His younger brother had the most to lose if the truth came out. It was justified, one hundred percent, but when it came down to it, Heath had killed Tommy. How a scrawny thirteen-year-old boy had gotten the best of a hulking nearly eighteen-year-old menace, Xander would never know. Heath was scrappy, but Tommy was a dangerous physical presence. Only Heath and Julianne had been witnesses to Tommy’s death and neither of them had ever wanted to talk about how it had happened. He didn’t blame them. Everything the other kids had done was to protect them both from what they’d had to face.
“Nothing yet. I actually got onto the computer tonight because I wanted to check with Brody to see if he had any more information. There hasn’t been a peep about the body the whole time I’ve been here. No one has even mentioned it.” With everything that was going on with Rose, sometimes Xander even forgot why he was in Cornwall to begin with.
His brother sighed with relief, but then his expression changed to one of curiosity. Heath’s light eyes, so much like his own, squinted at the screen, his nose wrinkling in thought. “What else is going on?”
Xander sat up straight and shook his head dismissively. “Nothing is going on. Like I said, it’s been quiet.”
“No,” Heath said. “You’ve got that look on your face. You’re lost in your thoughts and your right eyelid keeps twitching. You haven’t told me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell about the situation with Tommy,” Xander insisted.
“And what about things that don’t have to do with Tommy, Mr. Lie By Omission?”
Heath knew him too well. His brother could tell he had things on his mind. And he wanted to tell him. He needed someone to confide in. Since Heath wasn’t in Cornwall and wouldn’t be anytime soon, he might be a safe choice.
“Okay,” Xander said, “but when I tell you that this is a secret, I mean it. You can’t tell Brody or Wade or Julianne. Not Mom or Dad. No one. I don’t even want you telling your chick of the week that I’ve never even met.”
Heath’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. This must really be good. I won’t tell.”
“I mean it, Heath. You can’t breathe a word to anyone. No crossed fingers, no writing it down to get around ‘telling.’ This has to stay secret. I shouldn’t even tell you but I need to talk to someone.”
“I swear that I will not share this information with anyone via any means of communication, including Morse code, American Sign Language and pig Latin. If I so much as breathe a word of it, you can come to my apartment and take a baseball bat to my Super Nintendo system.”
That was probably as good as it would get with Heath. Their parents had bought him that Nintendo the Christmas before they died. “Okay. Brace yourself, because this is a big one. I’m a father. I have a ten-year-old son named Joey.”
Heath’s eyes grew wide on the screen. He did some math on his fingers. “Rose?” he asked.
Xander nodded. “I just found out.”
“Holy crap,” Heath said, running his hand over his hair in disbelief. “Have you seen him?”
“Yes. He doesn’t know I’m his father, though. Rose and I decided to wait.”
“To wait for what? You’ve already waited ten years.”
“It was her suggestion. I don’t think she’s ready to deal with the town gossip and press scrutiny when it comes out. Neither am I, frankly. It would help if we could wait until after my book tour. Maybe even after my reelection campaign. It’s not a huge scandal, but combined with some other factors, it might give my competitor an edge.”
“You’re going to make that little boy wait a whole year to find out the truth because it might look bad in the papers?”
When he said it like that, it sounded horrible. “I wanted to make it official, but filing any kind of paperwork would send up red flags. I’m used to the press interfering in my life, but they’d swarm all over Rose. She didn’t ask for that. Life is different for a politician. We’re scrutinized for every little thing.”
“So what? You weren’t caught in a public restroom with an underage transvestite hooker.”
Xander sighed. “Yeah, but I’m the face of the Fostering Families charity. I spend all my time preaching the virtues of taking in needy children. I wrote a book on it. How would it look if it came out that I had a child I’d abandoned?”
“How can you abandon a child you didn’t know about?”
“Somehow the press would find a way to hang me for it. By the time the truth came out and everything blew over, it would be too late to undo the damage. If my book tanks, Fostering Families won’t raise the money they need. If I’m not reelected, I no longer have the platform to help them. They can’t survive without my support. Even if I decided I didn’t care about being reelected and I chose to move back to Cornwall and work on the farm, I couldn’t let the people at the center down.”