Page 52 of I'll Carry You

Jason extinguished his cigarette, no longer in the mood to sit and share anything with Mildred. “A portion of it. My grandfather sold a majority stake a few years ago to Powell Enterprises.”

Mildred nodded slowly. “And you’re worth a few million? I’m assuming they paid you well, at least for the last few years. But you probably spent it, thinking you’d have a nice inheritance coming your way.” She winked. “I saw that car you were driving the other day.”

She wasn’t too far off. He had put some away in the bank and retirement accounts. But the bulk of his personal wealth was in investments and property. “That’s not the point,” he said, bristling. “Mildred, that money can’t just go to Colby.”

Mildred climbed out of her chair again and shuffled to the fridge. “Scrambled eggs?”

He didn’t answer, and she pulled out a carton of eggs from the door. As she shut it, he went on, “The company...my grandfather made a terrible deal with the Powells. I want to convert the entire company to a one-hundred-percent employee-owned. Set up a trust with my shares and use some of the money my grandfather left in his will to buy out the Powells. It’s not even for me. It’s for the people who have put their whole lives into Cavanaugh Metals and are going to lose their jobs with the way Bill Powell is running things. I don’t care about the legacy. I don’t care about the money—”

“That’s not true. You do care about the money.” Mildred snorted and gave him a pointed look. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t want to see a couple of hundred good people out of work because my grandfather was a controlling asshole who didn’t listen to me about the Powells. And that’s why I need your help, Mildred. The Powells hired an infamous private investigator to see if they can find out if there’s anyone other than me who stands to inherit.”

Mildred cracked a few eggs into a mug and pulled a fork from a drawer. She turned her back to him, dragging a cast iron frying pan from the oven. “Your brother”—she set the pan on the grates of her stove with a bang—“he left Jen because he didn’t want your grandfather to ever find out about Colby.”

Her words stole the breath from his body. “What?”

Cutting a piece of butter, Mildred threw it onto the pan. She didn’t look at him. “You heard me. He loved that girl. Loved the baby she was going to have, too. I could have murdered him for leaving, but I can’t say I didn’t understand it. I think it damn near killed him.” She pulled a couple of slices of bread out of a bag and pushed them into the toaster.

When Mildred turned to look toward Jason, red rimmed her eyes. “Kevin never wanted Colby to grow up the way he did. Never wanted your grandfather to get one finger on Jen or his son. So he picked up and left in the middle of the night so Jen wouldn’t know where he’d gone. He swore me to secrecy.”

Jason’s throat tightened. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to imagine the desperation.

Didn’t want to register what it meant.

Mildred poured the eggs onto the frying pan and pulled out a spatula. “I know Thomas is dead now, and all I can say is good riddance. But if he thinks he can get his claws on my great-grandbaby from the grave, he’s got another thing coming. I don’t want Jen to know about Kevin. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Jason set his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands. “God, Mildred, why couldn’t you just have talked to me when I first got here?” He felt sick. Mildred would have helped him. Kevin had loved Jen. All of it was too much. He’d ruined things and made them impossible to fix.

Silence settled between them, the only sounds the gentle scraping of the spatula against the pan and the clock ticking on the wall. A plate clinked, and Mildred stopped in front of Jason, setting a plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the table. She took a deep breath and set her hand on his shoulder. “What did you do?”

Jason stared at the food she’d made him, too nauseated to eat. But he didn’t want to offend her by not taking her peace offering, either. He lifted the fork, his mind drifting over the mental image of Jen in his arms. Images he didn’t want to erase. Words seem to strangle his throat. At last, he managed, “I started a relationship with Jen.”

Mildred's eyes narrowed at him, and she sat across from him once again. “What sort of relationship?”

He wasn’t about to discuss his sex life with his grandmother. But he lifted his gaze to hers and gave her a hard look, one he knew she was wizened enough to understand. Her face fell and she shook her head. “There must be some sort of curse on your family name. Cavanaugh men just keep coming to Brandywood to ruin and steal their best women.”

Her eyes misted. “You look like my Martha, you know that?” She clasped her hands together, her thin and wiry frame seeming smaller. “Kevin didn’t. He was the spitting image of your dad. But you—you took after the Prices.”

“Mom never really talked about her family.” Jason shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth, chewing slowly. It was better than he expected.

“How could she? And she died when you were so young.”

Fifteen. He’d been fifteen. But his mother had changed after his dad’s death.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to think about it. She had just stopped living, really. Stopped going outside, stopped going to parties. She’d wasted away and had been even thinner than Mildred had been when she’d died. An acute case of the flu and pneumonia had been enough to undo her. But her death had started long before then, with her broken heart.

Mildred was clearly lost in her own haunted thoughts. Her jaw moved as though she was grinding her teeth. “If he’d just have let me see her. Talk to her. I could have helped her. I was her mother, for God’s sake.”

When his grandfather had talked about Mildred, he’d always used some name.“Crazy old bat,”or“backwoods country loon.”Something like that. That voice had shaped Jason’s teenage years.

He’d been ashamed of Mildred when she showed up at his mom’s funeral. Ashamed of her clothes, her hair. Everything. Ashamed of the way she wore her grief openly and loudly.

And never once had he stopped to think about the person underneath that earthen, crusty veneer.

His guilt sat in his stomach heavily with the food he’d eaten. He cleared his throat and set the fork down. “Mildred, I—” He could barely get the words out. “About Mom’s funeral . . .” He couldn’t form the apology she deserved. How could words ever be enough?

She sighed, then reached for another cigarette. “Do you mind if I smoke while you eat?”

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