CHAPTER NINETEEN
Barely anything remained in my room. As soon as I’d woken that morning, I’d hauled any item of clothing paid for by Stafford Scientific to the front room for Julia to pick out what she wanted. Whatever was left over, if anything, would go to charity. The last of the items in my room were those I’d brought with me from Milwaukee, ready to be packed in two weeks’ time.
Flopping down on my bed, I grabbed my laptop and hammered out my resignation, feeding my hurt and frustrations into the letter. Before I lost my courage, I sent it to Noah, rendering myself jobless once more.
From my laptop bag, I pulled out the business card of a woman I’d spoken to at the convention. She’d advised me not to settle, that I would one day find work I was passionate about. That’s what I needed to focus on — my career. Forget settling. I’d go anywhere I needed to if it meant working to improve the environment, even Antarctica. Compared to the chill of Noah yesterday, Antarctica seemed warm.
Imagining Corey alone in the manor, I set my laptop aside and, wearing white denim shorts and a loose fitting tank top, I drove to Stafford Estate.
“Hello!” I called as I entered. “Corey? Are you here?”
There was no answer, so I searched the manor. When I returned to the foyer, there was still no sign of Corey, but I did find a box full of photo albums. There had been some disturbance in the library. When I had cleaned it, the shelves were empty of books, but now there were boxes spread around. Corey must have pulled them down from the attic, the one place in the house I had left alone. I’d poked my head into it, but seeing it was used for storage, I’d climbed back down the stairs, respecting the privacy of the family. But photo albums, especially those left out in the open, were too tempting to refuse.
I sat on the lower steps of the staircase and set the box on the floor in front of me, upon which colored silhouettes from the stained glass of the dome above danced around as the sun penetrating through. The hoard of photo albums at my grandma’s house were bought at department stores, the covers decorative but laminated in plastic. These photo albums were bound in leather, the family name embossed in gold on the front and spine.
In the first album I picked out, Corey and Noah were young boys, probably seven or eight years-old. Playing in the yard in khaki pants and woolen sweaters, they looked merry as they jumped into a pile of leaves and threw them around the place. It was utterly impossible to tell them apart. Everything they did together, every arm raised, every kick of the leaves, every smile was completely in unison. There was only one photo in the series that didn’t have the brothers in it together. In that one, a tiny finger covered half the shot, as if the camera had been held the wrong way, but the corner showed a Filipino-looking woman who smiled with love.
Your nanny. From what I’d heard of Mr. and Mrs. Stafford, the photos within these albums had likely been taken and assembled by the nanny.
Snapshots within another album portrayed the boys a little bit older. They continued to act in harmony, but one didn’t smile as brightly as the other. It was a subtle difference, but the cloud of uncertainty that tugged at his smile was unmistakable. Something troubled him.
Flipping through the rest of the albums, the photos showcased a very cultured and educated life, from orchestra performances where the boys played the cello to formal tuxedo dinners. There was also fun, including several photos of Noah at his graduation in his hot dog costume. But when I reached the very last album in the box, I found another peculiarity. In it, a single brother appeared in each photo, likely in his pre-teen years. A small gap in his teeth told me it was the same twin repeated throughout the album, the other missing.
“That’s so strange,” I muttered, turning the pages back and forth to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
Leaving only questions and no answers, I returned the albums back to the library. The rest of the boxes that had been pulled down contained old books. It would appear Corey was an avid reader. Most had his name scribbled inside the cover. It didn’t surprise me. Despite his heedless, rugged ways, there was a deep intelligence behind the green of his eyes.
I checked my phone. There were no messages. It was a relief, but it was also upsetting. Noah must have gotten my resignation. He was meeting it with silence.
To bide time while I waited for Corey to return from wherever he had gone, I went to the conservatory. The washcloth remained where I had dropped it yesterday. I picked it up and dusted off the last of the sculptures, completing my work. There wasn’t as much satisfaction as I’d thought there’d be. Noah hadn’t even acknowledged my efforts.
Grabbing one of the larger plants, I lugged it into the foyer. Though I had cleared out the old stumps where narrow trees had once stood beneath the dome, I was nowhere skilled enough to plant new ones, so I’d cleaned the area and left it as it was. But while sitting on the stairs with the photos, an idea had come to me. I set the plant down to act as a tiny tree and headed back towards the conservatory for another, but I stopped.
What was I doing? Besides a friendship with Corey, I had no association to the manor. Not anymore.
It was time to leave. Preparing to do so, I gathered my belongings, but the hum of a motorcycle pulling up outside prevented my exit. It had to be Corey. Stubborn and rigid, Noah would never get on the back of a motorcycle. According to him, they were as safe as running head first into a moving train.
Eager to see Corey again, I went outside. Sporting blue jeans and a black T-shirt that showed off his broad shoulders, the rebel brother hopped off a slick black racer bike and pulled off his helmet.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, beaming when he saw me. “I went looking for you.”
“You did?” I asked. It was nice to hear after yesterday’s blizzard.
Lively, he stood close to me and gently tapped his finger on the bridge of my nose. It was playful, but the energy around him was charged with a palpable covetousness that made my wrists sore with the hammer of my pulse.
“I didn’t come all this way to sit alone in an old empty house, no matter how lovely you’ve made it. After I took my bike out of storage, I went to my brother’s office to kidnap you for the day, but his butler said you no longer worked there. What happened?”
“Maybe I want to spend all my time with you,” I teased, trying to avoid the truth, but I immediately regretted my choice of words. It sounded like I was hitting on him, which was the last thing I wanted.
“I would like that very much,” he purred with a throaty desire, like a panther seeking his mate.
Seizing me with the brilliance of his carefree smile, he tipped his head down to kiss me, but I slipped out from beneath him.
“Garlic breath,” I lied. “I had a heavy lunch.”
“You don’t have to explain,” Corey stated, running his hand down a strand of my hair, fiddling with it. “It’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other. I know these things take time.”
Exhaling, I relaxed. “Thank you. It’s just that a lot has happened since Thailand.”
“Wanna tell me about it?”
I shook my head. “No. Not right now. Do you want to go somewhere?”
Grabbing my hand, he pulled me towards the bike. “I thought you would never ask.”
I laughed, excited for the ride. “Where are we going?” I asked as he handed me a spare helmet.
“Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”
It didn’t take me long to decide. “A sleazy biker bar out in the boonies where there’s likely to be a fistfight over a pool table.”
“Really?” he asked with clear skepticism.
“I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Okay, babe. Your call. But if there’s any trouble, we’re not sticking around. I didn’t travel all this way to watch you get hurt.”
I thought of the gang in Thailand. “I trust that you’ll keep me safe.”
Straddling the bike, as my arms wrapped around Corey I couldn’t help but be momentarily enticed by the hard rip of his abs. With the bike vibrating beneath me, we turned out of the estate and sped farther from the city, towards the mills and farmlands of the countryside. The visor of the helmet cast a haze across the landscape as dark as the hurt that lingered from the events of the last twenty-four hours. In a snap, everything had changed.
It wasn’t Corey’s fault. There had been fundamental flaws in my relationship with Noah, or lack of a relationship, according to him. Never mind his acute jealousy when Kay had kissed my neck, or the effort he had put into finding my family, or the nights we tiredly fell asleep in each other’s arms with no carnal intimacy. His acts of love meant nothing, because they led nowhere. Corey’s arrival hadn’t ended my agreement with Noah; it had simply expedited the inevitable.
Pulling off of the highway, we stopped at a decrepit bar adjacent to a truck stop. A neon sign flashed above its log cabin exterior, the wood chipped and loose, as if it could be knocked over with the flick of a finger. I was surprised it had survived the recent storm.
A line of bikes was parked outside, most cruisers with seats wide enough to fit a bear, confirmed when we walked in and saw giant bearded men in leather jackets playing pool. Beside them were women with punky hairstyles and pierced noses who looked as if they could kill a giant with one look.
“Have you been here before?” I asked Corey as he set his hand on the small of my back and guided me towards the bar counter, far away from the pool tables.
“Never.”
“What are you having?” the bartender asked.
“Hard whiskey,” I answered.
“She’ll have a beer,” Corey amended. “And the same for me.”
Squirming past Corey, I leaned forward over the counter and looked the bartender dead in the eye. “Hard whiskey,” I repeated. “And make it a double.”
“You can stay,” he told me through a toothless smile, “but next time, ditch the boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, relaxing onto a tall stool.
“Yet,” Corey added, pulling a seat over next to me. “It’s sexy when a girl knows what she wants.”
“I’m tired of being told what to do.”
“My brother?” he guessed.
Suddenly sweaty with nerves, I tried to remain cool. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been his personal assistant for a while now, which means you’ve suffered the brunt of his nonsense. You and that redheaded kid I spoke to, the butler. I know how insufferable my brother can be. He tries to control everyone.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” I said with a trace of my frustrations burrowing through. “You told me you left Chicago because you felt trapped here, that you were tired of someone constantly looking over your shoulder. And yet you sent me here to work for your brother. You put me in the trap. Why?”
“You needed a job, and I knew he would give you one if I asked. You’re strong, Imogen. I figured you could handle it much better than I ever could. If I had known he was going to make you his personal assistant, though, I would have sent your information to my mother in New York. She’s more neglectful than overbearing.”
The bartender slid our drinks down to us, including a beer for me. I shot my whiskey back then chased it with the brew. “Will you be seeing your parents while you’re in the States?”
“The question is whether or not they’ll see me,” he said without emotion, as if he were well used to the fact.
“I found my mother,” I revealed, the whiskey kicking in, loosening my speech.
“The lady who abandoned you when you were a baby? You use the word mother too liberally.”
“She’s dead.”
His tone softened. “I’m sorry, Imogen. That must have been a hard blow to deal with.”
“I don’t know. She was a stranger. I never knew her.” I spun my empty whiskey glass around. “But I did go visit her grave in Arizona. While there, I found out a bit about her life. Like she did when she was in Milwaukee, she frequented the biker scene. At a rally, she made some friends who turned out to be part of a cult and followed them around for a while, but my mother never liked to be tied down, so she eventually broke free and traveled, eventually ending up on a Native America reservation as a blackjack dealer.” I laughed and took another sip of my beer.
“What?” Corey asked, listening intently, his eyes never leaving mine.
“My grandma liked to gamble. Mother and daughter are probably having a ball up in heaven. If there’s a Las Vegas up there, I bet they’re scamming people left and right, my mother the dealer, my grandma cashing in the chips.”
Smiling, he put his hand on my knee. “I’m sure they are. Is that why you wanted to come here? Are you trying to understand who your mother was?”
I nudged my head towards the women at the pool tables. “I wonder if she looked like that. In the photos I’ve seen of her before she disappeared, she appeared to be the girl next door, but she was young then. I’m sure she changed over the years. Like did she have tattoos? Did she have nose piercings? Was her hair shaved on one side? I’ll never know.”
“How did she die?”
“A car accident. She was driving her truck to her trailer after a long shift, and she fell asleep at the wheel. She crashed into a tree. It’s just so sad, her buried out there all alone. Noah offered to have her remains flown back to Milwaukee so she could rest next to my grandma, but the desert is where she chose to be. I hope she was happy there, so that’s where she should stay.”
“Noah?” He sounded surprised. “Was my brother there with you?”
The whiskey was a truth serum. “He was. We flew his private jet down. Neither of you wants to admit it, but you two are very similar. You’re both very honorable, when you want to be, always trying to save the world.”
Removing his hand from my knee, Corey chugged down half of his beer. “My brother can be generous, even when it’s not wanted.”
“What happened between you two? Is his need to control everything really what’s driving you apart?”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
He was hiding something, but I didn’t press. “Whatever it is, he’s glad you’re home. He cares about you.”
“I never doubted that.”
“And misses you,” I added.
“Did you miss me?” he asked intently, bouncing his knees against mine.
“Yes,” I said honestly. “But then you never contacted me, and I moved on.”
“To someone else?”
“Does it matter? You weren’t here. From what I’d heard, you hadn’t been around for some time.” I finished off my beer. “Anyway, it’s over now, but I need some time.”
“Do we still get to hang out?” he asked, smiling into my eyes with his easy charm.
I matched his smile, my stomach fluttering. “I’ll even pick up the tab.”
“No you won’t. There are some things a man does, no argument.” To prove his point, he threw a handful of bills at the bartender. “Keep the change.”
“But I want another,” I protested. “I’m not done living out my mother’s youth.”
“I can’t drive if I drink another.”
“Who said you had to drink?”
Standing, he offered me his hand. “I have a better idea to commemorate your mother. When you’re sober, and you’ve had some time to think about it, how about we get you a tattoo.”
My eyes went big as I accepted his hand. “A tattoo?”
He flexed the massive muscle of his arm, making his own ink dance. “Like this.”
I considered it. “Maybe a feather to represent the reservation she was living on. I think we also have some Native American blood in our family, so there’s that meaning too.” I perked up, getting excited by the idea. “Can we get it done tonight?”
“Not when you’re drunk.”
“A hamburger will sober me up.”
He chuckled. “A hamburger is fine, but no tattoo. We’ll save the tattoo for another day.”
On the way back to Stafford Estate, we briefly stopped at a fast food truck with picnic tables outside. Dipping my fries into a glob of ketchup, the sunshine sobering me, I asked Corey about his adventures before Thailand. “Were you really in the arctic?”
“For a time.”
“Why?”
“Polar bears were being hunted for their fur.”
I licked the ketchup from my fingers. “Is it only poachers you go after?”
“Not always. I once helped an Indigenous family in Australia reclaim their land after the government tried to take it away.”
Smiling, I threw a fry at him. “Aren’t you the hero.”
“Life is short. I’m just trying to do some good before I go.”
“Shouldn’t we all,” I mused.
Full before I even got to my hamburger, we took the rest of our food to go. Whizzing down the highway, the wind against my legs and arms blew away the last of my buzz.
It was too bad. When we pulled into the estate, a helicopter waited on the front lawn. Noah leaned against the smooth black surface, his arms crossed, disapproval etched across his face. Another beer would have made him a lot easier to handle.
“He doesn’t look happy,” I muttered as I took off my helmet.
“I would say get in your car and run, but I’m not sure you’re ready to drive, not with a double whiskey in you. So why don’t you go on into the manor and let me deal with my brother?” Corey said, putting a protective hand against my back.
With my head down, I did as he suggested, hurrying past the helicopter, refusing to acknowledge Noah or his scorn. Once I was inside, I pressed my nose against the glass in the foyer, trying to figure out what Noah’s problem was. Corey was furious. He shook his arms in the air, pissed off about something. Noah listened with his icy calm, but something Corey said must have set him off, because he abruptly jumped into his helicopter, and it took off.
“What was that about?” I asked, running back outside to Corey.
“Family stuff,” he stated, smiling at me, clearly pushing his fight with Noah aside for my sake. “Don’t worry about it. Here, let me call you a taxi. It’s been a long day. I’m sure you’d like to get home.”
“It’s been a fun day,” I said, accepting his offer. “What about my car?”
“That’s my evil plot. Now you’ll have to come back and pick it up,” he said, smiling. “Maybe tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” I teased. “Are you sure you don’t mind this friends-first thing?”
“Not if that friend is you,” he replied, taking my hand and rubbing the soft padding between my thumb and index finger, making my knees weak.
“So you don’t regret coming back from Thailand?”
His eyes fixed on mine, full of both decent and indecent intentions. “Not at all.”
When I got home, Julia waited for me, pouting with worry. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “A little while ago, I received a text from you saying that you were about to get a tattoo of a feather.”
I didn’t remember sending it to her. “I’m thinking about it. Maybe along my spine.”
“So you haven’t gotten it yet?”
“No,” I assured her.
Her shoulders dropped, and she put a hand over her heart. “Oh, thank God.” She headed towards her room. “You scared me.”
“Where are you going?” I called after her.
“To take a post-work nap. I’m exhausted. I’ll make us dinner later.”
Night settled upon the city, and Julia continue to slumber. I didn’t have the heart to wake her. It was because of me that she’d barely slept the night before. Hungry, I warmed up my hamburger, but before I had a chance to eat it, my phone beeped. It was a message from Noah.
Meet me on the rooftop.
Reluctantly, I set my hamburger down and grabbed a cardigan from my room before heading for the roof. I didn’t owe Noah anything, not after the way he had ended our agreement, but I wanted to know what the fight between the brothers had been about, and I had a feeling Noah was going to tell me.
Like before, Noah waited beside his helicopter. “Imogen,” he greeted, looking and sounding completely neutral. At least he wasn’t yelling.
“You’re lucky I’m talking to you,” I snapped. “I’m only up here because I need answers.”
“Good, because there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What?” I asked, trying to mimic his apathy.
For a moment, he didn’t speak, appearing to struggle.
More compassionate, I stepped forward. “Noah, what is it?”
“It’s Corey. When we were twelve, he suffered from continuous heart failure from a birth defect no one had been aware of, not until it was too late. He spent almost an entire year in the hospital. They treated the problem, but his heart is weak. It won’t take much for it to fail again.”
Stunned, I could barely speak and the edges of my vision went white. It was devastating news. “So he could just collapse at any time?”
“He can more than collapse. Imogen, he could die.”