AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You shouldn’t have left like you did,” Declan says as if he just read my mind.
“I had no choice.”
“Yeah, you had a choice. Stay and fight. Or just stay.”
“My father chose.”
He snorts. “You know, after all those years, those last days, he thought I was you. Kept calling me Hawk. My boy.” Something flashes in Declan’s eyes. It’s not anger or taunting or anything like that. It’s hurt. “I didn’t correct him or tell him it was me. Figured it didn’t matter anymore. And you’re right in that my mother had a grip on him that none of us could match, but he loved you. He would have forgiven you.”
“Forgiven me? I’m the one who told him the truth.”
“You always have to be right, don’t you? Let me ask you something. You think he didn’t know the truth?” Declan asks, stepping closer and cocking his head to the side. “You think our father was that stupid that he didn’t know his wife who was twenty-five years younger than him had lovers?”
“If he’d known, why did he let her get away with it?”
“What would you let Melissa get away with?” he asks, gesturing toward the house.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You don’t even know how lucky you are, do you? Life is short, brother, and you’ve wasted enough of it, haven’t you?” He turns back to the wooden plank. “Get the other end.”
I pick it up, help him line it up and slide it into the slot. I walk out to pick up the hammer and a couple of nails.
He watches me as I secure the plank of wood.
“Are you staying?” he asks.
I don’t look at him. “Don’t know. I’ll repair the house. Make it like it was before.”
“So you can sell it. More money for the man who has enough to burn,” Declan says, stepping outside and watching the sun peek around a dark cloud.
I follow him. “Just as I don’t know you, you don’t know me.”
“And isn’t that a shame.”
We look on in silence and I don’t want to walk away but I’m not sure how to continue.
“You’re not the only one who lost when you left, you know,” Declan says. “And neither was he. I lost, too. I lost my brother.”
And I mine.
I look down at the glen, remember the stories grandfather would tell about fairies and the like.
“You tell James the stories?” I ask.
Declan follows my gaze, smiles. “He loves them. I’ve promised to take him camping down there when he’s older and big enough that the wee people don’t snatch him up.”
“You scare the boy.”
“He’s not so easy to scare.” He walks back to the mews.
“You don’t have to go,” I call out, my voice sounding strange. Thick.
“I won’t live on your charity.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll run the distillery like you’ve been. You’ll more than earn your keep. Even if I stay, the house is big enough.”
When I turn, I find him watching me. “What about all that talk of murdering me?”
“I didn’t think I would care when he died. Didn’t think I cared about anything. Being back here has shown me how untrue that is. You’re right about wasting life. Wasting time. I’ve lost too many years. Lost my father. Never got to meet my nephew’s mother. I don’t know the man you’ve become. I don’t know my nephew. And I’d like to.”
He studies me, doesn’t answer just yet.
“I may still want to kill you, though,” I add, my lips trying for a smile.
He smiles back. “Same goes for me, brother.”
We stand like that for a minute in that perfect sunshine just before the clouds come and obscure the light again, dumping rain onto our heads.
“Uncle Hawk! Uncle Hawk!”
We both turn to find James running madly toward us, Alice trailing so far behind she’s a dot in the distance.
“What is it?” I call out, and Declan and I go running toward him. He’s out of breath and wet from the icy rain when Declan reaches him, wrapping his arms around his boy.
“What is it, James?” he asks.
James looks up at me. “Melissa,” he says, tears welling in his eyes as he casts a guilty look to his father. “She fell on one of my toys and she must have really hurt herself—”
I don’t hear the rest. I dash to the house, running at full speed, almost knocking Alice over as I charge past her and into the house.
“Melissa!”
No answer. I run to the steps, call out.
“Melissa!”
“She’s gone, sir,” Alice says from the door. “She took the car you came in and left.”
“What? Did she say where she was going? Why?”
“She dropped this,” Alice says, handing me Melissa’s passport.
Fuck.
She found the printouts.
“Poor James thinks it’s his fault,” she starts. “He’s very upset.”
Why did I put those papers in there? I shouldn’t have even brought them with me. I should have destroyed them.
