Page 1 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

PROLOGUE

“Why are you standing by yourself in here?”

Van Harlowe turned to look at his father. “Because it’s quiet and I can be left alone.”

His father snorted. “You’ll be left alone plenty just like me when this is done,” his father said. “You can get your ass out there and greet people. Most are going to be your mother’s friends or coworkers or people from the force paying their respects toyou.”

He didn’t need his father to tell him those things. He’d been to more than one funeral during his four years on the police force.

Four years as an officer, and if there was one thing he hated, it was a funeral.

He never expected he’d be attending one for his mother this soon.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve got time.”

“Not as much as you always think,” his father said, then turned and left.

He didn’t want to get into a pissing match today, but he was holding it in as best as he could.

His mother had been sick for less than a year. No one thought it’d come to this, though they’d been told. They hoped otherwise, but it didn’t happen.

Between him and his father, they cared for Lauren Harlowe the best they could.

More him than his father, but he got it. It wasn’t easy to see your wife suffering, even if that man had been an ass to the woman he was grieving for publicly.

Van waited a few more minutes and then walked outside to get some fresh air.

The last thing he expected to see was his father talking to a woman that he’d never seen before. Or the woman to hug his father and kiss him on the lips. Not a consoling one. But more on the sexual line.

He opened the door to storm back in when his father turned and caught his eye.

There was no time for them to talk and it was for the best or he might deck the guy that he’d butted heads with for more than half his life.

The funeral director came up to him and told him they were opening the door. It’s not like there was any other family here. None of his mother’s because she’d cut them out of her life before he was born. The bits and pieces he’d heard told him that his mother’s parents were more controlling than his father was.

His father was an only child and Adam Harlowe’s parents had passed years ago.

One by one, people came up to him at the casket, many he knew from his mother’s job. She was well liked and always had been.

Not his father. Not many could stand the guy and he always wondered why his mother stayed with him. Sure, his father put a polite face on in public, but an idiot could see through it.

At the end of the night, one of his mother’s friends was still there. Fiona had been sitting in the chair all night and talking to people as they came in, keeping an eye on him but staying back.

Fiona and his father didn’t always get along.

“I’m so sorry,” Fiona said, coming up to him. His father had gone off to talk to the funeral director. “I thought for sure your mother’s father would have been here. She’d hoped he might come.”

“What?” he asked. This was all news to him. “Did my mother talk to her father?”

“You don’t know?” Fiona asked, angling her head to the side.

“Know what?” he asked as the two of them walked outside.

“That your mother asked your father to contact her father last week right before she slipped into a coma. She fought until the end, you know that.” Fiona wiped her eyes. “I think she thought she’d be fine and could do it herself.”

“I had no idea,” he said. Why wouldn’t his mother ask him to do it? He’d been caring for her more than his father lately. He was the more reliable of the two, but he just figured his father needed a break. It’d been a rough year for everyone.

“She couldn’t find his information or where he could be. Toward the end she was more confused and I wonder if she even had it and forgot. But she did say she thought he still lived in Boston where he always was, but your mother was in no shape to find him. I offered, but she said no, that your father would be able to. She was adamant it be him. I’m guessing whatever was between them couldn’t be mended prior.”

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