Page 139 of Family Bonds- Kelsey & Van

“You’re right. My mother wasn’t any of those things. She was loyal even if it was to a fault.”

“Think of it that way. We all make mistakes in life and this is no different. You can’t fix a thing and you shouldn’t let it control you. You’re unsettled because your heart is telling you what I am, but you’re fighting what you’ve believed for years.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “Can you say that again?”

He laughed. “You’re right, Kelsey. This is in my hands. Just like you are too.”

“I like the way you think.”

39

LET IT GO

The following Friday, Van was in his office at home and pushed away from his desk. It’d been a slow week, but he was learning rapidly about the businesses he’d inherited.

He was learning more about himself in the process too.

He’d spent days going through everything his father had said in his head and finally decided he had to let it go.

There was no reason to dwell on any of it.

When his phone rang, he saw it was Jarrett Bond.

“Hi,” he said. “Got anything new?”

“Landon Dickson has a history of vandalism,” Jarrett said. “We’ve got video of him getting off the ferry on Saturday morning and then leaving Sunday morning. He was with a group and they rented a house for the night.”

“Partying again?” he asked, remembering the name from that rowdy noise incident at his hotel. That didn’t make him guilty, but it was twice now the guy was in a group of people. First in the hotel months ago and second on the island.

“There was a noise complaint,” Jarrett said. “Which is why it was hard for him to deny having been here and he knew it.”

“I know you asked him if he was at my house or Kelsey’s,” he said. “What was his answer?”

“He admitted to doing that to Kelsey’s house,” Jarrett said. “He swears it wasn’t him that broke into your house.”

“Why admit one and not the other?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I thought the same thing,” Jarrett said. “He was adamant that he only did the one. Said he was put up to it for making everything that happened at the hotel in October go away. The disturbing of the peace and being thrown out.”

“Oh really?” he asked. “And who put him up to it? Or did the cat find his tongue and now he’s got a lawyer too?”

“No, he sang like a bird on the first day of spring,” Jarrett said, laughing. “Someone named Carl Mason.”

“Shit,” he said. “That’s the security guard from one of my hotels. Kelsey got in his face over his inability to do his job a few months ago.”

Jarrett snickered. “She’s got some balls on her.”

“Yeah, she does,” he said. And he realized he loved that about her.

No one would push her around.

No one could pull something over on her. Ever.

She’d believe what she wanted to believe and voiced it on top of it.

He needed that in his life more than he ever thought he did.

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