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She sat down on the double bed and took off the lid. She’d been expecting drugs, maybe a gun. Certainly not what she found.
The box held letters, maybe two dozen in all. As she riffled through them, she saw that the earliest ones were dated the year Jesse turned sixteen. The return addresses were all the same…a single line that read RRIF. The postmarks were all Cheyenne.
Had no one at the house ever questioned Jesse about them, or were they spaced so far apart that no one took notice? Or had Mac known all along? The three older boys would have been in college when the first ones showed up in the mailbox.
Bryn opened one at random and began reading. Horrified, she went through them all. Her stomach clenched.
What kind of mother would poison the mind of her young son, a boy she had abandoned when he was six years old?
The damage was insidious. A child might have missed the venom behind the words. But what about Jesse? Had he been happy his mother contacted him? Happy enough to not to look beneath the surface? Or as a young adult, had he been able to see the subtext beneath the whining, manipulative words?
Jesse, you were always my favorite.
Jesse, Mac was a tyrant. I was so unhappy. He wouldn’t let me take you.
Jesse, I miss you.
Jesse, Trent and Gage and Sloan never loved me the way they should.
Jesse, you have my brains. Brawn isn’t everything.
Jesse, you deserve more.
Jesse…Jesse…Jesse…
Bryn couldn’t imagine why Mac’s wife would have been so cruel. To punish her ex-husband? To bring discord into the family? Why? She had left them, not the other way around.
The later letters were the most damning. Etta Sinclair talked about her many boyfriends. She hinted that she’d had affairs while she was married to Mac. And she intimated that Mac might not be Jesse’s father.
Bryn’s legs went weak, so much so that she might have fallen if she hadn’t been sitting down. It wouldn’t matter if Trent and Mac ever believed that Jesse was Allen’s father. Jesse might not be a Sinclair at all, and if he wasn’t, then his young son was not, either.
Bryn gathered the letters with shaking hands, tucked them back in the box and went downstairs to her room.
Would there be any point in letting Mac see them? Best to hide them. Until she could decide what to do with them. Surely he had long since become immune to his wife’s defection.
The more she thought about the letters, the more confused she became. She had seen pictures of Etta, though they were few and far between. Trent, Gage and Sloan were all carbon copies of their dad—big, strong men with dark coloring.
Jesse was blond and slender, the spitting image of his mother. Was it simply a quirk of DNA, or was there any truth in those letters?
By the time the men returned in the late afternoon, Bryn had almost made herself ill. She excused herself after dinner and hid in her room. After a shower and a long phone call with Aunt Beverly, she curled up in bed and read for hours until she fell into a restless sleep.
Trent’s immediate anxieties were eased considerably by the doctor’s glowing report on Mac’s recovery. The heart attack had been a serious one, but Mac’s overall health and fitness had mitigated some of the long-term damage. Mac Sinclair was a tough old bird.
Which emboldened Trent on the way home to press gently for some answers. He kept his voice casual. “Was it really necessary to invite Bryn to come out here? She’s bound to cause trouble. You know what she did six years ago. I doubt she’s changed.”
Mac wrapped his arms across his chest, gazing pensively through the windshield. “I handled things all wrong back then. She deserves a fair hearing. That’s why I asked her to come.”
Trent was stunned. “But she lied.”
Mac shrugged. “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But it still does my heart good to see her again.”
Trent opened his mouth to protest, but choked back the words with effort. His tough father had never been prone to sentimentality. Trent feared that in this vulnerable state his father might be fooled by a woman who was beautiful, charming and had a not-so-secret agenda.
He spoke carefully. “It would be human nature if Bryn wanted a piece of the pie.” Trent’s job, like it or not, would be to ferret out the truth and protect his father from doing anything rash.
