one had but me. Not that I shared what I’d learned. No. I kept the information I’d found to myself. His perfectly nice but blue-collar parents. His weak academic record. Knowledge was power and I hoarded it like it was toilet paper at the end of the world.
It was the first time I’d realized that people were way too quick to accept what other people said about themselves like they were dying for someone to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. Thank God they were. I’d based my livelihood on that character flaw.
“It’s seeing my mother I’m most worried about,” I said, sidestepping the question of fault for the moment.
“I remember you said you’d been kicked out,” Danny asked, voice small. “But you’ve never been back? You haven’t seen her in fifteen years?”
In his eyes, I read the fear and pain at the thought that he might not see his mother again for a decade and a half. I sincerely doubted that would be the case. As a matter of fact, I was going to try very hard to convince Mrs. Munroe of what a horrible person she was and impress upon her how if I were her, I would be begging Danny’s forgiveness and praying that he granted it.
In a very rare honest gesture of compassion, I reached across the table to take Danny’s hand and held it tightly. “I’m going to say this as often as you need to hear it. Your parents are assholes and have lost a precious, precious thing. You don’t have to forgive them, but also you don’t know what the future will hold. You are not me,” I said with a final squeeze. “You are much more sensible.” I released his hand.
“In any case, it’s true I haven’t seen my mother in person in a long time. But I have spoken to her. We speak twice a year. Christmas and Mother’s Day.” I didn’t mention that she had stopped asking me to come home and that her responses to my calls had cooled considerably over the years.
Maybe I was a little bit the bad guy even if my mother had stood by and let Bob send me halfway across the country.
“And your brother?” Leo asked. “Is he still around?” he finished tactfully.
What he meant was is he still alive?
“He is. He’s twenty-eight now. Has a girlfriend.” I could feel the smile on my face. “We talk more often. Video calls mostly.” Sammy hadn’t stopped asking me to come home, and it had been getting harder and harder to resist his pleas.
“Are you planning on seeing them?” Steele asked.
I sighed heavily. “Unavoidable,” I said.
“Why unavoidable?” Leo asked.
“She’s married to Eric’s father,” I said.
“You were bonking your stepbrother?” Breck said much, much too loudly for the late hour and not exactly empty diner.
With as much disdain as I could muster for his prurient interest, I pointed at the photograph. “Obviously, we were friends before our parents married. We grew up together. His mother and my mother had been best friends since high school.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse,” he said. “You were family.”
I didn’t know either. Eric and I had struggled with that very issue. I certainly knew Bob’s opinion of the situation. The look of disgust on his face was still clear as day in my mind.
“What happened to Eric’s mom and your dad?” Danny asked.
“My father left when I was four and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t even know if he’s alive. Eric’s mother, my aunt Bitty, died of cancer when we were fifteen. My mother married his father almost exactly a year later.”
“Man, Carson, when people in your family leave, they really leave. No fucking around,” Breck said.
“So why did you run away?” Steele asked.
“I didn’t run away. I was kicked out right before senior year when Bob caught us fooling around. My mother let him send me away to boarding school in California, which was probably as far away as he could get. I’m sure it would have been Switzerland if he could have afforded it.”
“And your mom was okay with that?” Breck asked.
“Apparently.”
“Harsh,” Ridge said. The twins exchanged glances.
I knew what they were thinking. Their addict mom wasn’t going to win any awards, but she’d never kicked her kids out.
“That would have been about two thousand and seven?” Leo asked, eyes to the ceiling as he rummaged through his memory for something.
“Yes.”
“Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
He nodded as if things were falling into place. Given