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At the corner he flipped a U-turn and headed back down Bramble to pick up Highway 89 north of the high school.
It’d take him at least twenty minutes to get to the Sheenan ranch, and he drove slowly, mindful of the black ice on the road. He was in no great hurry to return to the old two-story log cabin. The old Sheenan homestead wasn’t his home, and the longer he was there, the more uncomfortable he became.
He did not belong.
He wasn’t supposed to be there.
His certainty had little to do with Cormac and the other Sheenan brothers, but the heaviness that filled him every time he entered the house.
He hadn’t believed in spirits before he moved in. He did now.
He was most definitely not alone in the house. His mother’s ghost—sad but benign—and another one, far more aggressive. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was his father’s spirit as it seemed to go out of its way to make him feel unwelcome, reminding Shane he didn’t belong. That he’d never belonged. And yet whenever he felt the hostile presence, the other one was there, too, as if trying to be a buffer, determined to protect Shane.
God, he’d love to know the truth.
Why was he given away? Why had his father’s name been stripped from the birth certificate—because Bill Sheenan was his father, the DNA test four years ago proved it—but Shane had waited too long to confront his father? Bill Sheenan was dead. The brothers had all abandoned the family homestead. And now Shane was here, still the outsider, still the interloper.
Shane hadn’t expected a warm welcome from the Sheenan brothers, but he had thought maybe—and now he could see how silly he’d been—just maybe, they’d help him. He’d thought they’d be civil, possibly friendly. He’d thought he could get them to trust him and sit down and talk to him about what had happened leading up to the massacre on the Douglas property.
Before signing the lease, he’d hoped he’d get to know these brothers, not as brothers, but as people. Men. There was no need for a big, bonding thing, and no need to become close as they’d never be a family, but he hadn’t anticipated the freeze-out.
To be fair, Dillon had been friendly enough when Shane had talked to him about leasing the house. He’d enjoyed their lunch at the Graff. Dillon had been somewhat guarded and Shane hadn’t known if that was just Dillon’s personality or a family thing. Nine months later Shane knew it was a family thing.
There was nothing soft about the Sheenans. They’d obviously been raised with a firm hand…taught from birth what it meant to be a Sheenan, and a man.
More than once Shane had tried to imagine growing up in that house, as a Sheenan. In terms of the lineup, he would have been near the end, sandwiched between Cormac and Dillon.
His birth date was less than a year after Cormac. He and Cormac were Irish twins, with Cormac’s birthday on April fifth, while Shane’s was fast approaching, February twenty-seventh. Cormac would have been just a couple months old when their mother conceived again.
Shane had wondered if that might have been part of the problem, if there had just been too many babies too quickly. Perhaps the family had been having some kind of financial difficulty or his mother had been ill, necessitating the need for her mother to step in and help take care of the new baby.
So odd to think of how it might have been, the lineup and pecking order—Brock, Troy, Trey, Cormac, Shane, and then Dillon.
For the first two weeks of his life, he’d been a Sheenan, and then mid-March the birth certificate was amended and he became a Swan.
Bill Sheenan was not crazy. He was a tough man but smart, successful, and respected by all but neighbor Hawksley Carrigan.
Why would he remove his name from the birth certificate?
For him to do that, he had to be sure that Shane wasn’t his.
Except Bill Sheenan was wrong. The private investigator Shane had hired four years ago had been able to run a DNA test off a Starbucks coffee cup that Troy discarded after a meeting with a potential investor—Shane’s investigator—and Troy was a ninety-nine percent match for a sibling, which meant Shane was as much a Sheenan as Trey and Troy, since they were identical twins.
Arriving at the ranch, Shane parked in the gravel area between the house and barn and headed for the two-story log cabin.
He discovered a white envelope tacked to the wooden front door.
Cormac, he thought. Cormac had put the notice in writing.
Shane removed the envelope, unlocked the door and stepped inside to read the paper. He’d been right. Thirty-day notice. In writing.
For a moment Shane didn’t know what to think. He’d been expecting this for awhile but, now that it had come, he was numb.
These past nine months hadn’t been easy or comfortable. But what had he hoped? That living in his parents’ house would heal something inside of him? That sleeping in his brother’s bed would knit that gaping hole in his heart?
Irritated and frustrated, he walked through the house, flipping switches until the entire downstairs blazed with light. But it wasn’t enough. The house seemed to be listening, waiting for something, and Shane synced his phone with his Bluetooth speakers, filling the house with Aerosmith, upping the volume until the glass figurines in the dining room’s china cabinet rattled. Nothing like a good, old 1973 classic to wake the house up. And the ghosts…if they were sleeping.
Did ghosts sleep?
Sing for the laughter…
Shane had been born in 1982—at least that was what his grandmother claimed—but he loved seventies rock, not the disco stuff sweeping Europe and the US, but rock with all its genres…punk, glam, hard, progressive, art, heavy metal. But, by far, hard rock was his favorite and his iPod had been filled with Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Kiss, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and more.
Whenever there was friction in one of the homes, the music was always blared.
The ultra-conservative far right folks would warn that he was going to hell, and complain to the agency that Shane was always listening to satanic music.
Shane would just put on headphones and turn the volume louder.
Knowing no one was within ten miles of the cabin, Shane turned the speakers all the way up now, the music blasting through the house.
Sing for the tears…
He drummed his hand against his thigh as he walked from room to room, circling the downstairs, kitchen to hall, hall through the dining room, dining room to the entry, past the stairs and into the living room.
Standing in the living room, he faced the neat built-in bookcases that framed the lower half of the fireplace. The shelves held maybe a dozen books total, one of them an old dictionary, and the other, an even older Bible.
He took the Bible from the shelf, the black leather scuffed and cracked, and flipped through the tissue thin, gilt-edged pages. Here and there select passages were delicately underlined in pencil. A church program was tucked in the New Testament, in John. Shane wondered if it was there by chance, or if someone had left it there deliberately. A bookmark perhaps. He opened the book more fully, inspecting the pages. More light pencil marks quoted a passage from John 4:16: And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Steven Tyler’s voice rose in the background. Dream on…
Shane closed the book, unable to read scripture in King James English with Tyler’s piercing wail filling the air.
Dream on, indeed.
Jet fell asleep feeling strong and brave and more than a little bit defiant. But when she woke, her first thought was, oh, no…Harley.
She had to call Harley soon and it wasn’t a call Jet wanted to make.
Dragging herself from bed, she opened the curtain and glanced up at the sky. The sun was shining, and during the night the gusting wind had blown the storm clouds away, leaving the winter sky a vivid blue. It looked like a gorgeous day, a gorgeous, cold day, since the blanket of clouds had kept temperatures warmer.
/> Jet had planned to go to the schoolhouse after breakfast to change her bulletin boards and prepare lessons for the week, but the school would be freezing—the school board turned off the heat on the weekends—and Jet dreaded the layers she’d have to put on to get through the morning there.
Fortunately, Kara kept her house warm and, even better, she’d left coffee warming in the kitchen. Bless her, Jet thought, as she filled her mug and then topped off the coffee with creamer before glancing out the kitchen window towards the driveway.
Kara’s car was gone, already on the road to Billings, which meant Jet had the house to herself all day. Nice.
Jet grabbed the paper from the kitchen table, carried it into the living room, and curled up on the couch to read and savor her coffee.
She was still on the front page when her phone rang minutes later. Jet’s heart sank, certain it was Harley.
She dashed to the bedroom and retrieved her phone from where it was still charging. “Morning,” she greeted her sister.
“Glad you answered. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me,” Harley said crisply.
“Not avoiding you. I just woke up.”
“I texted you earlier.”
“I literally woke up ten, fifteen minutes ago. Haven’t even gotten through my first cup of coffee yet, and you know how much I love my coffee.”
“But you never sleep this late.”
“Because I have to be at school early every day, but its Saturday. The weekend.” Jet sat down again on the couch, and grabbed the blue, crocheted afghan from the back of the couch, spreading it over her lap. “What’s up?”
“You know what’s up.” Harley sighed. “I’m sure Kara talked to you last night. And I know you spoke to Cormac last night, too.”
