Trevor dipped his head toward the phone, fighting to see who was calling him at seven a.m.
“Dad?” He’d seen Randy not even thirty minutes ago back at the barns.
“There’s been a cancellation, so if we can get to Calgary by ten o’clock, they’re gonna do more tests on me.” Randy hesitated. “Part of me wants to say to hell with it, but I promised you and your mother, so I’m ready to go. You drive your truck, though, so if we get stopped for speeding, the ticket goes on your record, not mine.”
Trevor snickered as he hit the brakes and pulled a U-turn, gravel flying up from under the wheels, a cloud of dust rising as he changed direction and moved back toward the main house. “Let Steve know we’ll be gone today?”
“I’ll do that now,” Randy promised.
The trip to Calgary took less than the three hours it should have, but the rest of the traffic on Highway 2 was also traveling well above the limit. Randy stayed pretty quiet the entire trip, and Trevor didn’t want to push.
Besides, he had enough on his mind to keep him occupied all on his own.
Becky’s terror the previous night had scared the beejeezus out of him at the time. She’d been so on board with everything they’d done along the way he’d…not forgotten—there was no way on earth he’d ever forget what had happened to her—but more like assumed she’d ended up with no long-term trauma.
He was a fucking ass for pushing too hard, too soon. He was going to keep it in his pants from now on until she was good and ready.
They pulled into the clinic with plenty of time to spare. Randy got called nearly right away while Trevor sat in the chair he was directed to, flipping halfheartedly through a magazine and wishing he had something else to entertain him.
Stupid. Of course—they were on the north end of town, with plenty of stores around. He double-checked at the nurse’s station to find out how long his dad was supposed to be, then took off to do a little shopping.
Summertime, and the mall was full of teenagers and moms with strollers. He waited at a set of doors, holding it open for a frazzled woman who was corralling along four kids. He felt sorry for her up until one of the kids slipped a hand into hers, and she looked down with a smile that wiped away a lot of the tiredness from her eyes.
It was enough to set Trevor pondering. Maybe he didn’t get the rug-rat thing, but obviously other people did.
…which made him think about Becky and her concern for her sister.
Did he want Sarah and her kids trapped in the hell that was Paradise Settlement? No, especially not after he’d done a Google search and found out more about the place, way back when Becky had mentioned it the first time.
He wouldn’t want a dog raised in that setting.
An ugly, barely contained anger simmered in his gut. Sarah had dragged her sister into danger knowing what might happen. He’d never tell Becky that, or tear down her sister in front of her, but the whole shit-storm made him ultra-wary.
He honestly ached for the innocent kids stuck where they didn’t belong, the sensation strange and new, but he didn’t see any way for him to change things. If the government couldn’t shut the cult down, how was a simple rancher from nowhere supposed to make a difference?
Right now the only person he could make a difference to was Becky.
He walked past a shop window filled with pretty little knickknacks, his feet jerking to a stop. He slipped in the door to look around in the hopes of finding something that would put a smile on her face. He made his way back to the clinic with a few minutes to spare, dropping into one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs and trying to distract himself with a magazine.
His dad escaped the back room the instant the nurse opened it for him, heading out of the clinic like his ass was on fire.
Trevor rushed ahead to open the door. “You need us to stop anywhere?”
His dad shook his head. “Just get me home.”
It was a quiet ride for the first hour before Trevor thought it was time to break the silence. “You were going to torment me with descriptions of everything that they did to you.”
Randy made a rude noise. “Trust me, even I’m not that mean. But they’re done, and hopefully this time we find out something more than I’m getting old.”
“You’re not old,” Trevor assured him. “Other than this stupid illness, you’re probably in the best shape out of all your brothers.”
“You’re buttering me up for some reason,” Randy accused, but he smiled. “Mike’s got an excuse. He is a good bit older than the rest of us.”
“Mike, and then Ben?”
“George, me, then John and Mark.”
Another cold sensation hit his gut. Sadness at the loss, and the missed opportunities death brought. “They were twins, right?”
Randy grunted. “That’s not a secret.”
“No, I guess, not.” He’d been too wrapped up in his own head to care. “Did Mark leave because his twin died?”
For the longest time his dad sat in silence before sighing. “Fine. You want all the dirty laundry, it’s yours. Maybe it’s time anyway. Hell, who knows how much longer I’ve got—”
“Don’t,” Trevor snapped. “Don’t you fucking go and put yourself on your deathbed before your time.”
So much for being reassuring and gentle. Trevor gave himself a mental slap upside the head.
But all he got from his father for his rudeness was a chuckle. “You sounded like your mother just then.”
“She’s a smart woman.”
Randy nodded. “Damn right she is. But this is something you should know about, and I’d prefer to be the one to tell you than have you get rumours or bullshit down the road. Mark didn’t want to ranch. He was a bit like your cousin Daniel in that way. Had other things that he was interested in, but we needed him, so he stuck around longer than he wanted. And he stuck around because John needed him.”
Trevor felt like he had to move cautiously or the conversation would come to an end before it’d begun. “Was there something wrong with John?”
A soft shrug lifted his father’s shoulders. “Nothing that you could come right out and say, but he was moody. He’d get lost in what he was doing, and was easily distracted. Mark could always pull him out of it. Just like you’re always able to lighten up any situation. Sometimes you do it by making people laugh, even if that means they’re laughing at you.” Randy stared out the front window, drumming his fingers on the armrest. “Mark was like that, and we all relied on him. Our folks were gone by then, and it was just us boys. Mike in charge, Ben complaining about things. George with stars in his eyes, and dreams about horses.”
“And you, if memory serves me from what Uncle Mike shared, you were the family peacemaker.” Trevor heard the admiration in his voice, and he hadn’t had to try to put it there.
His father laughed. “Peacemaker, ha. I was the one most willing to mix it up and get in people’s faces. Or use my fists, if need be.” He shook his head. “And maybe that is a peacemaker in this crazy clan of ours. But Mark held a special place, only it was slowly killing him, and we didn’t even notice.”
“What happened?”
Their eyes met for a second before Trevor had to focus back on the highway. “Mark had enough. He told us he was leaving in the fall, after he’d helped with one more harvest. It was strange to think of him being gone, but when the time rolled around, we mostly accepted it.”
“Then he left?” It didn’t sound that terrible. It didn’t sound like a secret that needed to be kept for thirty years.
“He left, and John went quiet. We thought they were just missing each other—you know that weird connection some twins seem to have? But John faded away more and more, until the morning he didn’t show up for chores.” Randy’s knuckles were white on the armrest where he clutched it. “We found him later that day. In the dugout beside the barn.”
Jesus Christ. The truck lurched as Trevor snapped it back into the proper lane on the highway, his heart in his stomach. “You think he killed himself?”
Randy made a noise of pain. “God, this isn’t the time to be telling you this—”
Trevor pulled off the side of the road into the next rest stop, hitting the brakes and jerking the truck to a halt as soon as he could. He twisted toward his father. “What the hell happened?”
His dad took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think John killed himself. I bet now he would’ve been diagnosed with depression or something, and it’d only been Mark who’d pulled him through for so long. Once that buffer was gone, he got worse and worse until he didn’t think there was any other way out.”
Heart wrenching and stupid. “It was nobody’s fault,” Trevor said.
“I know that now, but in those days it was a lot harder to understand. And then we couldn’t get hold of Mark to let him know—he’d fallen off the face of the earth as if he didn’t give a damn what had happened. So we got angry, and we set blame. Ben and George, and me. Mike, he tried his best to make us see reason, but we weren’t having any of it.”
“How come the rumour mill doesn’t know how John died?” Small towns, with their long memories never forgot a scandal or a painful falling-out amongst family.
“Because it could have been an accident.” Randy turned toward him, face drawn with sorrow. “The doc called it an accident, and hell, maybe it was. John wasn’t healthy. Maybe he’d fallen in and couldn’t get out, and that was the end. But it wasn’t suspicious, not to anyone else.”
“Just to you, because you knew what John had been acting like.”
“God.”
The pain in his dad’s voice made Trevor reach over and give his arm a tight squeeze.
“I found him,” Randy confessed, his strong voice weak and shaking. “I pray I never have to deal with another moment like that in my entire life. It breaks something in you. To know you’re too late. To know you didn’t do enough.”
Trevor waited in silence, the faint click of the engine fan the only noise as Randy pulled himself together.
“All three of us brothers who were married at the time had kids on the way—you, and Daniel, and Ben’s son Michael, and it was hard enough to have John gone, and Mark missing in action. That was one hell of a mixed-up year.”
“It would’ve been brutal. I can see that.”
Randy laid a hand on his shoulder. “You were a gift. All three of you boys born that year seemed to have a special ability to make other people happy. But at the same time, there was a deep bitterness that grew, and when Mark finally did show up months later, none of us were very welcoming. Mike was okay, and he’s always had an open-door policy toward Mark, but the rest of us? We weren’t big enough, even once we realized it was no one’s fault.”
One hell of a story. “So where do things sit now? I mean obviously Mark still owns the land—that’s the rental where Becky lives.”
“He never gave it up, but after that first time he came home and got doors slammed in his face, or worse, accusations and shouting, he’s never been back.” Randy leaned back in the chair. “I don’t blame him.”
“Is he welcome? If he wanted to come?” Trevor asked cautiously, even though it made no sense to him.
It took a long time before Randy answered him.
“There’re a lot of years of bitterness built up. While I don’t think it’s his fault anymore, I feel guilty as hell for all of the wrongs that happened, and I don’t know how we could possibly fix that, Trevor.” Randy dipped his head. “Of course he’d be welcome to come, but I don’t know that he likes us very much. I don’t like us very much, and I think some mistakes can never be repaired. Like a bit of land that’s been poisoned. Even if you try to put new healthy seed into the soil, it’s never going to grow.”
Trevor waited again, but Randy sat without saying any more, so he put the truck back in gear and aimed them toward Rocky Mountain House. Sitting silently and thinking over everything he’d learned.
Sadness settled in his soul.
His family had always seemed kind of untouchable. Oh, Uncle Ben was an ass, and there were fights and bickering among the cousins at times, including a lingering tension between his generation’s twins, Jesse and Joel.
To learn there was a layer of rot deep in their history choked something inside him.
It didn’t have to be there, his heart insisted.
But then he considered how he felt when Becky discussed her sister. How much she obviously wanted to be in touch with the woman, and how the mere idea sent streaks of disgust, and anger, and fear through him. He didn’t want her having anything to do with the person who had caused such deep abiding pain, unintentional or not.
Trevor might be able to see the broader picture, in Becky’s case, and in the case of his uncles. Didn’t mean he knew how to navigate the dangerous emotional currents tangled up in both situations.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.