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“He did it to me again, Bells. Just when I think he can’t be more of a shit, Lawrence proves me wrong.” She swallowed hard. No tears. That man did not deserve a single tear from her. Not now, not ever. He’d lost the right to any of her emotions over twenty-two years ago.
“Why the hell did they have you come out for the will reading, then? I don’t understand.”
“Because they’re taking half of the Heron.”
“What?” The worry and the outrage came across the line as clearly as if her best friend had been sitting beside her.
Kendall slipped her heels off and curled her feet under her legs, pressing her forehead into the buttery leather arm of the chair. Everything tumbled out. She didn’t know if half of it was coherent, but Bell listened and didn’t interrupt once.
“Bastard.”
Kendall choked out a laugh. “Yeah.”
“But I don’t understand how. He gave that house to you and Lily when you were a kid, for God’s sake. There’s no way they should be able to take the property.”
“Mom never took his name off the deed.”
“God dammit, Lily.”
There was no surprise in Bells’s voice, just the same resignation Kendall felt. They both had years of conditioning at Lily’s hand. No man could or would ever be as wonderful as Lawrence Justice. Even if he’d left them high and dry, there was always some excuse her mother would pull out to justify what he’d done to them. In the end, the fact that Lawrence had given her Kendall was a lasting reason not to hate him.
She wished she could be so forgiving.
Any attempt at that forgiveness was long gone now.
“So you have to share the house with your father’s son? What the hell, Ken? That’s fucked-up.”
“No, what’s fucked up is that Shane Justice isn’t even his biological son. Lawrence remarried and raised him as his own.”
“He left—” Bells cut herself off.
But the words were out. The same words that had run around Kendall’s brain for the last two hours. He’d left her and raised another child. She hadn’t been good enough. Why hadn’t she and her mom been enough? “Yeah.”
“Bastard.” This time Bells’s voice was watery.
“No crying, dammit. You’ll make me cry, and I don’t have time for tears. I have to figure out how this is going to work.”
“So you’re just going to accept this?”
“Shane and I are going through the will to see if there’s anything we can do to fight it.”
“Are you sure he’s doing it with your best interests at heart? What if he wants the Heron for his own?”
“That’s why I’m staying here and reading over everything with him. Things aren’t good for either of us. All the money’s been frozen. Shane went from rich to poor in a snap.”
“And lost his father.”
Kendall’s voice gentled. “And lost his father.” As little as she cared about Lawrence, she understood that Shane had loved him. She’d loved him once upon a time. She could still remember his booming laugh and the way he held her tight. She remembered the nights he read to her and the sweet scent of his breath when he kissed her cheek good night.
But she also remembered him driving away without a good-bye. And she remembered her mother’s tears. There were a lot of tears. A lot more tears than kisses good night. “I’ll know more after we go through the will today.”
“Does that mean you’re not coming home tonight?”
“No, I won’t. And my ticket is nonrefundable. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”
“If I could strangle your father, I would.”
“Get in line.”
