Page 104 of Marrying the Nanny

“What did she mean about her family?” Logan asked. “I know her ex-husband was a dick.”

“You didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him but trust me when I say her brother outshines him in dickishness. It doesn’t sound like her parents are much better.” Reid began to realize what her declaration of love must have cost her.

Emma was so damned generous with her heart, she went ahead and loved people who didn’t deserve it. And what had he done when she offered her love to him? Ran scared because he was afraid it would hurt to be loved by her.

Trystan rose and banged through cupboards in the kitchen.

“How do we not have anything stronger than beer or wine?” He came back and hit each of them with a defiant glower. “I’m getting the bottle over the work bench.”

He waited a beat to see if his brothers would stop him. They’d all left that half bottle of rye whiskey collecting dust exactly where Wilf Fraser had set it after his last pour.

When Reid and Logan stayed silent, Trystan thumped down the stairs.

“She’s right,” Logan said, pushing away his plate. “But the reason I hate being here so much is because Dad’s not here to do it himself. He’s gone. I’m so angry with him for that. Why didn’t he see a doctor? Why didn’t he book a flight instead of flying the plane himself?”

“Yeah,” Reid said through a throat that ached all the way to the cavern behind his heart. “I had things I was going to say to him one day. I put it off because I had time, right? Now I have to live with being a bigger dick than he ever was.”

“I was here for a week when Mom moved out. Every night he offered to buy me a beer at the pub. You think I said yes once?” Logan’s expression was agonized. “I thought I was proving something by being such a prick to him. Now I just hate myself.”

“The weirdest thing is, when Emma talks about him, he’s a different person. I wish I’d met that guy,” Reid said with a rasp in his voice. “Maybe if I’d come back here, I would have.”

Trystan came up the basement stairs, footsteps heavy now. Slow. When he arrived in the dining room, he clunked the bottle onto the table with a picture in a frame. He dropped a file folder next to it as he kept walking through to the kitchen. The folder had been handled by dirty fingers so often, the cream-colored manila was putty gray.

Reid picked up the photo while Logan said, “What’s this?” and reached for the folder.

“They were on the shelf with the bottle.” Trystan came back with three glasses.

Reid moved to stand next to Logan so he could see the photo of the three of them, maybe twelve, eleven, and eight, all standing with Wilf. They were on the wharf in shorts and gumboots, each wearing a Raven’s Cove ball cap. Tucked into a corner of the frame was a piece of regular paper printed with an image of Storm in her car seat. She had one of the ball caps angled over her sleeping head. Someone had written Team Fraser, Rookie Year above it.

“Emma?” Logan guessed.

“I don’t think that’s her writing,” Reid said. “Tiffany, maybe.” It unsettled him to see it, making him think his father had shown her this photo. Talked about them to her. She’d added to it, and he’d set it where he would see it every day.

Logan opened the folder while Trystan poured and handed out glasses. Inside were more snapshots.

“My first boat,” Logan said, flicking at one. “I sent that photo to Mom.”

“My first review,” Trystan said wryly of a printed screen grab showing four out of five stars. “That would be Glenda, too, I imagine.”

“Oh, hey, look at you, hot stuff. Thirty under thirty in one of Canada’s least-known magazines.” Logan picked up the clipping of a two-line paragraph beneath Reid’s headshot.

“That’s only a few years ago. I didn’t… Mom knew, but she wouldn’t have sent that to him.” The sturdy platform that propped up his heart listed to one side. Reid wouldn’t have said Wilf had given a single thought about his sons, but this made it seem as though he’d been proud of them.

“Read this.” Trystan dragged a greeting card with balloon animal illustrations onto the top of the stack. The front read “We’re having a baby.” He flipped it over to show their father’s block-letter printing.

Son,

You have a little sister. Storm. I’ll marry her mother soon and hope you’ll come meet her as soon as you can.

There was a stack of cards with matching envelopes, but that was the only one he’d started to write. Given the preprinted message, he’d had them a while before he even wrote that much.

“I’m starting to think this shit was even harder for him than it is for us,” Reid said, chest tight.

“You think?” Logan said with self-disgust, holding up his glass so they could all clink and take a bracing sip. “And yet everyone loved him.”

“They did,” Trystan agreed. “The worst thing about running those cruises is I keep thinking he’d be in his element with his bullshit and stories. The other day, I told some tourists the one he used to tell about the guy who caught the duck while fishing. He would have told it better and I missed him then. Really missed him.”

“Every day I hear someone say, ‘You’re not like your dad.’ It’s not always an insult,” Reid said with an arid chuckle. “Dad didn’t care if he paid on time. If he liked you, he paid you. If he didn’t, he didn’t. Who runs a business like that? Wilf Fraser. No one else.”

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