18. Holt
HOLT
Holt got into the police station early and settled himself at his new desk in what had been Tom’s office for most of the past two decades.
It still didn’t feel right. The desk was too big for him, the leather of the chair still carried a very faint hint of Tom’s aftershave, and every morning when he walked in through the front door, the young officer on duty still occasionally caught himself calling him Chief Morrison before catching the mistake and turning a deep shade of embarrassed red.
Holt had stopped correcting them. It took time.
Sandpiper Shores had known Tom Morrison as their police chief since most of the current force had been in grade school, and change didn’t come overnight in small towns.
Two leather-bound books sat on the corner of his desk.
Holt reached for them with the careful, ritual habit that had become part of his morning for the past three months.
The one had Willa on the front in small gold lettering.
The other one had Willa and Holt on the cover in the same elegant hand.
Both had been with him since the week he’d moved back to Sandpiper Shores.
The one with Willa on it had been returned to him after the forensic team finally released its contents.
Holt had been going through the albums every morning since.
As if trying to catch up with every day of the missed days of his daughters’ past.
He opened the one marked Willa first.
The inscription on the inside cover was in Willa’s handwriting, written when she was seventeen. The lettering was careful, the ink a deep blue, pouring love onto a page for the man who had raised her.
Dad,
Some memories of me to keep you company while I’m away at college.
Love you,
Willa
Holt ran his thumb gently over the page.
He could still remember, very clearly, the afternoon he and Willa had gone through it together. Willa had come and sat beside him, and they had stared at it for a good few moments before daring to open it. Both knew their lives would not be the same once they had.
Holt had shown her the one that June had given him, telling her he knew she’d made it for Trevor. And if she wasn’t comfortable with him keeping it, he’d understand.
Willa had gone very quiet for a while.
Then she’d turned to him and taken his hand.
“I’m glad Mom did that,” Willa had told him softly. “Dad would’ve wanted you to have it. The inscription and the book are yours now.”
Holt’s heart had swelled so hard in his chest that he’d thought it might actually break open.
That had been the day he and Willa had truly turned a corner.
She still hadn’t called him Dad, and he had never pushed her to.
But she’d started treating him like a father in the small, everyday ways that mattered more than a name ever could.
Asking his opinion on things. Letting him pick the kids up from school.
Calling him when the washing machine broke down because Ace was at work and she didn’t want to bother him.
The children had simply accepted him from the start.
As it turned out, Grace had found the album June made for Holt two years earlier while she’d been looking for something in June’s closet.
She hadn’t said a word to anyone. Then, after that night in Miami when the rest of them had finally been told, Grace had quietly briefed her siblings and Tyler behind closed doors.
Mina had overheard her. Rather than stepping in to stop her, Mina had taken charge, making all four of them promise on their grandmother’s name that they wouldn’t say anything until Willa and Rad were ready to speak to them themselves.
Holt gave a small, dry laugh at the memory.
They hadn’t listened to Mina. Not for a second.
When he, Willa, and Rad returned to Willa’s house after Miami, the careful intention was to sit the children down together and explain everything. They’d barely made it through the front door when Grace had squared her shoulders and addressed him directly.
“Is it true?” Grace had asked Holt, her chin lifted. “Are you our grandfather?”
That had made the opening of the conversation considerably easier.
Grace had also been the one to quietly slip upstairs and retrieve the album for them.
After a million questions, after every child had claimed their own version of wanting to know everything, they had simply switched to calling him Granddad without any further fuss.
Mina had been promoted on the same afternoon to Gigi, which delighted her considerably more than she was willing to let anyone see.
Then Gigi had ushered all four grandchildren out of the house along with Rad, announcing firmly that they were going for ice cream, leaving Holt and Willa alone with the album in the quiet of Willa’s living room.
They’d nearly been in tears the whole way through it.
June had documented everything. Every single piece of her relationship with Holt for Willa.
Their first meeting. Their first date. Their wedding at the courthouse.
Holt’s graduation from law school. Willa’s first ultrasound.
The first pair of tiny shoes June had bought for her.
Every photograph captioned carefully in June’s neat, even handwriting, with dates and locations and small loving notes.
She hadn’t put anything derogatory about him in a single line.
The page where she’d listed the reason for their divorce had simply read:
Darling Willa,
Our careers took us in different directions.
Holt wasn’t ready for children, and he had a destiny to fulfill.
I had you, Willa. If he had known about you, you would have been his princess.
What Holt still had to do was going to lead him down a dangerous path that would have put you in harm’s way too.
So your father and I decided we would tell you about Holt when you were old enough to handle the truth.
To make up your own mind whether you wanted to meet him or not.
P.S. Holt is a good man. It was my choice that kept the two of you apart.
Holt closed his eyes for a moment now, sitting at his desk, as the lump that was always somewhere in his throat when he read those pages crept up again.
He turned to the first page where June had started documenting Willa’s life.
For Holt,
This is your beautiful daughter, Willa Angeline.
The details of her birth had been listed in careful, precise lines beneath. Her birthdate. Her weight. Her length. The name of the doctor who’d delivered her. A copy of the original birth certificate had been tucked into a clear sleeve on the facing page.
Her last name had originally been Daily.
It had been changed to Carter when Willa was eighteen months old, after Trevor had formally adopted her.
That particular page ripped something open in Holt’s chest every single time he looked at it.
A slow, quiet anger would start to burn for a moment before he pushed it back down.
He’d never be angry at Trevor. Trevor had loved Willa completely and had been the father Holt hadn’t known he needed to be.
But the fact of it was still hard. June had given birth to his child alone.
She’d gone through every one of those ultrasound appointments without him.
Carmen had been with her sometimes, and Carmen had been in the delivery room on the day Willa was born, but it should have been him in that chair holding June’s hand.
It should have been him.
A knock at his office door pulled him sharply out of his thoughts.
Holt closed both albums quickly and slid them into the top drawer of his desk. He drew in a long, steadying breath and composed his face before he called out. “Come in.”
His eyebrows rose when his son walked in with a cellphone in his hand.
“Morning, Dad,” Rad greeted him, then grinned and corrected himself. “Sorry. Chief.”
“Morning, son.” Holt cleared his throat quickly. His voice was still a little hoarse. “I thought you were away for another day yet.”
“We got back early,” Rad replied, dropping into the chair opposite Holt’s desk. “I’ve got some information you’re going to want to hear.”
Holt frowned as Rad placed his cellphone face down on the desk between them.
“Are you working on a case I don’t know about?” Holt asked carefully. Then he raised his brows. “Please tell me there isn’t more to what they’re now calling the Sandpiper Shores Saga.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Rad shook his head. “This one’s more to do with the Dillinger family saga.”
“Oh?” Holt leaned forward and glanced at the cellphone. “What has your grandmother done now?” He sighed. “Please tell me she hasn’t tried to teach Tyler, Andy, or Becky to drive again.”
Rad laughed at that. “No, Willa and I have strictly forbidden Grandmother from putting the kids behind the wheel until they’ve been properly taught.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Holt replied, letting out a breath of real relief. “So what new drama is happening in our family?”
“Okay, first of all, don’t be angry,” Rad began carefully. “But I had to know the truth, Dad. I think Willa, June, and I all deserved to know.”
“Okay.” Holt’s brow creased as he watched his son sideways. “What did the three of you deserve to know?”
“Whether you were having an affair with my mother while you were married to June,” Rad told him simply.
The air left Holt’s lungs.
He stared at his son in shock.
“I can tell you right now I wasn’t,” Holt said after a moment, his voice dropping. His eyes moved back to the cellphone. “Rad, what have you done?”
“I hunted my mother down,” Rad admitted, picking up the cellphone and switching on the screen. “I think you need to hear the conversation I had with her. Ace was with me. I recorded the whole thing.”