AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, Shane, you’re home! I just had a feeling. I don’t know why. You know I get these instincts sometimes.”
Yes. She’d claimed instinct a lot in her wild-goose chases. Honey, I just know your dad is in California. I can feel it. Something is telling me to get in the car and drive.
“I’ve got to get to work, actually. What’s up?”
“I found someone on Facebook who looks exactly like your dad. Now, he’s way too young to be him, but he doesn’t say anything on his page about his father. What he does say is that he was raised in an unconventional way in a remote area of the Cascades.”
“Mom.” He sighed. Facebook had become her new obsession. He only hoped no one he knew ever read her updates. If she weren’t still holding down a job at the feed store, he’d be worried she was truly losing it.
“I know it would be painful for us to find out he’d started a new family somewhere, but we have to accept that possibility. Once he left, he may have just been too ashamed to come back. And this boy looks exactly like Alex did at eighteen. It’s eerie.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. His mother couldn’t face the truth. She couldn’t even consider the possibility of the truth.
“Mom, I can’t do this anymore. I swear to God I can’t. He didn’t love us. Not enough to stay and not enough to come back. Why can’t you accept that? He wasn’t even a good husband to you. He was sleeping with that woman for months! He wanted out, don’t you get it? He didn’t want you! You have to let him go!”
Shane heard his own ragged breath in the phone, but his mom was silent on the other end. There’d been an unspoken agreement for a long time. No one mentioned the other woman. No one brought her into the discussion. Hell, the blank was so complete that for the first five years his mother had rarely even investigated reports that people had seen Dorothy Heyer. The woman had existed only as a shadow. She was just some random person who’d happened to leave Jackson around the same time as their father. Sure, she’d been spotted at the dealership when he’d picked up the camper. But even if she’d left with him, he wouldn’t have stayed with her. He hadn’t loved that floozy. No way.
Now Shane had crossed the line. He’d thrown Dorothy in his mother’s face. And hell, he wasn’t even sorry.
“The next time you call,” he said softly, “it can’t be about Dad. It can’t be. Or you and I won’t have a relationship anymore. We can talk about my life or your life. We can even talk about Alex. But not Dad. Understand?”
“Shane,” she scolded, her voice thick with tears. “How can you even ask me to let it go? Am I supposed to just move on with my life? Just forget all that pain and, and…” She began to weep, choking her words so he couldn’t understand them anymore.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I expect. Bad things happen. You have to move on. Like other people do every damn day. Goodbye, Mom.”
He hung up and stared down at the phone in his hand, a little stunned at what he’d just done.
He’d been edging back for years. Pushing her farther away. Keeping more distance. This year, especially, he’d tried to avoid her jabs about Gideon Bishop, about what that family owed Shane and his brother, about how Gideon should go to hell for trying to force Shane into bowing to his will. All that despite the fact that she’d despaired over Shane’s name change far more than the Bishop family ever had.
He’d tried to keep her out of his head, but in that moment, staring down at the phone in his shaking hand, he realized he hadn’t succeeded. He’d let her in. She’d snuck deep into his mind, beneath all his conscious thoughts, and she’d lived there. Her thoughts and obsessions and resentments pushing at his mind, shaping his ideas.
And now it was so obvious to him. Her infection was so obvious, because she was in such stark contrast to Merry’s moment of beautiful strength.
Merry had seen terrible things. She’d lived with heartache and abandonment, and she still walked through life with a hopeful smile and eyes wide enough to take everything in.
“Jesus,” he breathed. What the hell had he done? What the hell was he still doing?
Shane grabbed his cell phone and texted the contractor he was currently working for to let him know he wouldn’t be in. Despite his work for Merry, Shane was ahead of schedule, so he could take a day off. Then he sent one more text. A very important one. His phone rang almost as soon as he hit Send. He answered with a humorless smile.
“Yes, I mean it,” he said without waiting for a greeting. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Write up whatever you need to write up.”
The way he’d been living for the past year—hell, for his whole life…this wasn’t who he was. It wasn’t who he wanted to be. He’d tried to change his identity by changing his name, but the truth was that he’d been resigned to it. To being his father’s son. To being a Bishop and everything that meant. The name change had been his one rebellion. His big fuck you to the crippling legacy they’d left him.
A damn pitiful rebellion, he realized now. He’d given in to everything else without even a semblance of a fight.
But this moment… This was his real chance to be someone better than his father. Better than his grandfather. Better than his mom.
Shane grabbed his hat and his keys and walked out the door to change his life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I HAVE TO RESIGN,” Merry said, staring at the email she’d started.
“I’m not saying you don’t. I’m just saying give it a day. You’re too screwed up to do this right now.” Grace looked over Merry’s shoulder. “I see you’ve made it all the way through ‘Dear Members of the Board.’ You don’t even know what to say. Close the window. Try again tomorrow.”
Merry shook her head.
Grace reached past and hit the cancel button. “Done. Let’s get drunk.”
