AFTER A RESTLESS night in a nondescript motel room, with a bed like many of the others he’d slept in around the country, Mason was eager to unwrap his little bar of complimentary soap and jump in the shower Thursday morning.
Three days ago, life had been...predictable. Fine. Just the way he’d established it. Normal.
That morning, other than the leather satchel that served as his bathroom cabinet and dresser, he hardly recognized anything. Least of all himself.
As a guy who moved through life analytically, he wasn’t prone to emotion. Or spending nights lying awake in the dark, questioning himself.
Was he wrong about Bruce? Had five years of suppressing questions gotten to him while he was busy with other things? Was his perception so clouded by an unrequited desire for the one woman he could never have?
Was he Brianna’s father? Missing out on the most incredible experience he’d ever know?
Was he after his brother because, only by proving that Bruce wasn’t worthy of his family, could Mason step in and claim what was his? Or rather what he wanted to be his?
But Harper wasn’t, and never had been.
The family, though... Gram... Brianna...
Bruce.
Bruce was his family. His closest family.
The one way his brother would come through this without a smudge was if Mason proved his innocence before anyone else knew about the report sent from urgent care and started asking questions.
Shaking the water out of his hair as he left the shower, he determined to realign his thinking. Darkness was gone. The light of day had arrived.
And with it came sense. Clarity.
Gram had been abused. He hadn’t conjured up that fact. His job was to find out who’d hurt her and make it stop.
An hour later, he was at the Stand, already sitting at their usual table, with coffee and doughnuts he’d brought in from a shop down the street, when Miriam came in at seven, just as they’d arranged. Hair and makeup done, wearing white capris and a short-sleeved light blue cotton top he’d never seen before, she looked small walking toward him. And yet putting on a good face. Her below-the-elbow cast caught his eye, renewing his anger at whomever had hurt her. He stood, pulled out her chair and set her coffee—black and mild as she liked it—in front of her.
“I brought you old-fashioned plain. Your favorite,” he said, taking a doughnut out of the box and putting it on a napkin.
“You’re a good boy, Mason.” She didn’t quite pull off a smile, but it looked as though she’d tried.
She nibbled a little of the doughnut. Mason watched, figuring the bagel he’d purchased for himself would wait until the drive to Albina.
“It’s my turn to make breakfast at the house this morning,” she said, when he mentioned her lack of appetite. “I’ve got to be back soon.”
He didn’t know whether to celebrate the fact that she seemed to be engaged with her temporary life circumstances, or to point out that they didn’t have long to talk. He’d let her know the day before that he needed time with her. She could have rescheduled breakfast duty.
She was using it as an excuse, flimsy at best, not to have to talk with him for long. Watching her, he wished his father was alive and could translate Gram’s actions for him.
“How did it go with Brianna yesterday?” He started there to put her at ease.
“Great.” Her smile was genuine this time, and she met his gaze. “We made chocolate chip cookies for her to give to the kids in her class today. She insisted on doing all the measuring herself—said her mom showed her how—and needed very little help in getting it right. We just had to increase the ingredients because we were doubling the recipe.”
A four-year-old who grasped the concept of measurement? He felt the news with a sharp stab of—
No. This wasn’t about him. It was about taking care of his family. Taking care of Gram and Bruce.
“I should’ve been teaching her when she visited on weekends, but I didn’t want to take her away from Bruce. She’s his only child and he has so little time with her...”
Instincts on full alert, Mason said, “I had a chat with Grace yesterday.”
The doughnut captured Gram’s full attention. Fingers picking at it, she was creating a small pile of crumbs.
“I was shocked when she told me the two of you haven’t spoken in almost a year.”
More crumbs. No words.
“She misses you.”
“She knows my number.”
“You know hers, too.”
Gram’s nod wasn’t encouraging. It disclosed nothing of what she was thinking.
“Don’t you miss her, too?”
That got Gram’s attention. “Of course I do,” she said, bringing some crumbs to her mouth.
“So...what happened?”
Gram shrugged. Ate another small piece. “People change.”
“Almost a whole life of being friends, and now, in your seventies, people change?”
“She wants me to be like her—free from family responsibility, doing whatever she wants when she wants it.”
“Grace has never seemed like a selfish person to me. As far as I can tell, she still spends most of her time volunteering at church, and with the women’s auxiliary.”
Gram nodded.
“You used to love doing those things, too.”
“I have a home and family to take care of.”
“Bruce is a grown man who lived on his own long enough to know how to take care of himself.”
“It’s a big house.”
“So hire some help.”
She shook her head, frowning, and he knew he’d overstepped on that one. Gram would never be happy with someone else running her home. She liked things done her way.
“She says Bruce wouldn’t let you drive at night anymore. Is that true?”
She’d driven herself to urgent care.
“He gets nervous. And I don’t like to be out alone at night. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”
Leaning his elbows on his knees, Mason bent toward her, wishing he could take her hand in his and not have her pull it away.
“Did he tell you not to drive at night anymore?”
“I don’t like to be out at night alone.”
Yet she’d climbed out a bedroom window to take a walk in the dark. Alone. To prove her independence.
Because Bruce had stripped her confidence in herself—maybe even without meaning to? Or had he purposely replaced a sense of independence with fear as a way of controlling her?
“Did he forbid you to go out at night, Gram?”
She didn’t answer.
“Look at me, please.”
A few seconds of silence passed, accompanied by another few crumbs of doughnut going to her mouth, and then she looked at him.
“Did he forbid you to go out? At night or any other time?”
“I’m a grown woman! No one can forbid me to do something.”
“Did he try? Did he ask you not to drive at night anymore?”
Her gaze dropped as she shook her head and Mason knew she’d just lied to him.
* * *
HARPER WASN’T EVEN out of the shower when Bruce called Thursday morning. Brianna answered the phone and came into her bathroom.
“Daddy needs you!” she called through the steam.
Fear shot through Harper and she yanked at the shower curtain and peered out. Brianna stood there, still in her short-sleeved princess nightgown, hair all askew, holding Harper’s cell phone.
Thank God. The phone.
Had she really thought the man had shown up at her house and that Brianna had let him in?
She was letting Mason get to her. That had to stop.
Grabbing a towel, she dried her hand, wrapped herself and took the phone, an eye on her daughter as she did so.
What had Bruce said to Brianna?
The four-year-old seemed as happy as always.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Bruce said to her, his tone affable. Kind. “I got called back for a job. Looks like I’m going to be on it all week. But...it’s been too long since I’ve seen my little girl. Is there any way you could bring her up here? Just for a few hours, if that’s all you can spare.” He suggested hours during each of the next three days, saying he could be free from his assignment then.
“We could do something, the three of us,” he continued. “Maybe have a picnic on the beach.”
Picnic on the beach. That was what he’d done on his second date with the woman he’d been sleeping with for weeks before they were married. Mason had said that Bruce’s report stated he’d slept with her on their second date—during a picnic on the beach.
“Harper?”
“I...” Have Friday off. The next day. With Miriam at the Stand, she’d been planning to go in—so Brianna could spend time with her great-grandmother. To keep Miriam satisfied and to give Mason an opportunity—to...clear Bruce?
“Sorry, I was just getting out of the shower,” she told her ex-husband, trying to focus. To think.
What should she do?
Taking Brianna to Albina was better than having Bruce back in Santa Raquel. Near Miriam.
She’d have to come up with some explanation to give Brianna to make certain the little girl didn’t mention seeing Miriam to Bruce.
What would Mason suggest she do?
She could see her parents. Time with them always put life in a more manageable perspective.
“I think I can do tomorrow afternoon,” she heard herself say before she’d consciously reached that decision.
He seemed delighted, which always made her feel better.
But she hung up with a pit in her stomach.
Dressing, tending to Brianna’s morning preparations, she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of unease. She didn’t want to call Mason—although she had to let him know about the meeting—until she knew why she was feeling that way.
She wasn’t afraid of Bruce.
So what was it?
* * *
GRAM’S MAKEUP COMPLETELY covered her bruises, but Mason couldn’t look at her without remembering they were there.
She’d resorted to lying to him. How on earth was he going to help her?
Half of her doughnut gone, she’d pushed it aside. “I really need to get back,” she said, her hands on the table as though getting ready to stand.
Placing a hand on one of hers, he said, “How about if I bring Grace down here to visit you?” The idea had just occurred to him, but he knew it was a good one. “She really wants to see you...”
Gram’s hesitation didn’t seem to be caused by fear, but she was frowning. “I don’t know, Mason...”
“Just for a few hours. You’ve been friends for practically your whole lives. What could it hurt?” Unless she was afraid that Bruce would find out? “She’ll only be able to come if she agrees not to say anything to anyone.”
Gram didn’t seem convinced, but she was no longer shaking her head. “It’s just...she wants me to do things...”
Finally. “Like what?” Get away from Bruce? Grace had already told him as much.
“Skydiving, for one.”
“Skydiving?” He studied her. Was she losing her mind?
Gram nodded, her lips pursed with disapproval. “She read an article on the internet about a woman who went skydiving for her ninetieth birthday and she couldn’t let it go. She said we had to do it together. Kept going on and on about it...”
Grace had never mentioned skydiving. Mason shook his head. “So...if she promises not to talk about skydiving?”
Another few seconds passed and then Gram’s eyes lit with decision. A look he recognized from when he was a kid and was about to be told what to do.
Funny how some things lost no effect at all as you aged.
“I’m okay with her coming if you’ll do something for me.”
He felt a surge of relief flood him—more emotion that didn’t normally invade his days. “What?” He’d pretty much do anything for her. She had to know that.
Unless it involved contact between her and his brother...
“My car’s due for an oil change. I was scheduled to take it in yesterday.”
And she couldn’t ask Bruce to do it for her. She still saw to her own car maintenance. As the independent woman she was.
She was thinking ahead—about driving and living an active lifestyle in the near future.
“Of course I’ll get your oil changed,” he told her, pleased that he’d gotten off so easily.
“There’s a coupon in the glove box,” she said, seeming more relaxed than he’d seen her in recent days. “It’s good for half off and expires this week, which is why I don’t want to wait.”
Gram was counting pennies? The woman had enough money to live two lifetimes.
Unless...whoever was hurting her had been taking her money, too?