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She could only imagine what he was thinking. She, herself, had been shocked and dismayed the first time she had read the letters. How much worse would it be for Trent, knowing that his own mother had been so intentionally mean-spirited?
No, it was actually worse than that. A child was supposed to be able to know that his parents loved him unconditionally. Jesse would have been better off thinking that his mother had left for parts unknown and was never coming back. Desertion was a terrible blow to a vulnerable boy. But in writing the series of notes designed to manipulate Jesse’s fragile emotions, Etta had moved from abandonment to deliberate harm.
Trent read every word of every letter. Bryn sat in silence as the clock ticked away the minutes. The house was quiet. Everyone else had gone to bed. Trent’s face was terrible to see. His shoulders slumped, his skin grayed, his lips tightened.
When he finished the last one and turned to face her, his eyes were damp. She had expected him to be angry…and perhaps that would come…later. But at this precise moment, he was in so much pain, he was unable to hide it, even from her.
He swallowed hard. “Why? Why would she do such a thing?”
Bryn clasped her hands in her lap, searching in vain for the right words to ease the torment etched on his face. “I don’t know, Trent. Maybe she thought that if she could worm her way back into Jesse’s life, Mac would let her come home.”
He dropped his head in his hands, elbows on his thighs. “Jesse must have been so confused, so torn. He adored Dad, but she insinuated—”
Trent had seen it, too. Bryn squeezed the arms of the chair. “Etta made it sound as if Mac wasn’t Jesse’s father.” The words scraped her throat raw. “And if that is true, then Allen is not a Sinclair. Not at all.”
Trent was so still, he worried her. She went to him and put her arms around his neck from behind. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, putting her cheek to his. “She was your mother. I know this hurts.”
He shrugged out of her embrace and got up to pace, his hands shoved in his pockets. She took the seat he had vacated and wrapped her arms around her waist, trying not to let him see how upset she was. Trent had enough to deal with at the moment without comforting her.
Intense emotion blasted the air in unseen waves. He ranged around the small space like an animal trapped in a cage. He paused finally and leaned against the wall, fatigue in every line of his posture. “Why didn’t you show them to me when you first found them?” he asked dully.
“I was afraid. Afraid of hurting Mac…hurting you.”
“Afraid of losing your quarter of the Sinclair fortune?”
Her actions hadn’t been blameless. She shouldn’t have been surprised by the question. But Trent’s question sliced through her composure and left her bleeding.
“Fair enough. I understand why it might look that way. But I was always going to show you these eventually. I had to. You deserved that from me. Because sometimes the only way to help with grief is to find answers.”
“Did you think about destroying the letters?”
“No,” she said bluntly. “I would have had to live with guilt for the rest of my life. I want Allen to be a Sinclair, but only if it’s true. If Jesse was not Mac’s son, we’ll deal with it somehow.”
“You didn’t show these to Mac.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No. He’s been so frail. I did wonder if maybe he knew about them already. They weren’t exactly hidden. The box fell off the top shelf in the closet when I was putting things away.”
“But Mac wouldn’t have snooped in Jesse’s room.”
“No, I guess not.”
They both fell silent.
When Trent didn’t say anything more, apparently lost in thought, she pressed him. “Do you think we should show them to him now? He’s like a new man since Allen came.”
Trent frowned. “True. But if he didn’t know about them, then the contents might give him another heart attack. And I don’t know if I can risk that.”
“We can’t let him change the will if he’s not Allen’s grandfather. It would be wrong…unethical…”
