“I’ve been letting him stay with Mom mostly,” I said. “It’s good for her. He’s keeping her from thinking about…other things.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess I get it.”
“How’s your mom?”
She sighed. “The same.”
Daphne Steel lived in a mental institution in Grand Junction. Marjorie and her brothers had recently relocated her from California, once all the threats to her had been removed. Long story. She lived in an imaginary world where Marjorie was named Angela and she was still a baby.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Daphne’s prognosis wasn’t good. I finally settled on, “Smells great in here.”
“It’ll be ready soon. I’m going to make a small plate for Jade and then stand over her while she eats it. Make yourself at home. Tal should be here in a few.” She quickly filled a plate.
I tried not to, but I ogled Marj’s perfect ass as she left the kitchen. I couldn’t help myself.
Now what?
I stood and walked to the sliding glass doors leading out to the redwood deck. The younger boy, Donny, ran around in the yard, being chased by two golden retriever pups and Talon’s loveable mutt, Roger. He was doing well, all things considered. Bouncing back was apparently easier at seven than at thirty-eight.
I shook my head. How could I even compare my situation to Donny’s? He’d been through the hell that Talon had been through—physical and sexual abuse as a young child. Me? I was heading into middle age when I found out my father was a perverted psycho.
Despite my father’s disgusting tendencies, he’d never laid a hand on me or my mother. He had laid a hand—and other parts—on my best friend’s brother, Talon Steel. He’d done worse to my cousin Luke Walker. My father and his two psycho cronies had killed Luke after torturing him.
How Joe and Talon could even look at me eluded me sometimes. If the situation were reversed, I wasn’t sure I could be so forgiving. Granted, I’d done nothing wrong. Nothing. And they didn’t blame me for my father’s actions.
But shouldn’t I have known?
My father had been a respected attorney. My father had been the one who welcomed Talon back to Snow Creek as a war hero when he returned from Iraq. My father, who’d also been Talon’s rapist when he was young.
I shuddered.
I shuddered a lot these days.
Yet the Steels bore no ill will toward me or my mother. But I did. How could we not have known? Shouldn’t we have seen clues? How do you live with a psychopath and have no idea who he truly is?
Pure evil.
That was my father.
Pure evil.
And part of me was frightened beyond words.
Frightened that I was the same as he.
“Bryce?”
I nearly jumped, spinning around.
Talon Steel stood in the kitchen, his hair a mass of unruly dark waves and his cheeks pink with windburn.
“Hey, Tal.”
“I said your name three times. You were in another world.”
“Just watching Donny and the pups.”
“Yeah, he’s amazing. So much strength for such a little guy.”