Page 117 of Sunday Morning

“Well, you should.” He clenched his jaw like Matt had done, fighting his emotions.

The last time my dad cried in front of me was when Danielle Harvey told him she was pregnant with his baby. Why was he crying again?

He swallowed hard. “The Friday before the Fourth, we had champagne and orange juice, but she had mostly champagne. We were celebrating while sitting on the tailgate of my truck in the middle of nowhere, watching the sunrise. She got an entry-level job at a news station in Houston. And I thought it was good timing because I wanted to move on as well. Put the past behind me once and for all. Forgive your mother.

“I asked her if she was okay to drive, and she swore she was fine. She only had three miles to drive on roads that were pretty dead, especially that early in the morning.”

He looked at me, but I wasn’t following anything.

“You think Sarah knows about Danielle Harvey,” he said. “But she doesn’t. She knows I was having an affair with Brenda Swensen.” He broke down, pinching the bridge of his nose while he silently sobbed.

Jesus …

“W-what?”

Brenda killed Heather and Joanna because she was drunk.

She was drunk because she was fucking my dad, and they were celebrating the end of their affair and the beginning of her minimum-wage job at a newsroom.

He was right; I despised him.

“You need to buy me out of my share of the land, or it’sall going up for sale,” I said, harnessing every bit of control I could find because I wanted to end his miserable life.

“What’s going on?”Mom asked as soon as I opened the front door.

I removed my boots, keeping my head bowed. “You’ll have to elaborate.”

“Matt ran into the house, very upset. I tried to ask him what was wrong, and he told me to ask you.”

Lifting my head, I studied her. My parents were deeply flawed, and maybe I had every right to blame my indiscretions on them, but I was twenty-four. Blaming anyone else for my actions was cowardice.

“I took something he thought belonged to him. Don’t worry about it. You have enough on your plate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Well I’m meeting Janet to help prepare food for after the service.” She slid her purse onto her shoulder. “You and Matt will ride with your dad to Joanna’s funeral.”

“I didn’t know Joanna.” I stepped past her toward the stairs.

“But Sarah did, and someday she’s going to be family. So, we need to be there for her.”

I closed my eyes just before heading up the stairs.

When the front door clicked shut behind my mom, I knocked on Matt’s door.

“Go away.”

I grabbed the key from the ledge of molding above the door and poked it into the lock.

“Fuck off,” Matt said, staring blankly at his ceiling, legs dangling off the end of the bed.

In the Army, they shared information on a need-to-know basis. As I gazed at my brother and grappled with recent revelations about my father, I made a decision. Matt deserved everything, and what he did with it was up to him.

I had no intention of telling my mom about Brenda Swensen or that I owned half the family’s land because her husband impregnated a young woman. She started it. And I wanted to wash my hands of everything. I felt no loyalty to anyone.

“Once you’re done tripping over your ego, you’ll see that she was never going to marry you. And even if you and everyone else managed to guilt her into it, the marriage would not have lasted. And she said you two broke up. You can’t suffocate someone’s dreams without losing them. But more than all of that, it’s time for you to grow up and deal with reality.”