I’m his old lady. I hang my cut right beside his every night and we’ve got a whole motorcycle club that already thinks of us as family.
I also have a nine-year-old who will probably take being a big brother more seriously than most kids his age.
I’ve still got my job, so I know I can help support this baby.
If Sabre and the club’s support go away, I’ll raise this child alone.
That’s my one worry. With Sabre, everything’s happened so fast. He’s a good man.
He stands up for what’s right. But what if he’s too good?
What if he’s just got a hero complex, and it’s not really me and Noah he loves, just the thought of helping someone.
And then what happens when real life kicks in.
I know it’s probably pregnancy hormones, but I can’t help the thoughts that start filling my head. I put the test kit back in the box it came in and cram it into the bottom of my purse, thinking out of sight, out of mind for now.