Chapter Eighteen #2
“Of course you fucking do,” Cal muttered.
“Cal,” Aly admonished quietly. “We’re all on the same team here. We should all know what’s going on.”
Cal didn’t argue with Aly. But he didn’t agree with her either. He just sat there. Glaring at Landon.
Landon wasn’t going to devolve into a glaring match. He was going to figure out how to fix this. The way he saw it, there was a clear solution. Or if not a solution, a step toward one.
“I think there are two things we should do.” Landon didn’t miss the belligerent look Cal scowled his way, but he ignored it. “Or maybe just one. Invite Glenda for dinner. And Bo Lake. And see what happens.”
No one jumped on that idea at first. It seemed to sit in the middle of the table, something both distasteful and yet intriguing for everyone to stare at. Worry over. And not fully form an opinion on.
The fact of the matter was, they didn’t know who Bo Lake was.
But he very well could be some kind of relation according to Nate—and even Sam couldn’t refute that.
Maybe they could sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the results of this DNA test Sam had mentioned, but what was the harm in reaching out now?
It would either be a net positive, or they’d have kept a potential enemy in their sights.
If the five of them worked together, what could Bo Lake do to them? Wasn’t that what this summer had taught them? They could weather the shitstorm of Bennet life if they worked together.
Because he’d spent the past fifteen years before this spring burying his head in the sand. Any problem not directly related to the ranch he’d avoided until he couldn’t. Even Dad’s drinking after Sandy’s death he’d let slide for way too long.
It had been the wrong tactic. Waiting. Hoping it went away. A tactic no doubt influenced by Dad impressing upon him it was the right choice. To be careful. To look the other way. To ignore the rifts and cracks and problems and focus on what worked.
Landon wanted to do the opposite of all those old choices influenced by his father. His father hadn’t been able to kill the desire to do the right thing inside Landon, but he’d influenced enough all the same.
If they were proactive, moved toward the problem rather than run away from it, maybe they could avoid someone getting shot this time around.
Cal was the first one to break the silence. “So, to be clear, your suggestion is ambushing an old, traumatized woman?”
“I didn’t say we couldn’t warn her or Jill,” Landon said evenly, but his frustration with Cal was starting to fray that evenness he was going for. “It doesn’t have to be an ambush.” Not everything does, he stopped himself from adding.
“I’ll talk to Jill,” Aly said, clearly trying to peace make. “So, it won’t be an ambush at all.”
“Seems to me if Glenda wanted Jill to know, she would have told Jill,” Cal returned. “Instead she told me. Not us.”
“But Jill isn’t connected to this the way we all are,” Aly insisted. “Glenda’s trying to protect her from it. Because she’s her grandmother. Not because Jill needs protecting.”
“Shouldn’t we let Glenda determine who and what she protects?” Cal demanded. “Why do we have to loop another fucking person into this mess?”
“She’s already in it, Cal,” Aly replied firmly. “You can’t just ignore that. And neither should Glenda.”
“There’s protecting and there’s hiding. Not all protection is good or right.” Landon thought about all the ways he’d tried to protect Aly. And what had it been? Just distance to keep them both safe from something that wasn’t dangerous, that wasn’t bad.
Even if he’d been told most of his life it would be.
“And not all protecting is wrong,” Aly added, finding his hand under the table.
She gave it a squeeze, but her gaze was on Cal.
“But in this case, leaving Jill in the dark isn’t right.
I’m going to tell Jill. She deserves to know.
She’s so worried about Glenda, about Detective Hayes coming to her place.
Worried it’s going to hurt us. So we’re going to tell her, and we’re going to tell her Landon’s suggestion.
If she doesn’t think Glenda can handle it, we won’t move forward.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t put it out there. Don’t you think?”
She posed that question to Sam. Who was looking more at her plate than the people around her. But she lifted her gaze to meet Aly’s. She didn’t speak right away, instead slowly put down her fork and surveyed the table, before looking back at Aly.
“We’ll have answers, or at least the start of answers, once the DNA comes in.
But … we don’t know how long that’s going to take, and it seems to me, if Ben’s lawyer is involved with whatever connection Bo and Glenda might have, we don’t really want to wait.
” Sam’s gaze moved from Aly to Cal. “Do we?”
“She told me that guy needs to be far away from here,” Cal said, his tone dark and vicious.
In this moment, he reminded Landon of Dad, and Landon had to look down at his own plate so as not to let that similarity take root.
“What part of this are you guys not getting?” Cal demanded. “She’s warning us. And we’re not going to heed a warning after everything we’ve suffered through? We’re going to put everyone in the same fucking room and see what explodes?”
“You interpreted what she said as a warning,” Sam said, very quietly. So quietly Landon wasn’t sure he heard her right. “That doesn’t mean it is one.”
Cal’s eyes got real wide, temper flashing in their dark depths as he turned his gaze to Sam. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve heard it from Nate, and now from you, and you both think it sounds like a warning. Like he’s bad. But what Aly said about protection … I don’t know. I have a different take on it now.”
Landon flicked a glance to Nate. Inscrutable expression. No surprise there. But surely Nate had to feel something about Sam having a different take than him. If the hand falling off the back of Sam’s chair was anything to go by, Landon supposed he did and…
Oh.
Oh.
The arm on the chair. It was then he finally caught on to what Aly was trying to get at before they’d sat down to dinner.
Nate’s arm on Sam’s chair, which could be friendly, but he didn’t think that was Aly’s point.
When he looked over at her, she rolled her eyes at him, but she nodded to confirm that…
Oh. He supposed he wasn’t surprised, but he didn’t know why it was … uncomfortable.
Well, yeah, he did. Sam had been instrumental in making his life harder than it already had been for the fifteen years Nate had been gone. So, he could try to take steps toward making amends and all that, but add something … romantic or whatever and…
Well, it made another thing more complicated than he wanted it to be.
“What’s your take, Sam?” Nate asked, and his voice was gentle.
None of Cal’s piss and vinegar. Or what would likely have come out of Landon himself if he’d spoken.
“I had a lot of thinking time while we drove around today. Between what Hayes said, and the connection to the lawyer and then Aly talking about Jill and Glenda trying to protect each other.” Sam sighed.
“Honestly? Knowing Glenda, and the way that she’s helped us.
Knowing something awful happened to her and we don’t know what, but we know she lived next to a murderer all the years your mother was being beaten, and then eventually murdered.
We know she has some kind of connection with Cal. ”
Sam’s gaze moved to Cal and Landon watched as Cal looked away. He looked pale. He looked … shaken.
Landon hated it. All their lives Cal had been the with-it asshole, smooth and brilliant and better than every fucking body. Watching him fall apart incrementally over the past six months was excruciating.
“Maybe it’s not some warning that Bo is bad news and we need to stay away from him, get him away from us.
She said get him away from here. Maybe it’s to protect him,” Sam said, her voice loud and clear now.
“Maybe, just maybe, whatever reason he’s a John Doe isn’t because someone abandoned him or because he’s here to make trouble.
Maybe, just maybe, someone saved him. Protected him.
By getting him the hell away from this.”
Cal got up abruptly. He stalked out of the dining room, but it wasn’t just anger that was driving him, it was something else. He had that haunted look on his face. Far more than fury.
Aly moved to get up, but Landon held on to her hand. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Landon.” She had that helpless look in her eyes that Cal seemed to put there on the regular.
Usually, Landon didn’t fight her on trying to soothe Cal even though he knew it hurt her. She was the only one Cal didn’t try to pick a fight with.
But he wasn’t looking to pick a fight—or let a fight be picked with him tonight. “I think it’s my turn,” he murmured. He squeezed her hand in reassurance. “I won’t make it worse this time,” he promised.
Then went to find his brother. Going toward the hurt instead of away from it.
Hoping like hell that was the right answer and not just another disaster.
*
Cal stood in the bathroom, gripping the sink. It had to be some kind of flu. There was no way there was … more. The nausea, the throwing up, it was a physical sickness inside of him. Not more memories.
If he remembered more, he didn’t know how he was supposed to stand under the weight of it all.
Glenda was the root cause of this. Something about that woman … it fucked everything inside of him up.
Why had he trusted Nate? He should have … he should have… Cal squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Too late now. Now he had to deal with whatever this was.
His stomach wanted to heave again, but he ruthlessly shoved that physical reaction back.
He heard the door creak open, cursed himself for forgetting to lock it in his rush to hurl up the contents of his dinner.
He wasn’t surprised someone was checking up on him. He was surprised it was Landon.