Page 83 of Silent Partner (Pine Falls 3)

She reached for me, but I refused her touch. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. “I swear to you on the lives of my children, Brant and I are not having an affair. Jill lied to you.”

“Brant told me you were pregnant with his child last year,” I threw back at her.

Her sorrowful eyes opened and zeroed in on me. “That is true,” she quietly admitted. “But it was a one-time thing. A mistake—an awful, awful mistake that Brant and I have regretted every day since it happened.”

I rubbed my head, not knowing who or what to believe. I needed coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Not that it would help drown the pain, but maybe it would make my head stop pounding. I jumped up and headed to the kitchen.

Dani followed and grabbed my hand. I tried to yank it away, but she wouldn’t let me. “Please, Kinsley, I’m begging you to believe me. You don’t know how badly I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how. And,”—she hung her head—“for the safety of my baby, I couldn’t.”

I tilted my head. “What do you mean?”

She looked up, so downtrodden. It pricked my heart to see her that way. No matter how much she had hurt me, I still saw my sister in her.

“Everything got so messed up,” she cried. “When I thought Brock died, I lost it. My world came crashing down, and so did Brant’s. We got lost in our grief and made a horrible, regrettable choice. I didn’t know how horrible until I found myself pregnant and being threatened by John Holland.”

“He threatened you?”

She nodded. “He said that he would take away my baby if I told anyone who the father was. When Brock married me, I thought it was because John had forced him to marry me.”

I held up my hand; my head was spinning ninety miles per hour trying to digest what she was saying. “I need coffee.”

She squeezed my hand. “I know it’s a lot to take, and I know how crazy it sounds, but I’m telling the truth.”

I wasn’t sure what to believe. Regardless, it didn’t change the fact that she’d slept with Brant. “Does Brock know about all of this?” I removed my hand from hers and headed for the kitchen and straight to the coffee machine. I grabbed the pot and filled it with water while Dani melted onto a kitchen chair. While I poured water into the old machine and waited for Dani’s answer, Grandpa and Grandma came to join us. They wore matching flannel pajamas. It was cute. Or at least I would have thought so had I not been in the middle of a major heartbreak.

Grandpa and Grandma both put their arms around Dani. She began to sob and tell them how sorry she was. I leaned against the counter and watched, trying to hold the tears back. How had it come to this? Dani was my best friend and sister. My protector. And Brant? I’d thought he was the love of my life. The idea of the two of them together hurt in places I didn’t know existed. Yet I hated seeing Dani in so much pain. I’d never seen her like this. Not even when she thought Brock had died. She was even more inconsolable now. I guess that spoke to how she felt about me. But considering how she felt about me, how could she have slept with Brant? She’d known how I felt about him.

All I could do was stand there and hug myself.

Once Dani’s sobs became shudders, Grandma stayed with her, and Grandpa came my way. He wrapped an arm around me, and together we faced Dani and Grandma in the small kitchen that felt as if it were getting smaller by the minute.

“We’re family,” Grandma stated. “Through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s hear the rest of your story, Dani.” She smoothed her head.

I turned more into Grandpa, bracing myself.

Dani swallowed hard. “To answer your question, Kins, Brock knows everything. He has from the very beginning, except for the part where his dad blackmailed me. He didn’t know that until after I’d lost Charlotte,” she spoke her unborn angel’s name with such reverence.

Grandpa’s face turned ten shades of red. “John Holland is an SOB if I’ve ever met one.”

Dani nodded. “He is that. Though,”—she paused—“he is paying heavily for his mistakes.”

“What mistakes?” I couldn’t help but ask, especially after what Jill had said last night.

“I can’t say right now. But soon the truth will be known.”

I sighed in frustration. I was so tired of that answer from both her and Brant.

“Kins, I know how hard this is on you.”

“Do you?” I grabbed my heart.

“Yes. You feel as if your world will never be right again. Like the sun will never shine, and like you’ve lost every friend in the world.”

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