“I’M NOT DENYING there are good sides to Bruce.” Mason chose his words carefully. The thin ice he was treading was melting beneath his feet. “I love my brother. He’s a great cop. A straight-up one. Completely dedicated to the job.” Bruce had always had wonderful qualities, which was one reason people were so drawn to him, to protecting him when his dark side got out of control. His parents had been the same way.
And so had Mason. Right up until the beginning of the week when he’d seen the cast on Gram’s arm, the bruises on her face. And had been told that there’d been other previous hairline fractures.
Did he dare hope Bruce hadn’t done it?
“I’m convinced he needs help, Harper. Believe it or not, I’m trying to get him that help before he does something he won’t be able to recover from.”
She watched him silently and he wished to God he knew what she was thinking. Did she understand what he was saying? Was she under Bruce’s mental control? Would she protect him at all costs—and hurt him by doing so?
Vacillating between anger at his brother and a deep love for him, Mason wasn’t sure how to proceed. If he took himself off the case, O’Brien would be forced to make it public within their department. He’d had a report from urgent care. He had to follow up.
The only way to protect Bruce was for Mason to find out the truth and then—if Bruce was guilty—quietly get his brother help. It wasn’t as if Gram was going to press charges against him.
O’Brien could. Bruce could lose his job.
He was hoping to prevent both of the last two scenarios.
Turning to Harper with renewed purpose, he said, “Looking back, can you see how Bruce came out of that whole situation the victim, with you beholden to him? You slept with his brother, and he made that seem worse than the fact that he destroyed the trust between the two of you. Worse than him lying to you about who he slept with that night. Beyond that, he had slept with the perp, Harper. You were unfaithful once, during the two days you guys were broken up. He was unfaithful multiple times.”
“For the job, except that one time with Gwen.”
He held her gaze for a few seconds. “Does that make it okay?”
She didn’t answer.
* * *
HARPER KEPT HER mind open. The evidence had to speak for itself. She understood what Mason was saying—to a point. Life wasn’t as easy, as black and white, as he seemed to need it to be. Emotions weren’t weighted based on the components that had sparked them. They were all part of the whole person, the whole package. She’d always been one less prone to drama.
Bruce lived—and loved—big.
“Did you know Grace hasn’t seen Miriam in over a year?” Elbows on his knees now, Mason faced her from his perch on the bench. His white tennis shoes looked brand-new. Hers were a year old. And black with fluorescent pink—Brianna had picked them out. She’d had a pair to match but had grown out of them.
Shoes didn’t matter. But they were easier to focus on than the rest of the conversation Mason seemed hellbent on having.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
She nodded. “I just... I can’t believe it.”
Grace and Miriam no longer friends? “What happened?” They’d been friends since childhood. Almost seventy years. Through school, and through both of their marriages. Through Grace’s grief when her husband was killed on the job; he’d been a truck driver, not a cop...
Grace had never remarried. Never had kids of her own. She’d emotionally adopted Miriam’s.
“That’s one of the things I need to speak with Gram about in the morning. I’m shocked, too. This morning was the first I’d heard there was a problem between them and I think it’s important to know what happened. It could all be part of this same issue. As you’ve said, abusers isolate.”
“Grace wouldn’t tell you what happened?” The two had always had a fierce loyalty to each other.
His shrug, accompanied by a grim expression, put another knot in her stomach. She rocked forward and then back on her bench, trying to ease the pressure of the hard surface against her butt. She had more comfortable places to sit—places for conversation. She wasn’t taking him there.
“She says that after you left, Bruce’s control got much worse. Her theory is that you were the first person who loved him who was able to walk away. You were the one person he couldn’t totally control. Everyone else—family, other women, Gwen—they all hung on, stuck around. Except for the women he dumped, of course, but then he was doing the walking away.”
Harper just wasn’t getting it. Something must have happened to turn Grace against Bruce. She was clouding the facts with resentment or some other emotion.
“Grace has known Bruce his whole life! When did she suddenly start thinking he was such a control freak?”
Mason’s studied glance sent tension spiraling through her. But there was no real reason for her to feel that way. It wasn’t like he could convince her of anything...or would even try. He was talking to her for confirmation—or not. Investigating. Not judging.
“Bruce has had...issues since he was a little guy,” he told her. “We all want people to like us, but Bruce seems to be obsessed with it. Even when he was accepting blame, he somehow came out the victim so he didn’t get into as much trouble. So he got sympathy instead of trouble. The thing with the asparagus wasn’t an isolated experience...” He’d taken a breath as though he was going to say more, but stopped, seemed to change his mind about whatever had been on the tip of his tongue.
Harper wanted to call him on it. And yet she didn’t want to know. Deciding he knew best what information she needed, she let it go. This wasn’t a personal conversation. She was a witness being interrogated.
Mostly.
“Anyway, Grace, as well as Gram and my parents, knew that he had a need for things to go as he thought they should. He’d have tantrums, and they’d work through them.”
“I can’t imagine they gave in to them.” The Thomas family played by the book. Good cops, all of them.
“Of course not. But they sympathized with him, too. And there were times they didn’t know he was manipulating them.”
She wanted to know about those times. In detail. Again, she didn’t ask.
“We all thought he’d grow out of his insecurities as he got older. Instead, he just grew craftier at his manipulation.”
She shook her head, shivering when her sweat-moistened T-shirt brushed against her skin. “If this was such a big issue, why didn’t I ever hear about it?”
Mason seemed to be struggling for words and Harper couldn’t help wondering if he was seeing something that wasn’t there, if his perception of his brother was so unclear, it was difficult for him to recognize the truth.
“We all wanted to believe he grew out of it,” he finally said, and she had to know what he wasn’t saying.
“Including you?”
Mason’s shrug looked painful. “Like the rest of the family, I wanted to believe that, too, but I don’t think I ever really did. Maybe for a while. Look at the supposed agreement I’ve been acting under for the past five years. No contact with you. I believed him when he told me you’d asked for the agreement—and that you were fully on board with it.”
Okay, that was one example. But the situation had been untenable.
“My brother’s had very little to do with me since then,” Mason reminded her. “We talked on rare occasions. I saw him, briefly, a time or two. That’s it. I kept up with him through Gram. And sometimes O’Brien and I would talk.”
“You’re telling me Gram doesn’t see this side of him.”
“Not that she’s admitting.”
“Did she ever?”
Another shrug. “I thought so. It seemed like we all knew. But I can’t give you, or even myself, any concrete evidence that she did. I don’t remember it ever coming up with her there, although I’m sure it must have. She was around all the time.”
She had to be honest with him.
“I was with him for over two years, Mason, and I never saw it.”
“Bruce was always on his best behavior when Gram was with us. He adored her and wanted her to think he was perfect. Maybe it was the same with you.”
Apparently Mason had an answer for everything. What remained to be seen, however, was which one of them was seeing the real Bruce.
The man wasn’t perfect. Clearly. She’d left him after only a year of marriage. But...
“The undercover work he does—he’s gifted at it—but that takes its toll, too,” she said. “Maybe you need to figure that into your opinions.” He’d asked her for the truth. Could be it was up to her to clear Bruce so Mason could focus on finding out who had really hurt Miriam.
If it wasn’t Bruce.
That last thought trickling in bothered her. Surely she wasn’t going to let what Mason said play with her mind.
Like he’d accused Bruce of doing.
“He enacts different personas and his life depends on his ability to believe them enough to act them out. Sometimes he gets so involved in the person he’s playing, he forgets to drop the guise when he’s not at work. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing.”
It was the reason her marriage had broken up—because she couldn’t trust Bruce to be faithful to her when he left for work every day.
“According to Grace, your leaving, Bruce losing someone he loved and needed, seemed to make him more adamant than ever about controlling Gram. He couldn’t lose her, too. Gram was getting older and, one by one, she dropped activities from her schedule, saying that Bruce needed her.”
“It makes sense, if you think about it,” she said, gaining strength in her mission now to give Mason her side of the story so that he could see it all clearly. He needed her piece of the puzzle. “She’d been living alone, having family dinner once or twice a week, but otherwise free to spend all the time she wanted with Grace. Then, suddenly, Bruce moves in with her and she has family to care for again. As you said, caring for family has always come first with Miriam. It’s what she lives for. Bruce gave her the purpose she’d lost. But still, she wouldn’t have the energy to keep up a full schedule and still cook and clean for him every day. Maybe Grace was jealous or put out because she lost her time with Miriam. Maybe she resented Bruce.”
That made complete sense to her. It didn’t explain why Grace had said Harper had pandered to Bruce—but you saw what you looked for. And bits of the truth strengthened perceptions, too. In her case, there’d been some truth in the fact that she’d tended to be more compassionate, often letting Bruce have his own way because she’d felt guilty about ripping his heart out. Felt guilty about the person with whom she’d been unfaithful.
I’d had nothing to be faithful to that night. The words came to her unbidden. Before she could follow the reasoning, Mason spoke again.
“It wasn’t just her time with Grace. Gram still called her, they still saw each other most days, until about a year ago. Grace said that Bruce was gradually sucking the life out of Gram by stopping her from doing chores she was perfectly capable of doing. Like carrying the laundry downstairs, for instance. She said it started out with little things like that, and Gram would gush about how great it was to have a chivalrous and caring man in the house again. But then it became less helpful and more controlling. I guess one day he got home from work and saw her on a ladder changing a lightbulb and lit into her. Grace was on the phone with her at the time and heard the whole thing, but Bruce didn’t know that. Gram had been talking on the Bluetooth Bruce had bought her, so she could answer the phone anytime he called, and could always call for help if she fell or got into trouble. Grace’s theory is that after you left, Bruce fixated on Gram and was petrified of losing her, too. Over time, he continued to curtail activities until she started to feel like she wasn’t capable of doing very much anymore. Grace invited her to a retired cops’ par three golf outing, and Miriam said that she’d never make it around the course. Didn’t want to tire herself, or risk putting a strain on her heart.”
“Miriam loves golf!” Harper had meant to listen from a safe emotional distance. By the time she’d interjected she’d been completely pulled in.
She didn’t blame Bruce. She understood. And, unlike Mason, saw a pattern of loving, not abuse.
“It sounds more to me like maybe Miriam’s getting older, has less energy and wanted to conserve it, just like she said,” she added. “We both know how much Bruce loves her. I can see him being overprotective—”
“The final blow between Gram and Grace came last year, when Gram suddenly announced that she couldn’t drive across town to Grace’s house anymore. She said Bruce didn’t think her reflexes were quick enough and she could get in an accident.”
That was a little much. Unless... “Did he have reason to think so? Had she had any accidents? Any fender benders or near misses?”
“Apparently not. Grace had ridden with her the week before, in downtown rush-hour traffic, and said Gram had maneuvered like a pro. Like she always did.”
“She’s a strong-minded woman. There must be some reason she didn’t stand up to him.”
“Grace is certain that he beat her down so much, she’d lost all confidence in herself. And when she tried to tell Gram, she said Gram hung up on her. They talked again a couple of times, but Gram said she wasn’t going to listen to Grace maligning Bruce anymore and Grace couldn’t watch what was happening to her friend and say nothing. Eventually their phone calls stopped.”
The sadness that momentarily consumed her...for both women...had to be pushed aside. This was business.
Harper looked Mason in the eye. “Miriam just climbed out a window to preserve her sense of independence and control. Don’t you find the idea of her giving in to Bruce due to a loss of confidence a little hard to believe?”
His lack of an answer was an answer in itself.
He’d come to her for the information she could give him. Harper felt the responsibility acutely. She said, “Look, Mason, I see some of what you’re saying. Bruce can be a bit controlling. Maybe he does embellish to elicit sympathy sometimes, but there’s got to be more going on here. Miriam not seeing Grace for a year... That can’t just be because Bruce was getting overprotective. Grace has known Bruce all his life! Why not talk to him?”
“Grace said she tried. He gave her a heartfelt testimony of his love for Gram, insisting that he only wanted what was best for her. He said he hadn’t told her not to do her volunteer work, that she’d sworn she wanted to be at home, caring for him.” He paused, looked down at his hands, then back at her. “She claimed he had tears in his eyes when he said it.”
“But you just said that, according to Grace, Bruce did tell her not to do volunteer work.”
“Another reason I need to speak with Gram in the morning.”
She didn’t miss the “tears in his eyes” reference, reminding her of the night Bruce had begged her to marry him. She even experienced a second of discomfort, until she realized that of course Bruce would have been emotional. His grandmother’s oldest friend had accused him of mistreating her, doubting his devotion to her.
“And none of this even remotely hints at Bruce hurting Miriam. Her arm’s broken. Those bruises on her face...that’s not mental manipulation or emotional abuse.”
“Grace said that that one time Miriam was changing a lightbulb and Bruce got home... His tone of voice was not loving or kind. He asked her if she’d lost her fucking mind. Called her an idiot. Grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the ladder, dropping her in her chair. Grace could hear most of it and Gram filed in the rest, insisting that Bruce was just worried and trying to keep her safe. He’d gone in to shower right after, never knowing that Grace had been on the phone the whole time.”
Nausea didn’t visit her often. But when it did, it came abruptly. Harper took a deep breath. Relaxed her stomach muscles. Went to the cooler for a paper cone of water.
She’d given Mason the facts she had to give him. As Grace had. There was no more she could do.
“I can’t comment on that, Mason. I wasn’t there,” she said when her stomach settled, needing him to leave.
He approached her slowly, stopping a foot away. The urge to hold him hit her as suddenly as the nausea had. Water wasn’t going to settle that one.
If she had to use Bruce as a barrier between them, she’d do it. For all their sakes. “Clearly, I’m not a victim of Bruce’s manipulations,” she told him. “I’m here. I left him. As Grace put it, I was the only one who didn’t let his love control me.” Or something to that effect.
Again he looked as though he wanted to say more. He studied her instead. If he wasn’t going to leave on his own, she’d show him out. Heading to the door and to the hall, her unfinished workout didn’t matter anymore.
Mason stopped her just short of the front door, turning her to face him.
“Please be careful,” he said, his expression reminiscent of early morning hours in the moonlight, giving her the false impression that nothing mattered more to him than she did.
“I’m armed every day,” she reminded him. “And I’m always careful.”
“Be careful with Bruce. Don’t accept things at face value. If your leaving changed him, just think what losing Gram could do to him. He has no idea she’s protecting him...”
“If he didn’t do this, he won’t figure she’d need to protect him.”
“But if he did do it...”
She’d hate to imagine the walking and staring he’d be doing. The walking out and returning hours later. Except, who would he walk out on? And return to?
“You don’t really think Bruce is going to do something as stupid and bold as to try to get into the Stand? To Miriam or me?” Or Brianna?
Her vision reddening around the edges as fear engulfed her, Harper felt weak in the knees for the second it took rational thought to return.
“Not unless he thinks he’s on the verge of being reprimanded—if he was suspended from work, for instance—but he wasn’t. Still, because he’s shown up in Santa Raquel for the very first time right now, while all of this is happening, I can’t just put his presence here down to coincidence.”
“My job changed a month ago,” she pointed out, facing down the fear his words were raising within her. “We’ve recently agreed that he’ll visit Brianna here.”
“I know. And he hasn’t been to see her once in those weeks, until two days after I brought Miriam to you.”
She had no argument, so she promised to be careful, looking at his lips as she told him good-night.
And felt his gaze linger way too long on hers before he opened the door and let himself out.