Chapter Seventeen
“Thank you for letting me come over late,” Jory said, following Dr. Sam Gallagher. “And early,” Jory admitted wiping damp palms on her jeans.
“I thought you were working Sunday nights through Wednesday nights.” Sam’s long-legged stride toward the barn had Jory jogging to keep up. “Sorry.” Sam slowed. “I walk fast. I do everything fast,” she admitted, and the constriction in Jory’s chest eased a little.
Getting a dog was a good second step.
She’d taken the first step—a huge step-off-the-cliff plunge by accepting an offer to join the staff of Marietta General. She still had a lot of paperwork to complete, but the offer by the hospital’s director and handshake had felt official, and Rhianna’s happy dance and Dr. Wyatt Gallagher’s high five and down low had cemented the feeling of being on the team.
“I am,” Jory said. “But Dr. Meghan Griffin’s son’s baseball team was in the state finals, and she really wanted to watch him, so I picked up her day shift this week.”
Sam nodded. “I heard congratulations are in order.”
“Word travels fast.”
“Wyatt can’t keep his mouth shut. Part of his charm. I also heard that condolences might be in order,” Sam said softly, her hand pausing on the barn door. “Jory, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. Balled her fists in her back pockets. “Nothing’s certain yet, but…” She pressed her quivering lips together. She’d called her mom to tell her about the gruesome discovery. Her mom’s sigh of relief had surprised her.
“I knew my Jesse would never leave me forever,” her mom said. “We had our troubles, but he was mine, and he’d never take Josiah away from me.”
Jory had been the one barely holding back the tears on that call.
“I loved that man, and he loved me in his own way. He would have come home to me if he could.”
Jory had cried then, because there had been no mention of her father being determined to make it home to her. But that had only strengthened her determination to build a life for herself, her new dog and hopefully her child in Marietta, with or without Calhoun.
“I always knew he’d never left Marietta,” her mother had said after a few moments of Jory’s stifled sobs. “That truck could have never made it out of Crawford County much less wherever that lazy sheriff thought Jesse’d gone off to that time.”
She and her mom had talked—really talked for the first time in a long time. Her mom wanted a funeral when what was left of the bodies was returned, and she wanted them buried side-by-side in the town cemetery, and she wanted Jory to buy a third plot so she would be laid to rest next to her husband and son.
Jory had hung up feeling more at peace than she’d expected. The sheriff’s department was investigating the crime twenty-three years too late, but Jory wasn’t all that interested. What would it change? She already had her closure and next steps planned.
She focused on Sam.
“Thank you.” Jory smiled. “It was a shock, but I can stop wondering and searching now and focus on my future.”
“I never met your dad or brother. I haven’t lived in Marietta all that long but let me know if you need any help.”
“Thank you,” Jory said, surprised and pleased. “I am interested in meeting up with your friends now that I’m staying in Marietta. I’m not all that crafty, and I haven’t found a place to rent yet so I’m still building my cooking skills, but I do want to get some hobbies and make some friends.”
“I got your number,” Sam said, touching her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “We’ll be meeting on Thursdays so that should work with your schedule.”
Jory smiled and Sam gave her a quick hug that Jory returned, feeling like she could definitely get used to this.
“I meant what I said,” Sam said. “Let me know if you need help with funeral arrangements or someone to talk to.”
“Thank you,” Jory said. “Mandy McBride and her sister have offered to help as well. I think she feels guilty because the suspicion is that her father-in-law was drunk-driving and hit my dad and brother on the side of the road. They were walking home, taking the shortcut because the truck had broken down. The sheriff suspects that Mr. McBride, not wanting to get arrested, buried the bodies and hid the truck on his property.”
Sam looked shocked. “That’s awful.”
Jory nodded. “I still feel numb, but I told my mom, and she has more peace now. And I want to focus on the future,” Jory said, even as more tears fell.
Sam’s beautiful eyes welled up too, and she laughed. “Look at us. We’ll be a mess if we don’t escape the gloom spiral. I have the answer. Puppies. You can pick your new bestie and when you have your apartment or house or wherever you choose to live, you can come pick him or her up. They are nearly old enough to go to their new homes.”
With a dramatic flourish, Sam swung open the barn door.
*
Calhoun drove allnight and much of the next day, stopping only to let Kai exercise and take care of business and eat. He parked in the shade of a carob tree at a rest stop once he’d crossed the California border and closed his eyes for an hour, and then he was on the road again, feeling grim.
Jace would have made him detail the goals of his mission.
Hell, if he knew. He just knew he needed to look at his old man one last time. See what he’d left and say goodbye forever. Show no fear because now there was no fear. He could handle anything his dad tried to bring. He’d been thinking of his dad the way he’d been when Calhoun was still a kid, but Cross had cleared his vision.
A nineteen-hour drive should have more purpose. Calhoun’s gut told him he needed to walk through that massive front door one last time.
He wanted to stop at the top of the ridge of the West Valley Vineyard and looked over the thousands of acres of Lael-Miller holdings and see the beauty and history and not the taint.
See where he came from, so he could turn around and return to what he wanted.
Jory.
His friends.
Purpose for him and Kai.
Was it really that simple?
“Is anything?” he murmured to Kai and rested his hand on the dog’s head.
A couple of hours later, he bounced his way over top-dollar acreage until he found the view he’d been looking for. The weather gods had been kind. The marine layer hadn’t rolled in yet so he could see the rolling hills of the vineyard and pasture lands. He could see the longhorn cattle. Typical. His dad had always wanted to make a bigger splash, throw his weight, balls and cash around.
He took a picture of Kai, with the view spreading out behind him and, before he could think too much about it, he typed in Jory’s name, hesitating a moment. She hadn’t reached out to him since her family’s bodies had been found. But he hadn’t reached out to her either.
Why the hell had he been so stubborn? Why hadn’t he told Jory he wanted to renegotiate their ground rules? Be a couple? Why hadn’t he treated her like a partner?
He deeply regretted pushing her to take the Plan B. It had seemed to make sense at the time, but if she’d been pregnant, he’d have an easier path to make his case to give them a chance. Calhoun had never taken the easy path though. Why start now?
Wish you were here with us.
He hit send and then drove back down Oakhill Road and headed to the main entrance of his family’s historic vineyards.
Still running?flashed on his screen before he’d gone more than a hundred yards and a reluctant smile tugged at his lips.
Never again. Home soon.
He didn’t recognize the beautiful woman, maybe in her early forties and trying to look younger, who answered the door. A wife? A girlfriend? She was dressed like she was auditioning for a Wine Country Housewives reality show, and Calhoun wondered if there really was such a show.
“My day just improved.” She leaned against the heavy wooden door that his father had imported from some crumbling Italian medieval castle. She sipped at a glass of golden wine—chardonnay likely. “The prodigal returns. How exciting.”
She took another sip of wine, and her frank sexual appraisal made his skin crawl.
“This should be interesting.” She stepped back and opened the door wide. “Entre vous, Five.”
Kai on his six, Calhoun sauntered through the doors he’d sworn he’d never darken again.
As he walked down the wide hall toward his father’s office, the obvious place for a confrontation, sunlight streamed in from the open courtyard on the hacienda-style house. Hacienda—typical of early California architecture—but thinking about the arrogance of his Lael-Miller family, Calhoun would have expected his ancestors to go more luxury Mediterranean or medieval castle. For the first time, he wondered at the design choice. And why his father hadn’t upgraded his permanent digs to the more prestigious Napa, where he had at last count a thousand acres of planted vineyards, a prestigious winery, showcase home on a hill and high-end guest cabins for a full ‘vineyard vacation experience.’
Whatever. He’d always loved the courtyard. Orange, lemon, avocado and olive trees climbed toward the sky. His steps slowed as he caught sight of his favorite olive tree that was near the large, blue-tiled fountain that merrily splashed and caught and refracted the morning sunlight. He’d loved to climb that tree and sit in one of the middle crotches and read or do his homework. It was high enough from the ground to feel private and heavily leafed so he felt invisible.
His pause allowed his hostess to catch up. “This is where we have our morning coffee,” she said. “Would you care to join us, Otis?”
“Calhoun. Not here for a social visit. He in there?” He looked down to the end of the tunnel of stucco arches and large ceramic tiles and the curved heavy wood and iron door that was his father’s office, but it was really a separate living suite complete with a courtyard patio in the back to smoke cigars, an en-suite bed and bathroom, office and game room where you could be invited to play a board game or video game or be derided for an hour over some failing.
“Then why are you here?” She crossed her skinny arms and looked at him, not alarmed, but definitely curious. “Are you here to finish what Mara started?”
His curiosity stirred, and he hated that. Mara had been the eldest of his four sisters, but they’d been more like hostages trying to curry favor or survive, and it had felt so impossible. He hadn’t realized that until he’d escaped to West Point. There the drills, exercise and training had left everyone reeling, but he’d felt safe for the first time in his life. The instructors were tough. But fair, with clearly set goals.
No one had punished him for clearing the bar by hitting him with it. The rules hadn’t been changed mid challenge and he hadn’t been gaslit, or harangued.
Should he feel guilty for not reaching out to his sisters? They hadn’t once reached out to him.
Trying to survive.
But now he wanted to live.
“Are you?” Beautiful blue eyes, heavily extension-lashed, regarded him, and he had the odd feeling she didn’t really care one way or the other. She just wanted to be in the know—or prepared.
“I’ve had no contact with Mara since I was eighteen.”
Her shoulders drooped a little, but her smile was blinding, and he felt her attempt to appear brave.
“Okay then.” She reached out her hand and lightly touched his chest, meeting his eyes. “If you change your mind about coffee, or anything, Calhoun…” Her fingers knowingly trailed down his chest and he caught her hand.
“I won’t.”
Though tempted to leave, he knew he’d forever regret it if he didn’t look his father in the face and say…what? He walked toward the century-plus doors that had filled him with terror as a child.
What was his play?
He’d had to improvise on missions. This was no different, and as Cross had reminded him, he was no longer a child.
He paused at the door, gently stroking Kai’s head. He quietly commanded Kai to heel, not wanting Kai to go into protective mode. He drew a breath for calm and pictured Jory in that field of flowers, some in her hair as she’d hummed and made a flower chain for Kai, who’d sat and gazed at her adoringly.
That was his life. Not this.
He pushed open the door. His father had never locked it. No one ever entered unless summoned.
His father was seated at his massive desk, in the act of popping a pill and washing it down with bottled L M water supposedly from their own spring in the coastal mountains.
His eyes bugged, and he pushed to his feet, wincing, and Calhoun noticed that his father had a sling, keeping his left arm immobilized. He’d never once seen his father sick, much less injured.
“What the hell do you want?” The voice wasn’t the whip of demand Calhoun remembered. But the dark brown eyes were as mean as ever.
Calhoun had kept his Stetson on when he’d been driving because he’d forgotten his sunglasses, and he hadn’t felt like staying long enough or being polite enough to take it off when he’d entered his father’s house.
His father turned rather awkwardly, his left shoulder dipped, and he took his black felt Stetson—never straw for him—off the hat hook, put it on and then swung back around to face him. He swayed, barely skimmed the desk with his fingers and then squared his shoulders.
“Did Mara stab you?” Calhoun guessed, and he knew it was wrong, but he found the image funny.
“You’re dead to me. Dead men don’t speak.”
The whole scene was ridiculous. Something was wrong, and yet there was all this posturing. His dad had been this…Atlas of a man, holding the world up on his shoulders greedily, holding everyone prisoner as much as he’d been holding them back from spinning wildly out of orbit and off into space.
And it was pathetic really.
He must be in his early seventies. Trimmer than Calhoun remembered. Narrowed somehow as if squeezed by life. And shorter.
How that must burn the old man.
It hit Calhoun then what a lucky escape he’d had. Was that why he was here, to thank his dad for being a total asshole and burning up his life so he’d had no place to go but far away?
But he didn’t need to make it that easy for him.
He handed Kai a treat, which earned a curled lip of disdain from his father.
“You left twenty-five years ago. You don’t get to come back. You don’t get jack-shit.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Calhoun promised. He removed his hat and put it crown down on the edge of his father’s desk and didn’t miss the look of alarm. “Looks like you’re injured,” Calhoun said lifting the hem of his T-shirt and pulling it off so his father could get a full look at him.
His dad was an excellent poker player and a dark, greedy, unhappy man who could never fill whatever hole he had gnawing on his insides, but Calhoun noted the flash of shock, then a tinge of fear when he was forced to reconcile how the boy had turned into a man.
Calhoun turned a slow circle then stood at attention in front of his father, letting him see his strength, the muscles, the tats, the years and the scar on his upper back that his father had left with a garden hoe when he’d been eight and too slow to escape. That time, the bleeding hadn’t stopped and an infection had set in, and the housekeeper despite her illegal status had driven him to the ER, before she’d disappeared. The visit from the cops had infuriated his father, but it had turned his fury to more verbal displays.
“Ironic, we’re both injured at the same time. Probably all we have in common.”
“Damn straight.”
“Cut your posturing. I didn’t come here to fight you.”
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
Always the swearing. Was that manly? “Closure. I didn’t get it. Didn’t want it. Now I do.”
His father had nothing to say to that, and Calhoun, who’d had plenty of time to think about his childhood, father and family on the drive here, finally figured out what he wanted to say.
“I wanted to thank you.”
“What the fuck?”
Calhoun laughed, and it bounced off the stucco walls that had witnessed and absorbed such darkness that the room probably had to be repainted white annually.
He pulled on the heavy drapes, spilling light from the courtyard into the room, almost surprised his father didn’t melt or writhe in pain.
“Yes, thank you. You taught me resilience.”
His father’s skeptical, pissed-off expression settled a little.
“But more, you taught me the type of man I don’t want to be. With everything you said and everything you did, you taught me to be a different man. A better man.”
His father cursed again.
“I don’t want your money. Your businesses. Your property. Your life. You burned my possessions and set me free. I’m grateful every moment because I don’t owe you anything. I excelled at West Point. I was in Special Forces and racked up commendations based on my merits, my behavior, my actions. I am smart and highly trained and powerful and a fierce protector and all of it is a direct antithesis to the man you are.”
“Finished?”
“We are,” Calhoun said. “I’ve left the army and am starting a business with friends in…”
“So that’s it,” he sneered. “You’ve come for money. Every one of my family comes crawling for money.”
Maybe if his father hadn’t starved his children, but perhaps that was his father’s world view. He was blameless, everyone else weak. Wrong.
Calhoun who’d felt heavy inside for so long—as if wrapped in a wet, black velvet cape—felt lighter.
“The only thing I want from you is distance. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to hear your name. I don’t want to think about you. We can both be dead to each other.”
His father made a derisive sound.
“I’m building a life and career and family far from you. Keep it that way.”
“You come to my house and threaten me…” his father growled.
“No, I’m not threatening. I’m promising. Now. Today. You don’t touch me. You don’t touch anything or anyone in my orbit, and if you do…”
“A threat,” his father sneered, widening his stance.
Calhoun leaned over the wide desk totally into his father’s space, trapping him between the desk and his massive, mission-style antique chair he loved so much.
“No threat. A choice. You leave me and mine alone, and you live whatever life you want. You try to interfere with anything that’s mine. Game over. You won’t see me coming.”
His father’s breaths came in puffs of fury and his handsome, tanned, distinguished, lined face purpled with rage.
“Just because you were a grunt in army or whatever you think you can challenge me.”
“I don’t want to.” Calhoun held his position, wanting his father to see his future. “But I will.”
“Bluster. You were always blustering.”
He’d never blustered in his life, and Calhoun looked deep into his father’s eyes. That was it.
Projection.
His father had probably lived the childhood that he had lived—fear, terror, disappointment, trying his best but failing over and over again. A no-win loop. But his father hadn’t broken free. He’d remained chained and continued the miserable, painful trauma cycle.
“That’s you,” he said, for the first time, he felt sorry for his dad.
He leaned back into his side of the desk and breathed in a deep, calming breath, and touched Kai’s head, scratched his ears to let the dog, quivering with the desire to join in the action, know that all was well.
“Don’t interfere with my life.” Calhoun shrugged back into his shirt. “Mara got the drop on you and she’s what, five one, five two?” He’d noticed a bloodstain on the wicked-sharp letter opener that his father claimed was a family heirloom—a sgian-dubh—part of some ancestor’s full Scottish Highland dress. As a child, Calhoun had been awed by the small but sharp blade and the decorations on the hilt.
Calhoun doubted the origins now, and it was arrogant for his father to keep the weapon in full view.
“I’m over a foot taller and a hundred pounds of honed, highly trained muscle,” he said casually.
“Get out.”
He put on his hat. His dad always wanted the last word. Calhoun walked to the door, acutely listening for a move against him, but he’d deliberately had Kai stay, facing the threat so he’d have warning, but his father, likely impotent with fury over being faced down in his sacred space, and staring into the eyes of a potential killing machine former military service dog, didn’t move.
He opened the door, called Kai, and tipped his hat.
“Thanks for everything.”
He walked back down the long, wide passageway leading back to the main part of the house.
The woman waited for him at the archway back into the house.
“Did you change your mind about coffee?” Her eyes were avid with curiosity.
He was about to say no, but what the hell. That would piss his father off to know that his prodigal son had the balls to take coffee with wife or girlfriend number whatever.
“To go if you’re still offering.”
“I am. He still alive?”
Calhoun followed her into the kitchen that was so remodeled he didn’t recognize it.
“When I left.”
She made a venti-sized Nespresso that would keep him jacked up until he crossed the border if not longer.
“He’s injured.”
“He had a fight with Mara. He fired her. His own daughter.” The woman shook her head looking as amused as she did disappointed. “Mara’s always been stubborn and fierce and the winemaker at the Lael-Miller winery in Champagne, for years, and he sold the vineyard to a competitor without giving her a heads-up, and then just to stick it to her, the sale was contingent on no one in the area hiring her for five years. She was pissed.”
Typical Dad dick move. Don’t let anyone get too comfortable. Don’t let anyone belong.
He wondered if his dad would leave him alone or if the temptation would be too great. And would someone be searching for the old man’s body twenty-three years from now on a dusty access road somewhere on the ranch.
Hell no. He wouldn’t be leaving any evidence behind.
“What’s so funny?”
“Thank you for the coffee, ma’am.” He tipped his hat and strode toward the front door, anxious to be back to Jory, to his friends, to the life he wanted to build.
“It’s Sorella.” She pouted, trotting beside him.
“Sorella,” he said. “If you see Mara, tell her she missed by about a quarter inch too high and an inch too far to the left,” Calhoun said, just to mess with her.
She rolled her eyes. “She left. I don’t think she really wanted to kill him. Just make a point, a rather dramatic one, if you ask me.”
He hadn’t.
“Did Otis Senior tell you what happened? He wouldn’t tell me. Drove himself to the hospital two days after it happened because the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding. He holed up in his office the whole time.”
Nothing changed, yet everything changed if you embraced it, and Calhoun’s arms and life were full.
“You take care, now.” He tipped his hat again and walked out the door and into a glorious May morning and the rest of his life.