Grant sat in the living room of the mansion. It was almost two a.m. He was thinking about calling Marcus, but his friend was married now and probably at home in bed with his wife. He thought about having another drink, but his bottle of whiskey was empty and he’d have to go down to the cellar to get another. On his way to the cellar he’d have to pass the safe room and that room always made everything come flooding back…he didn’t feel like he had the strength for it that night. He was mentally, physically, and emotionally spent, but he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t calm down his thoughts. He needed to talk to someone, anyone, from home. He took out his phone and pressed in the number for Benny’s Bar. Maybe Mickey was still around. Mickey was always good for a bullshit session, a distraction. It was what Grant sorely needed at the moment.
“Benny’s, this is Rosa, how can I help you?”
Grant was confused for a moment. “Rosa? Why are you there so late? Where’s your baby?”
“I’m sorry? Who is this?”
Shit. He pined for her and she didn’t even recognize his voice. Figures. It’s just the way his life has been going. “It’s Grant.”
“Oh, Grant! I’m sorry. Your voice sounds…funny.”
Drunk. His voice sounded drunk. When Grant went to Benny’s he was either with his team or he was there to look at the lovely Rosa. Either way, he never drank enough to get plastered. “Sorry,” he said, “I had a little too much to drink.”
“Oh, are you okay? Do you need me to call someone for you?”
“No, Rosa, I’m fine. I’m in Boston.”
“Boston? What are you doing there? In any case, please don’t drive tonight.”
He smiled. She did care, at least a little bit.
“I’m at my family’s home. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh, good. I’m sorry, if you were looking for Mickey he already left for the night. It’s just me and Travis the bartender.”
“That’s okay. I’d rather talk to you. But really, why are you there so late? Mickey knows you have that pretty little girl you need to get home to.”
“She’s with my sister in San Antonio this week. I’m picking up the overtime on purpose. Her fourth birthday is next week. I want to throw her a big party.”
“Oh, that’s nice. I miss you, Rosa.”
The other end of the line was suddenly silent. Grant felt like an idiot. Why was he telling her he missed her? For six months since he first realized he had a thing for her, he’d gone into that bar with the intention of talking to her and he ended up talking to everyone else instead. Grant was an extrovert and Rosa wasn’t. She was quiet and reserved and he was always afraid of scaring her. Now he’d done that from fifteen hundred miles away. Good job, dumbass.
“Oh, um…thank you,” she said. “I’ve missed you coming at the bar too.”
Grant laughed. “You didn’t even know that I wasn’t in town.” Again, he knew he needed to stop talking. He was only making it worse.
“No, really. I noticed that you weren’t coming in when Cade and the guys met here or when Marcus and Sadie got back…”
He interrupted her before he said something else incredibly stupid. “I’m sorry, Rosa. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have called. I’m going to let you get back to work.”
“There’s no one here, Grant. My work is all done save for locking up. You sound like you could use a friend right now. I have time to listen if you need to talk.”
He wondered what she would think of him if he just laid it all out there. She would run screaming back to where ever she came from, that’s what. “Thanks Rosa, you’re an angel. I probably do need to talk, but right now I don’t even know where to start. Plus, I’m drunk, so I might just say stupid things.” Like, I miss you. “I should try and sleep. I think I’m flying home tomorrow.”
“Okay. Please get some rest.”
“I will. Thank you for…not hanging up on me.”
Rosa laughed lightly and he pictured her smile. It made him warm inside. She had these plump red lips and he could spend hours just watching her talk or smile. He’d like to spend hours doing more than that with them, but Rosa had made it clear since she came to town that romance of any kind was not on her mind. Besides, she had a kid and there was no way a kid needed to be brought into his family. Any kid.
“I would never,” she said. “Goodnight, Grant. I hope you have a safe trip home.”
“Goodnight, Rosa.”
He ended the call and then sat there staring at his phone. He wished that he were in Blossom Hill. After he met with his brother and left the prison he’d considered getting on a plane and going home. Instead, he went back to that awful house. He still felt like he was searching for answers, but each time he stumbled upon one, he wished that he hadn’t. So, what he really should’ve been doing was put the house on the market and go home.
He leaned back into the couch and thought about his visit with Duke earlier. His brother had changed a lot over the years since he’d seen him. He had quite a few new scars on his face and new, colorful tattoos on his neck. His head was shaved, his body was a lot more muscular, and his dark blue eyes were cold and hard. Duke had never been a warm and fuzzy guy, but to Grant, he now almost looked like he’d lost touch with his own soul.
“There he is,” was how Duke greeted him. “My pretty little brother.”
“Don’t fucking call me that or I’m walking out of here,” Grant told him. Duke had called him pretty since he was ten years old. Grant liked to dress well and he woke up and styled his hair every day before school. Duke would pull on whatever pair of jeans he picked up off the floor and his hair was long and shaggy and he rarely washed it. Duke liked to poke fun at Grant. He knew his little brother didn’t like to be called pretty, so he did it twice as often as anyone else.
“Temper, little brother, I was kidding. Can I guess why you’re in such a pissed off mood? Did you see our dear father before you came here?”
“I saw him, for all the good it did. He’s not going to admit to shit. Duke, the day everything happened was almost twenty years ago. Why now? Why, suddenly, do you want to tell me my own father pushed me out a window and let my brother take the fall for it?”
Duke’s face grew serious. “I was messed up back then, Grant. I was always torn between wanting their attention and wishing they would die and just leave us the money. The alarm started going off that day and I started down toward the safe room. I found the old man in the study with his head in his hands and a gun on the desk in front of him. I think he was thinking about eating it. He looked bad. I don’t know if he’d been drinking or if he was taking some kind of pills, but he just wasn’t right, you know?”
Grant nodded. He didn’t know, but he wanted Duke to keep talking. “I told him the alarm was going off and for a few minutes he just stared at me like I was an alien. I started to leave and he said, ‘Duke, I love you.’ I swear to God I nearly shit my pants.”
Grant hated that he felt a little twinge of jealousy. Neither of his parents ever said those words to him, at least not after he was old enough to remember. “He wanted something,” Grant said.
Duke nodded. “Of course he did. He started talking, telling me that the business was in trouble and we were going to lose the house. He said the alarm was going off because he owed some guy some money and he couldn’t pay him. So the guy had come to rob us. He was afraid to call the police. Then he suddenly just stopped talking about all of that and told me to go to the safe room. As I was leaving the study he asked where you were. I told him you were in your room and he told me to get to the safe room, and that he’d get you. The next thing I know, the maid is unlocking the safe room door and the house is full of police. They told me you fell out of your bedroom window and Mom and Dad were at the hospital with you. They took me downtown in the back of a police car and once we were there they started asking a whole bunch of questions about Dad and his business and if I knew his associates or where he kept his money. I didn’t know anything so they started in about you. I hadn’t even known what had happened to you or where you were at that point and they were insinuating that I had something to do with it. The more they pushed, the angrier I got until I just finally shut down. The next day Dad came to see me at the police station. He told me that you might die and that he and Mom had to go away. I was terrified of being by myself, so I was frantic. I asked him what I should do and he looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘Just tell them you did it, son.’”
Grant stared in shock. “He just said it like that? Just tell them you did it?”
“Yeah. It was bizarre, but I’d been in that interrogation room for fifteen hours. My father was finally paying attention to me. And I thought if I did what he wanted me to do, he would stay. That he would fix everything.”
Grant’s chest hurt for that fourteen-year-old kid his brother was at the time. He always knew his father was an asshole, but only a lunatic would put a kid—his son—in that position.
“I’m sorry you had to suffer all those years for something you didn’t do. I’m guessing he had insurance on us and he thought I’d be the easier one to take out?”
“I never found out, but yeah, that’s my guess too. The timing of it, I think, was to cause a distraction and scare off whoever was on the property. It all seriously backfired if that was his plan. Anyways, I confessed and they took me to jail. By the time I went to court you were out of the hospital and living with Aunt Evelyn at the mansion and Mom and Dad were long gone.”
“Why didn’t you change your story then and tell them the truth?”
“Who was going to believe me? I didn’t think you would ever speak to me again and I knew that even if Dad came back he’d never admit to telling me to admit to it. It was a mess and one that I figured I’d be better off just chilling from in juvie for a while.”
“So I have to ask you again, Duke, why are you telling me all of this now?”
“Because I have cancer, brother. I have Stage Four Melanoma. The doctors say I have three months to live. Guess it’s true what they say, even hardened criminals want to die with a clear conscience. I didn’t want to die without you knowing the truth.”
Grant hadn’t known what to say. He’d seen plenty of men die over the years, some of them friends and some strangers, and as a sniper, many at his own hands. But this was his brother and even though he and Duke were never close, Grant knew it was going to leave some kind of empty space in his heart when he died. He left the prison feeling sad and angry and guilty. He was the one that was supposed to die that day and, instead, Duke was the one that had survived his shitty life, only to find out he’d be dying a slow, painful death and, meanwhile, his father would probably live forever. Figures.