Grace had a brother.
A brother she didn’t know existed.
The coffee Pati had brought me an hour ago sat untouched, cold. The bear claw she’d placed in front of me without asking remained on the plate, uneaten. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t drink. Could barely breathe past the rage and grief and guilt clawing its way up my throat.
I closed the journal with shaking hands and stood, my chair scraping loudly against the floor. The few customers inthe bakery glanced up, but I didn’t care. Couldn’t care about anything except getting to Grace.
I grabbed the journal and headed for the door without looking back.
The drive from the bakery to the Silver Shadows’ clubhouse took ten minutes. Ten minutes of my mind racing, trying to figure out how to tell Grace that her mother had given birth to a son and given him away. That her aunt—an aunt she didn’t even know existed—had kidnapped him and held him captive for years.
Ten minutes of wondering exactly what Grace already knew.
I pulled into the clubhouse parking lot and killed the engine, sitting on my bike for a moment to steady myself. The journal felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in my jacket pocket. I climbed off the bike and headed inside.
The clubhouse was quiet mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, most of the brothers working their day jobs. A few prospects were cleaning up the bar area. Tank was restocking beer in the cooler behind the bar.
He looked up when I walked in, his expression shifting when he saw my face.
“You good, old man?” he asked.
“Grace here?” I asked instead of answering.
“Office with King.” Tank jerked his chin toward the hallway. “You sure you’re good?”
“No.” I headed down the hall without another word, Christina’s journal burning a hole in my pocket.
I stopped outside King’s office door, my hand raised to knock. For a moment, I hesitated. Once I told Grace what I’d discovered, there was no taking it back. No undoing the damage it would undoubtedly cause.
But I couldn’t ask her what she knew without telling her what I’d learned.
I knocked once, then pushed the door open when King called out.
Grace looked up from where she sat in one of the leather chairs, her hand resting on her swollen belly. Eight months pregnant and she still looked like she could take on the world. King stood behind his desk, arms crossed, that protective look he always wore around her sharpening when he saw my face.
“Dad?” Grace’s smile faded. “What’s wrong?”
I closed the door behind me and locked it. The click echoed in the small room.
“Need to talk to you,” I said, unable to disguise the sharpness in my voice. “Both of you.”
King’s eyes narrowed. “About?”
I pulled the journal from my jacket and held it up. “About this. About the things she wrote.”
Grace’s hand stilled on her belly. “What things?”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down heavily, suddenly feeling every one of my seventy-two years. The heavy weight of the journal echoed as I set it on King’s desk.
“Baby girl, I need you to tell me everything.”
Grace looked up at King and then back to me. “About what?”
“About your mother, Grace. About the club. Titan. Everything I missed after she hid you away from me.”
“Popeye, now is not the time,” King said.
I kept my eyes on my daughter as I responded, “Now is exactly the time.”
