Page 38 of Infinite

“Daddy never mistreated me, Becks,” Hale says. “He ignored me. It’s probably why I fought so hard to be the best in sports, in school, in everything. They were things I could do to make him pay attention to me.”

“And make you the favorite.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Hale asks. “No way was I the favorite. Not when I was the result of his wife’s mistake.”

He wants me to take back what I said. But I can’t and he needs to hear why. “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m out of line. But from everything I saw when I was around your family, you were the hero. In your parents’ eyes, you were the one who’d done right by them.”

“I can’t agree,” he says. He tips back his beer. “Not after everything I had to do to make up for what my mother did.”

He tosses his empty bottle in the garbage can. I down the rest of mine and pad over to him, blanket and all.

I take the second beer he offers and plop down in the cushy seat beside him. The cushion feels cold against my legs. I don’t complain. This is nothing compared to what Hale is feeling.

“How did it happen?” I ask.

“Do you want Daddy’s version or Momma’s?” he asks me. He pats my knee. “You know what? I’ll tell you Momma’s. It’s more interesting.”

Interesting isn’t the right word here. Not with the sadness that skims across Hale’s aura like a rising tide.

“Daddy’s business had started to take off. So much so, he was putting in sixteen-hour days and working seven days a week. He did that for two years straight, if you can believe it. Not so much as taking Christmas off, in order to please his clients and to make a name for himself.”

“I always remember him as a hard worker,” I say. I have nothing better to add. Although, for Hale’s sake, I wish I did.

“You know what he did with the first of his fortune?” I shake my head. “He took his family on a trip to Europe. He’d never been. Always dreamed of going as a kid. But, instead of enjoying the trip, he’d stay behind in these fancy hotels to work and manage the business from afar. Momma couldn’t take it. This was their time to be a family. He’d promised that all the sacrifice and dinners she’d spent without him was for them. But instead of just being lonely in Kiawah, she was lonely clear on the other side of the world.”

My stomach turns inward. I know that loneliness well. I’ve just never known it as a wife and mother.

“She was young and attractive,” he says. “You hear where I’m going with this, don’t you? One night, while they were in Sweden, they hired a nanny to look after my brothers so they could go out on the town. But Daddy received a call about an employee acting up at a site. He couldn’t have that. Not my father. Not when his reputation was on the line.” Hale pinches the bridge of his nose. “Momma couldn’t take it. For her, it was the last straw. She left my brothers with the nanny, my father to conduct his business, and went to the closest bar to a find a man who was willing to pay her attention.” He motions to himself as he lifts his beer. “You can see it worked out well for her.”

I blink several times. “This is what she told you?” I ask.

“More or less, a few days after the funeral.” He rolls the bottle between his palms, not bothering with another sip. “You might have heard she was drunk at the funeral parlor. You might have even heard she was drunk at the service. I have to say, she was pretty lit when she spilled her secret. Some might have even referred to her as sloppy.”

Hale’s momma tended to drink more than the other mothers I knew. But I never saw her out of control even once.

“Her drinking wasn’t bad until after Daddy died,” Hale explains, reading my thoughts. “The guilt ate her alive. I think it took his death to make her realize how badly she’d hurt a good man.” He pauses. “I also think she saw how badly she’d hurt me.”

“Did you confront her?”

Hale rubs his eyes, appearing suddenly tired. “We talked about it. There was no screaming or yelling or accusing. It was just her talking and me sitting there wishing it was all a bad dream.” He looks at me. “I don’t think she wanted me to know. If it were up to her, they both would have taken that shit to the grave.”

I look at the ground, my gaze practically singeing the stone pavers at my feet. I’m angry for Hale and disappointed, as well. Mostly, I’m heartbroken, just like he is. “What did your daddy say?”

Hale doesn’t seem to be listening. I think the ghosts of his past speak louder than me, drowning out my voice and reducing it to a whisper. Eventually he answers, but it takes him time. “He blamed himself. I never expected a man as proud as my daddy to take the fall for his wife’s mistakes. But that’s what he did.”

“He loved her,” I say without thinking.

“I can’t argue with that,” he agrees, his tone heavy. “Even as he lay there telling me what she did, it was his love for her that made him break down. ‘I was angry when I found out,’ he said. ‘And if she hadn’t been pregnant with you, she may never have told me. But in trying to do right by my family, I neglected them. I neglected her.’”

“Shit,” I say.

“That pretty much sums it up. Want to hear the best part?” He chuckles, as if knowing the punchline of a joke before he tells it, not that I find what he says funny. “My brothers figured it out long before they were told. I was blond, real blond back then. Hard to blend in, when you’re a towhead in a room full of country folk with hair and beards as dark as midnight. My brothers never liked me. They used to gang up on me, remember? I know why now and why I chose my family in the form of friends like you.”

I don’t judge, nor reply. My family is just as screwed up as Hale’s. It’s the reason we were all as tight as we were with Trin, Mason, and Sean. We needed a family we could count on.

“Everything you just told me, every last word you said to me, we’re putting on film.”

“Excuse me?” he says.

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