Page 28 of Duress
“Huh… Whaaa?”
“Dane, sweetie. Wake up. Your mom just called. You need to get up.” Jason’s mom’s face comes into focus. The room is dark, and only a dim light is seeping from behind the curtains. It’s definitely still early.
“What’s going on?” I croak out, voice hoarse from too much hollering and shit-talking last night.
“I’m not sure, sweetie. Your mom just said something’s happened and you need to come home.”
I can tell from Mrs. Graham’s tone whatever happened is serious. I kick off the blanket and sit up, fully awake now. The Graham family has been my second family my entire life, and I know Mrs. Graham’s mannerisms and tone as much as my own mother’s. The look on her face tells me everything I need to know.
When we pull up in front of my house, there is a police cruiser parked in the driveway where Dad’s truck should be. The sun has barely risen, and Dad doesn’t go to work on the weekends. Where is his truck? A sick feeling settles in my stomach. I must sit there, not moving, for a while.
“Hey, Dane. Do you need me to walk you in?” I look over at Mrs. Graham, and her eyes are full of concern. I shake my head, not wanting any witnesses to whatever bad news I’m walking into.
“No, no. I’ll be okay. Oh, look, see, Bryce is here.” I point to my brother’s car that is pulling into the driveway. No one outside of my family knows how much of a dick my older half brother Bryce is to me, so I use his appearance as an excuse to send Mrs. Graham on her way. Fuck, if he’s here it must be really bad. I hop out of the car as Bryce and his wife, Everly, get out of theirs. Everly’s eyes are red and puffy; it looks like she’s been crying. Bryce has dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and he looks pale, like he’s sick.
“What’s going on?” I run up to Bryce and grab him by the arm. He flinches and pulls his arm out of my grip.
“You should go inside. Go find Mom.” His tone is flat and dismissive.
Everly throws him a side eye and comes up to put her arm around my shoulder. Her floral perfume wafts around me, momentarily distracting me. How my dickhead of a brother landed an angel like Everly, I’ll never know.
“Come on, Dane. You should hear this from your mom.” I let her guide me through the front door. We find Mom sitting in the living room, two uniformed cops standing over her hunched form. Her shoulders are shaking, and she is making the most inhuman, broken sound.
It’s the sound of someone’s heart shattering.
“Mom? Mom? What’s going on?” I collapse on my knees in front of her, gently pulling her hands away from her face. The look of heartbreak she gives me, is like a knife to the gut.
“Oh, baby. There was an accident. You-your father…” She chokes on a sob and can’t finish. She just pulls me into her arms, cradling my head against her chest as she holds me the way she used to when I was small.
She doesn’t have to say the rest. I know what happened.
My dad is dead.
It feels like time stops. My body forgets how to function. My lungs forget how to breathe. Mom speaks, but I can’t hear the words she’s saying. There’s a ringing in my ears drowning her out. I can only feel the vibrations of her words and sobs as my cheek rests against her sternum, and the soft stroke of her fingers through my hair. She used toplay with my hair when reading me bedtime stories, and I feel like that little boy again as I cry into my mom’s soft flannel robe, that smells like her favorite gardenia lotion.
Slowly the ringing in my ears dissipates, and I hear a soft sob behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Everly, tears streaming down her face. Her hand covers her mouth, stifiling her sobs. Momentarily, I’m confused by how broken she looks over my dad’s death.She didn’t know him well. Bryce has always kept his distance from us after leaving for college.
Everly turns her head toward Bryce, a pleading look in her eyes. Like she’s telepathically begging him to do something that would somehow make this nightmare not real. Bryce stands next to her, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, his face a blank mask. He stares at our mother with cold indifference. I never thought it was possible for me to dislike my brother more than I already do, but seeing the lack of emotion from him while our mother breaks in my arms turns dislike into hatred.
CHAPTER 24
EVERLY
EVERLY-AGE 26
My legs threaten to give out as my brain processes Bryce’s words. “What do you mean Jake’s dead? What accident? I thought you were at work? Why were you out on route 19?” The questions come out of my mouth in a torrent. None of this makes sense. Bryce was at work. He never mentioned seeing Jake. He avoids seeing his stepfather as much as humanly possible. I can barely get him to agree to visit his family at the holidays.
“Bryce, please. Talk to me.” Cupping his face in my hands, I force him to look at me. I stare at my husband’s face, studying his expression for clues to this bizarre riddle. His eyes are bloodshot, his nose red, cheeks wet with tears. I’ve never seen him cry before. Ever. He said once he stopped crying after his dad left and he realized he wasn’t coming back. He said he’d never lethimself get so attached to someone ever again, because he never wanted to feel that kind of pain when they left.
That was, until he met me. He even included a line in his vows to me that being with me was worth the risk of feeling that kind of pain, because he couldn’t imagine a life without my love. It was so romantic. It was the moment I lost my battle to keep the tears at bay until after the ceremony, and my mascara was a mess as we walked back down the aisle, arm in arm.
Bryce closes his eyes and lets out a heavy sigh. “Jake came by the office. Said he needed to talk to me, man to man. Said it was important. He asked me to go on a drive with him so we could talk. Richard and I had just been sharing some fancy new bourbon he picked up while in Kentucky, so I guess I was tipsy enough to agree to go with Jake.”
Richard is one of the partners at Bryce’s law firm. Bryce has been working his ass off day and night to get on Richard’s radar so he will be recommended for higher profile cases. That explains why Bryce didn’t come home right after work.
“Where did you go?” I ask, gently prodding Bryce to continue with his story.
“Went to the quarry. It’s where Jake used to take Dane and me when we were kids, to go fishing. When he tried to make me like him by doing normal dad stuff, in an attempt to make me forget he was the reason my dad left.” Bryce lets out a derisive snort at the memory. “Guess he thought maybe being there would make it easy to break the news to me.” His voice takes on a bitter, acerbic edge.
