Fatted Calf

“I JUST TALKED to my sister.”

Giselle blinked at Bryce’s uncharacteristic lack of lascivious greeting whenever he called her. She stopped at the stoplight and adjusted her earpiece. “Um. Okay? And?”

“My brother died.”

She didn’t quite know how to react to that. “Oh. I’m sorry?”

Bryce sighed heavily. “I … don’t know.”

“How did the conversation go?”

“Terse,” he said tersely. “She was irritated that she had to spend so much time looking for my number since she had no idea where I was. Her granddaughter finally googled. Voilà.”

“So … nothing changed?”

“Apparently not.”

“Does she want you to go out for the funeral or was she just informing you?”

“She made it clear I should bother to show up since I didn’t for my parents’ funerals.”

Giselle gasped. “She doesn’t know you were in a coma?”

“Nope.”

“You never told your siblings what happened to you?”

“What for?” he asked bitterly. “They wrote me off long ago.”

“You know … ” she ventured. “Maybe they were just jealous … ?”

“Don’t play devil’s advocate, Giselle,” he flatly. “I don’t give a shit why.”

“I meant that as a compliment to you,” she said in a small voice.

“Hrmph.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

Giselle groaned. “And you’re in the middle of a trial.”

“I can get a continuance.”

“You just don’t know if you want to and it’s do-or-die time.”

“Right.” He paused. “She wanted to make sure I’d be bringing Meryl.”

Giselle hesitated. “Didn’t google far enough.”

“Nope.”

“Let me know,” she said with fake cheer, “and I’ll make arrangements if you decide to go.”

“Are you out and about?”

“Yes.”

“Come by for lunch.”

“Okay,” she said immediately, even though she was on her way to a meeting.

“Hey, Giselle?” he said in a lower voice. “I wanna fuck you.”

Giselle smiled and felt herself blush even though nobody was watching. “I love you, too.”

THEY TOUCHED DOWN in San Diego two days later after a very silent ride in a chartered jet, Giselle sitting on the couch stroking Bryce’s face and hair while he tried to sleep. He hadn’t slept at all the night before.

Knox, who’d begged to come along for the ride, was toward the front, working on his laptop.

They were dressed for a funeral. Sort of. In general, Mormons didn’t particularly care about black for funerals and Bryce didn’t look as good in a black suit as he did olive. Giselle wore a modest red dress and low red chunky heels that matched his tie.

Bryce had raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that your ‘fuck you’ dress?”

Giselle grinned, which made him laugh for the first time in two days. “If it’s good enough for Kate Middleton, it’s good enough for a funeral. The baby bump is the ‘fuck you’ part.” She paused. “Knox is your personal ‘fuck you.’”

Knox snorted and adjusted his tie.

Once Bryce and Knox were perfectly put together, Bryce handed her into the hired car as Knox slid in the other side, and gave the driver the address to the chapel where Mark Kenard’s viewing and service would be held. It was a tense ride and Giselle held Bryce’s hand in both of hers all the way, noting that his grip tightened as they got closer. She didn’t know which part he dreaded most, but the only thing she could do was offer comfort in the way he needed it most, to be touched lovingly, her body pressed against his as if to leach off some of his anger.

Tense, angry, bitter, without a hint of grief except at the way his family treated him was not a good way to go to a funeral.

Giselle didn’t know what to expect except perhaps a whole lot of older people. Bryce was forty-two, but his oldest sibling was sixty. Mark shouldn’t have died this young, but considering Bryce had already gotten to death’s door, he didn’t worry about his own mortality.

They made a stir when they walked into the chapel’s gym, but two big men in sharp, expensive suits and a small woman in red between them wouldn’t go unnoticed.

She picked out Bryce’s sister Serena immediately. She had thinning orange hair dull only by dint of the white running through it. She was tall and stocky, like Bryce, thick but not overweight. She, too, would tan easily in the sun, and the wrinkles showed it. She was fifty-seven or fifty-eight, if Giselle remembered correctly. She was wearing a staid black Chanel-ish skirt suit. Other people weren’t wearing anything less somber, even if it wasn’t black.

There were a lot of people here.

Serena hadn’t seen them yet. She was standing in the family line, several people removed from the casket, Mark’s widow, and, Giselle assumed, their adult children all in a row. On Serena’s left was a distinguished older man. She was speaking with the next person in a line of mourners queueing up at the open casket.

“What’d he die of, again?” Knox muttered.

Bryce hesitated. “I … forgot to ask.”

Knox gaped at him.

Bryce shrugged with a helpless grimace. “My estranged sister calls me out of the blue after thirty years and I’m supposed to remember all the niceties?”

Knox grunted. “Are you going to be expected to stand with the family?”

“I’m not family,” Bryce snapped.

Giselle squeezed his hand again, and he squeezed back.

The sister’s husband had seen them and nudged her. Serena looked up and straight at Bryce, but it was clear she didn’t recognize him. Her gaze settled on Giselle and her mouth tightened. She leaned into her husband and said something in his ear. He nodded and detached himself from the family to unobtrusively make his way around the perimeter of the cultural hall toward them.

“Designated bouncer,” Giselle muttered.

“Always has been,” Bryce muttered back.

“Hello,” he said as he closed in on them. “Can I help you?”

“We’re here for Mark Kenard’s funeral,” Knox said when Bryce remained silent. Silence was one of Bryce’s intimidation tactics, and Knox wielded graciousness like a weapon. He reached out a hand and shook the other man’s. “Knox Hilliard. You’re Orin Prindle.”

The glimmer of faint recognition of the name went across his face, but he took Knox’s hand and shook it firmly, saying only, “Yes. Do I … know you from somewhere?”

“Yes.”

That was all he said, which flustered Bryce’s brother-in-law. He looked at Bryce, who could give a statue a run for its money, then at Giselle.

“Giselle Kenard,” she said smoothly, introducing her husband to his own family. “This is my husband, Bryce.”

The man’s jaw dropped and he looked Bryce fully in the face. “Ah … ”

Bryce graced the man with his most bitter and villainous smile. “Orin. Questions can wait until after the dedication of the grave. Can’t they.” It wasn’t a request. It was an order.

“Um … certainly. Bryce.” His glance slid uncertainly to Giselle. “Sister Kenard.” She let that stand. She liked the way it sounded. Then he addressed Knox, whose identity he should certainly now be crystal clear on. “Brother Hilliard.”

Knox smiled with genuine warmth. He must like the way that sounded, too. “Shall we?” Knox said smoothly, gesturing for the man to let them pass.

He did.

The three of them were eye-catching to all but the widow and her children. “Do we like her?” Giselle whispered up at Bryce.

“Yes.”

Giselle blinked up at him in shock.

“From what I understand, she was no more welcome than I was.”

“How did that happen?”

“She has … ” Bryce stalled out. “She has odd ideas about the church.”

“How odd?”

He hesitated. “More like yours. I think. If I remember the dinner-table chatter right.”

Knox tried to stifle his sudden laugh. “Fuck me.”

“She put up a good front for years,” Bryce muttered reluctantly. “I guess she couldn’t take it anymore and started letting loose at family dinners. I was a kid. I didn’t understand. I just knew Mark and my dad were angry at her. Dad chalked it up to her being from one of the Mexican colonies, too far removed from the ‘real’ church to understand the proper way of things.”

Giselle gestured toward the crying widow. “She looks sad enough.”

Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know what happened with them once I left on my mission. I doubt Mark came around, though. Well,” he amended after a slight pause. “Maybe he did. Who knows.”

The conversation ceased as they got in the very long line to the casket. Though they attracted some attention, nobody approached them, but people were usually too into their own grief and the family’s to be sociable to strangers. So Giselle was startled when Serena appeared at Bryce’s elbow. She wasn’t as tall as he, but only by a couple of inches. She towered over Giselle.

“Bryce,” she growled, “get in the family line.” Bryce turned that intimidating stare on her, but she snapped, “Dad did that better than you do.”

Giselle gasped, which attracted her attention. “And you. How dare you show up in something so irreverent. Where is Meryl? And the children?” She snarled at Knox. “And of course you would be here.”

“Wouldn’t’a missed it for the world,” he returned cheerfully. “I find the Kenard family very entertaining.”

Giselle snickered.

“Serena,” Bryce rumbled, “you asked me to come. I’m here. If this is the best welcome I can expect, we’ll leave and I’ll bill you for our expenses.”

“I had to ask you to be here because you couldn’t be bothered to come to Mom and Dad’s without an invitation.”

Bryce’s whole body turned to iron and Giselle squeezed his hand, but Knox took the opportunity. “He was a little too preoccupied to get to your parents’ funerals.”

“Doing what?” she demanded.

“Lying in a coma in a burn unit in Kansas City for a year,” he replied with a blasé smile. “Notice his face?”

“Meryl died, as did the children,” Giselle interjected coolly, inspecting her manicure, which would tell both Bryce and Knox she was about to get seriously catty. “Why don’t you know that?”

Serena stared at Bryce, her mouth hanging open. “Oh, Bryce,” she whispered, touching his arm lightly.

“Don’t touch me.”

She snatched her hand away, still looking horrified, but now layered, mixed, too many things in this situation to be horrified by.

“Bryce, let’s go,” Giselle said.

He gave her a soft smile. “I’d like to say hi to Ilora.”

And probably find out if she was as much a renegade now as Bryce thought she might have been. Giselle looked at Serena and murmured, “Get away from my husband, you venomous bitch. Bryce won’t slap you but I will and I don’t have a problem making a scene. I’m wearing red for a reason.”

Serena stepped back, aghast, her hand flat on her chest, then she scurried off. Again, she whispered something to her husband, who looked at Bryce then whispered something back.

“Wise man,” Knox muttered. “Not gonna take on a savage.”

“Mmm hm,” Bryce replied.

“He’s big but he’s old,” Knox pointed out.

“He’s always been a coward. He could’ve given me a good fight twenty-five years ago. He wouldn’t have won, but he’d have been able to get a few good hits in. He was just too scared to try, even when Serena made it clear she wanted him to.”

“Why would she want that?” Giselle asked, confused.

“To punish me for not being Dad because he wouldn’t take me on, either. He could, but that wasn’t his preferred weapon and his worked. Her husband couldn’t weaponize a disappointed look. Why change what works?”

Serena and Orin’s adult children began to approach him to say hello hesitantly after Serena hunted them all down and whispered in their ears. Either they didn’t know or remember that they had another uncle or they couldn’t believe he’d actually shown up, because they looked at him as if he were a mirage. They were cordial but reserved, which, Giselle understood, was just a family trait and probably didn’t mean anything. Bryce was just as reserved, but charming when he had no need to be intimidating.

Then the niblings drifted away and she, Bryce, and Knox were getting closer to Mark’s children. The three of them ignored Serena and her husband on their way to the first of Bryce’s nephews from Mark. Mark’s kids knew who Bryce was, but seemed to be taken aback by the fact that he wasn’t a fairy tale, an object lesson. Don’t be like your Uncle Bryce, children.

Giselle didn’t know that had ever been said, but if they’d been poisoned, they were hiding it well.

Finally, they reached Mark’s widow. “I’m sorry … ?” she asked vaguely. Giselle wasn’t sure she was all here anyway, for which Giselle couldn’t blame her. Her husband was over there in a casket.

“Bryce Kenard,” he said gently, or at least to Giselle’s ears. His voice was too rough to convey that to strangers. “Mark and Serena’s younger brother.”

Her mouth fell open as she gaped up at him, then she did the damnedest thing: She threw herself in his arms and began to sob. “Oh, Bryce!”

Startled, Giselle and Knox stepped back, but though Bryce was knocked off balance, he gingerly wrapped his arms around his sister-in-law, who wore her age well. He hesitantly patted her back, casting Giselle a glance of pure confusion.

She finally pulled away from him and cry-laughed with some embarrassment, wiping her face with no grace whatsoever. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, now not looking at him as she tried to regain her composure. “I didn’t mean to—” She waved a hand in frustration. “Whatever. Anyway, I’m so happy you’re here. Can you stay a couple of days?”

Then Bryce’s jaw dropped. “Um … I hadn’t planned to, but … ”

“I need to talk to you,” she said earnestly. “Alone.”

“Um … well. Okay,” he said doubtfully.

Satisfied, she turned to Giselle, her brow wrinkling in confusion. “Meryl, you’ve … changed.”

“I’m not Meryl,” Giselle said flatly. “She’s dead.”

Ilora gasped, then said, “Oh.”

That was an odd reaction. Most people scurried to say I’m so sorry!, or at least adopt a sad look, but again, this was a grieving widow.

“This is Giselle,” Bryce said. “My wife. And Knox Hilliard, my best friend.”

She said polite hellos to Giselle, then looked at Knox. “I remember you. And I’ve heard a lot more about you.”

Knox’s mouth twisted. “All of it bad.”

She grimaced a little, but said, “Yes, but I … considered the source.” Giselle and Knox looked at each other, surprised. She looked back up at Bryce. “That’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”

“Um … okay … ”

They moved on, toward the casket and looked down at a peacefully slumbering man, his robe over his shoulder, his green apron barely visit. His hair was pure white although his eyebrows still had faint traces of red.

“Just like my dad,” Bryce muttered, his bitterness back.

“Does that bother you?” Giselle asked quietly. “That you don’t look like him? Don’t have red hair?”

He shrugged slightly. Noncommittally.

“Like, if you looked like him, you could be like him?”

“Mebbe,” he mumbled.

“He does look like his dad,” Knox corrected quietly. “But the difference in coloring is so marked that that’s all you really see. Like Jack and his dad.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Bryce said as if from far away. “Not often. I didn’t take it seriously. My mother was a quarter Apache, so … ”

“Did he wonder if you were his?” Giselle asked.

“If he did, I don’t know.”

The way he answered made it clear to Giselle that he’d wondered that himself.

“He didn’t treat my mother badly, so I’ve always assumed he didn’t have any doubts.”

Good point. His father probably would’ve treated an adulterous wife like shit. Then again, his dad was so passive-aggressive, it might have gone on behind closed doors and no one would have ever known.

It was when he began crushing her hand again that she laid her other hand on his arm and said quietly, “Ares. Let’s go find a seat.”

As she and Bryce left the gym, Knox broke away to slip the line to hand Ilora his card, then followed them into the chapel, where Giselle found a side pew toward the back and slipped in, Bryce after her. Knox, last in, relaxed and pulled out his phone to play Angry Birds. Bryce was still stiff and Giselle laid her arm along the back of the pew behind him and massaged his scars. He nearly deflated, then bent over, bracing his elbows on his knees, his head down like a recalcitrant seventeen-year-old priest. She traded sober glances with Knox over his back. She closed her eyes, sighed, and shook her head while she continued to minister to her husband.

The service was long and Bryce never moved. Mark Kenard was a stranger to Giselle, so everything said was a blur and made no impact on how she saw Bryce. To her, Bryce was a singular individual with no ties to anyone but a college roommate. That he had a family of origin was an abstraction to her. That he had been someone other than a savage was also an abstraction.

Not a bad word was said about Mark, but that was to be expected. People who spoke ill of the dead if they deserved it were Giselle’s kind of people, but other than her family, she had met very few of those. To be fair, she didn’t know enough about the man to speak ill of him anyway.

It vaguely occurred to her that the three of them were here in church, where they’d all begun life, where they’d all spent their youths and adolescences and early twenties, where, for the last fifteen years, they’d either been loath to go or not been allowed to go. It didn’t matter it was a chapel none of them had been in before, it was church. It was as natural as breathing to all of them. No explanations necessary. All habits fully ingrained. They were home.

They bowed their heads for the prayers. They said “amen” where appropriate. They sang the hymn. Well, Giselle and Knox did. Bryce didn’t move except to nudge her hand one way or another where he wanted more scratches.

Finally, the closing prayer had been said. Bryce sat up with a heavy sigh. They waited for the ushers to begin dismissing everyone, but Ilora didn’t move, so no one else did, either.

Trumpets faded in from the speakers, the first two notes making it clear what it was, the volume and bass far above acceptable church levels. Giselle gasped with everyone else, Knox started to laugh, and Bryce sat with an expression of wonder and hope.

“Also sprach Zarathustra” faded out, but more music faded in, music everyone was familiar with, and that was when the casket was wheeled out the door and the ushers began dismissing rows one by one. The music kept on coming, one space opera theme after another, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Alien. Finally, their row was dismissed and they stood, walking out to the love theme from Superman.

“Holy fuck.” Knox was still laughing as they left the building. “He was clearly not as much of a tight-ass as your dad.”

“Uh … ” Bryce managed, clearly stunned. “I guess?”

“We’re going to get in the funeral procession,” Knox told the driver once he’d slipped into the car beside Giselle. “While we’re there, can you get us reservations at the Del Coronado? Two rooms beach-side, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then Walmart,” Giselle muttered. “We brought nothing.”

“Are you available the rest of the week?” Bryce rumbled.

“Yes, sir.”

GISELLE, BRYCE, AND Knox stood in back of the mourners at the grave site, bowed their heads on cue, said “amen” on cue as they had during the service, and generally did what people do at a grave site: Watch and listen.

It doesn’t take long to dedicate a grave, but there were a lot of people who wanted to say a few things because they didn’t get to say them during the service.

Once it was over, they stayed there while people chatted and dispersed slowly, eventually leaving a clear view to Bryce’s family. Giselle presumed they were staying put so that the family could arrange to meet with them later, but Bryce had no intention of approaching them.

He was going to make them come to him.

She slipped her arm through his and pressed her fingertips into his back, into his scars where he hurt the most, and she could feel his muscles rippling in response. She couldn’t muster up words to help him, but she could do this.

It took a long while before Serena looked at them, her expression commanding. Come here.

He crossed his arms over his chest. No.

Her mouth tightened, and she began the long trek toward them.

Bryce 1, Serena 0.

It was probably the first time she’d ever been disobeyed by anybody.

When she got within polite conversing distance, she said, “Bryce.” She cast glances at Giselle, on one side of Bryce, and Knox, on the other. “Come to the house.”

“No. If you want to talk, name a restaurant. Tomorrow.”

She looked stunned. “What happened to you?”

“Grew into my paws.”

Knox barked a laugh.

Her nostrils flared. “Dad would—”

“I do not give two shits what Dad would do.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You watch your mouth!” she hissed.

“Or what?”

Her eyes went wide.

Giselle watched this little war and wondered if the Bryce whom Knox had known all those years ago would have folded or if he’d just resentfully submitted. This was not Giselle’s fight, so she’d keep her mouth shut.

“I— I—” She couldn’t seem to form words. “You—”

“Say what you need to say. Lay it all out. Here or at Waffle House, I don’t care.”

Now she just looked confused. “Waffle—?”

“Or Island Prime. I’m not particular.”

Nice pivot.

Serena rolled her eyes up to the sky and took a deep breath. “If you would be so kind,” she said with tight resignation, “please come to the house. I’m sure Ilora would appreciate it. She has always liked you.”

Nobody else did. Giselle heard that loud and clear, but was it a power play or not?

There was a long silence, but Giselle really didn’t know what would be the return volley here. “Fine.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Address?”

After supplying it, Serena turned and trudged across the grass to greet and direct the rest of her—Bryce’s—family perhaps forty yards away. She spoke to her husband who looked over his shoulder at them.

“Her clothes are expensive, but they’re a little shabby,” Giselle observed, but not with judgment.

“Orin’s Rolex is real,” Knox said.

“I don’t remember what he does.” Bryce took a deep breath. “All right, Wife. Let’s get this over with.”

The three of them headed to their car, which was at least three cemetery blocks away. Bryce handed Giselle in.

“Reservations?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Little detour first.” Bryce gave the driver the address. “Thank you.”

Giselle looked at Knox. “How different is he from your UCLA roomie?”

She felt Bryce start, and Knox was a little surprised at the question, too. He shrugged and gestured to Bryce. “I mean, he is now what I knew he could become. The whole good Mormon boy righteous priesthood holder just wasn’t … it didn’t fit. I mean, he was that, but it was like a suit that was fifty years out of date and three sizes too small.”

“And how do you fit into his family?”

“I was the thorn in everybody’s paw,” he drawled, making Bryce chuckle reluctantly. “I’m not sure why I was allowed to spend so much time with them.”

“You were a lesser rebellion than what I could have been doing,” Bryce rumbled. “You went to church. Regardless your sacrilegious opinions, you were doing everything right. You didn’t go on a mission, no, but Dad understood that you wanted to, but your uncle wouldn’t let you and why, and that you were bitter about it. Knew you wanted to get married in the temple. That you knew your theology. But you were nineteen years old and you just couldn’t resist forcing him to defend his positions and he couldn’t. The only warning he could legitimately give me was not to let your views color mine. And then he’d point to The Miracle of Forgiveness again.”

Giselle snarled and Knox growled. That made Bryce chuckle a little in spite of himself.

The block they turned onto was a standard southern California mid-scale tract housing suburb, complete with peachy-tan stucco and red barrel tile roofs, quite some distance from the beach.

Surfing was not on their itinerary.

Unless …

“Bryce, do you want to go surfing while we’re here?”

He looked at her sharply. “I … hadn’t thought about it … ”

“But … ? I mean, we’re staying for a while, I guess? So … ”

“I like that idea,” Knox pronounced. “The concierge at The Del can get us gear, but I don’t want to surf that beach.”

“Me neither,” Bryce said slowly, as if his mind hadn’t switched gears.

“Justice won’t be mad?” Giselle asked. “We were supposed to be home tonight.”

“Let’s find out.” Knox pulled his phone out. “Miss McKinley! Hey, do you mind if I stay a couple-three days longer so I can go surfing?” He listened, then scowled. “You don’t have to sound so fucking happy about it.”

Giselle laughed.

“Shit’s weird,” he answered to whatever question Justice had asked. “We were summoned to the house, which we didn’t plan for, so it’s probably gonna get weirder, and Bryce’s family wants to have pow-wows tomorrow. … After a funeral service, the family gathers at the widow’s house to eat food other people dropped off. … No, it’s SOP for funerals in most cultures. Sometimes the women in a congregation make a meal for the family to eat there at the church, but that didn’t happen today, so it’s at the house. … Yes, that’s why they’re called funeral potatoes. … Family preference. … Mmm, okay. Love you.”

Bryce still looked a little dazed. “Well … sure. I guess. Why not? Thank you, Wife.”

Giselle smiled at him.

“How do you do that?” he murmured.

“Do what?”

“Know what I need.”

“I’m a good guesser?”

He laughed and kissed her palm.

The car drew up in front of a house with a ton of cars in the driveway and up and down the street. Bryce handed her out and Knox emerged from the other side. The car drove off to await their text to retrieve them.

“Ares,” Giselle said low, pulling Bryce’s ear toward her, “I love you. Knox loves you. My mother thinks you hung the moon. You have a family now. I know they suffocate you and you have issues with how they treat me, but the closeness here that you don’t feel a part of, that is what you have with us. You belong not just to me, but us. This isn’t about sex or romance or a comfortable husband-wife relationship. It’s about family. A family that respects you, who you are now. ‘If I’m asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Bryce Kenard. I had earned it.’”

When he drew away a little to look into her face, his mouth was tight and his eyes glittering, his jaw clenching. He stroked a knuckle down her cheek and whispered, “‘Show me the woman a man sleeps with and I will tell you his evaluation of himself.’”

“Wrap up the pep rally. I need to get on a board.”

Bryce and Giselle turned stony looks on Knox, who smiled blithely.

But they were all a lot less tense when they entered the house and saw the many people milling about with food and drink in their hands. Lots of people in a relatively small space. She expected that. Lots of children of varying ages, too.

What she did not expect was the swarm of people who descended upon Bryce as if they’d been waiting for him. He was taken aback, but his cocktail party charm slowly emerged as he realized these people were not here to look down on him, preach at him, or berate him. They were curious. They were friendly.

“This isn’t how the prodigal son goes,” Knox muttered in her ear.

Giselle let Bryce go to give these ostensible groupies space to fawn over him and stepped back to stand in an unobtrusive corner with Knox.

“Want something?”

“Just water, thanks.”

Knox disappeared and she stood there and watched her husband relax as he started to trust that what seemed to be, really was. He was hers, and she realized that this was what Leah had felt about Knox: What Leah and Giselle each had done with their men had been wrong according to what they had always been taught and certainly not consistent with their personalities, but it had been oh, so right. No downside.

“Found some lil smokies for you,” Knox muttered when he reappeared at her side with a styrofoam bowl of cocktail sausages swimming in a generic, probably sweet, barbecue sauce, a plastic spork, and a red Solo cup of ice water.

“Oooh, thanks. The sauce is going to blow my carb count for the day, though.”

“Hi.”

Both Giselle and Knox started and looked around, then down. It was a girl, maybe about ten. “Hi.”

“Are you Aunt Meryl?”

Instant rage. She’s just a little girl she’s just a little girl she’s just a little girl. Giselle should have known that would be on the agenda. “Um. No. I’m Aunt Giselle. Aunt Meryl died. What do you know about Uncle Bryce?”

“My grandma says he left us and never came back.”

“Grandma Serena?”

She nodded.

“Well, I mean, technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. Your uncle Bryce didn’t think he was wanted here.”

Knox poked his elbow in her back, but she ignored him.

“What happened to his face?”

“He caught on fire. He almost died.”

“Oh. It looks like it hurts.”

“It did. It still does. His whole left side looks like that.”

The girl leaned to her left to look around Giselle. “Who are you?” she asked Knox.

“I’m your uncle Bryce’s best friend. Knox.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Kansas City.”

Her face hardened. “The Chiefs,” she growled.

Giselle and Knox both burst out laughing. “Yes. And our family has a box at Arrowhead Stadium.”

She gasped. “You do?”

Giselle nodded.

She gestured toward Bryce and said, “So that’s where he lives?”

“Yep. What’s your name?”

“Leda.”

Giselle was utterly delighted. “The Spartan queen!”

She looked confused. “What?”

“In Greek mythology, Leda was the queen of Sparta. Also, it’s the name of a ballet, Leda and the Swan. I was named after a ballet, too.” Giselle handed her food and drink to Knox, dug in her pocket and pulled out her phone, swiped to her contacts, and handed it to the girl. “Deets, please. I’ll send you links.”

The excited look on her face was priceless. She took the phone and quickly thumbed in her number.

“Leda!” came a sharp older female voice from across the room behind them.

Her face collapsed. “I gotta go,” she muttered.

“Serena’s gonna kill you if you lead her astray,” Knox muttered in her ear.

Giselle laughed wickedly and took her phone. “Thank you, Leda. It was nice to meet you.” She squatted in front of the girl and said seriously, “I want you to think about what marvelous and wonderful thing you want to be or have when you grow up. If you are able to do that thing, and do it well, I want you to do it regardless of what anybody else thinks. Understand?”

The girl nodded soberly, then slipped through the throng of mourners as Giselle straightened.

“Took him thirty-five years and a house fire to bust out,” Knox reminded her, gesturing to Bryce.

“Took you twenty-five years and one serial killer.”

“Took you twenty years and one glance at a savage.”

She gave him a hateful glance.

“I am not going to apologize for keeping you two apart for fifteen years.”

“Yanno, it might actually have worked.”

“No, it would not have,” he insisted again, as he had continually since Bryce and Giselle remembered their history together. “Did you notice I’m a known entity here? I know him. Knew him. I’ve told you this four times now: He needed to grow up and you needed to glow up. You could never have done that together. You’re welcome.”

Giselle released an irritated sigh.

“Giselle!”

She went to her tiptoes to see where Bryce’s voice had come from and then it was her turn to slip through the mourners to find Bryce with his arm out, welcoming her with a smile.

“This is my wife, Giselle,” he said warmly, drawing her to his side. He introduced her to his interlocutor, but she’d never remember the name in a million years and it didn’t matter anyway, but she smiled and shook hands. The post-funeral gathering was slowly, inexorably turning into a meet-and-greet for Bryce Kenard, San Diego church royalty’s prodigal son.

For the next hour or so, Giselle stuck with Bryce, relaxed and chatting with various people who remembered Bryce as a child, a teen, and a young man. It was a glimpse of the Bryce who existed before July 14, 2001, and she was fascinated. He was open, happy. Every once in a while, she looked around for his sister and brother-in-law— Wait. Giselle’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law! —and saw them stiffly chatting with people. She oughtn’t judge because this was a funeral and they were grieving, so her impressions were informed by circumstance. Every once in a while she’d catch Serena looking at her and Bryce, but not with anger. With confusion.

Who is that man?

Well, Serena was married soon after Bryce was born and started having kids not long after that. She wouldn’t know him even if he’d never left. She was an entire generation older than he was.

“So what do you do back there in Kansas City?” asked many someones over and over again.

“I’m an attorney,” he answered over and over again.

“Now, where’d you serve your mission again?”

“Scotland.”

“Oh, that’s where your dad was from! How lucky!”

Neither being a returned missionary nor an attorney were remarkable in the least bit in Mormon circles, but Bryce had a subtle charisma that just seeped into a room.

Knox was a gifted storyteller.

Étienne was an attention whore.

Emilio was a showman.

Jack was a carnival barker, or at least, that was the way Lydia described him. To Giselle, he was just a hyperactive five-year-old all hopped up on sugar who hadn’t slept in three days, and she honestly didn’t know how Lydia put up with him.

Bryce … it would take a while for people to realize they’d stopped being intimidated by him and started being charmed. He did it to juries all the time, and she could tell when people stopped seeing his scars and started seeing him. He wasn’t in protection mode at the moment. Wasn’t feeling threatened. Wasn’t suspicious.

“Wow, look at you, all grown up!” said some ancient woman who fussed over him. That was one thing Giselle’s family didn’t do—fuss. “I’m so happy to see you again and doing so well! You look just like your dad! I remember you when you were a little thing … ”

Nobody asked about his face. They seemed to have made note, gotten clarification, then dismissed it because they were just so happy to see him again.

The subject of Meryl and the kids was touchy, but these people didn’t know and to them, it was a vague and likely unreliable memory that he had maybe been married to someone else once upon a time and had had children possibly.

“Four kids. They and Meryl died in a house fire in 2001,” he repeated to the appropriate condolences and seconds of sadness, but he didn’t seem distressed in the telling. Maybe he had just said it enough that it had lost its meaning.

Giselle didn’t have to speak much. She was just so happy Bryce wasn’t miserable that it was about all she could do to keep from smiling too much. This was a funeral.

“Bryce.”

He stiffened up and Giselle looked over her shoulder at Serena.

“Can we talk?”

“Not now, Serena. Tomorrow. I already told you that. Just tell me where and when.”

She hesitated, uncertainty in her expression. “Um … Country Waffles, I guess … ? On Mesa Boulevard? For breakfast? Eight?”

“Okay.”

She slid a glance toward Giselle. “Just you, though.”

“No. That’s something Dad did, get people alone, get passive-aggressive, then gaslight them and rearrange the truth about what happened. I’m not going to give you the opportunity to continue his bad habits.”

“I’m not Dad,” she said tightly.

That gave Bryce pause.

“You aren’t the only one with daddy issues,” she sneered. “That is why I asked to talk to you alone.”

Giselle watched this, fascinated. Any way he cut this, it was still either his family telling him what to do or his rebelling against what they wanted him to do and both were reactive, which made one weak, and he was not weak. She had not seen this Bryce, though Knox was very well acquainted with him. She didn’t like seeing her husband in such a bind. Not even when he’d pled for her not to leave him had he seemed weak or unsure, just wounded and alone.

“Yanno,” he finally drawled, “if you wanted a family therapy session over pancakes, you shouldn’t have declared war on me the instant you called me out of the blue after twenty years. Don’t act like you didn’t roll up just like Dad would’ve. That might fly with the family you made, but it doesn’t fly with me or the family I married into.”

She swallowed and looked away, flushed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “Habit.”

“Break it,” he snapped.

She took a deep breath. “Please.”

“Fine.”

She flushed angrily and Giselle was shocked she hadn’t thrown them out of the house. Then, suddenly, there was Ilora.

“Bryce! Serena!” She looked at Giselle. “I’m sorry … ?”

“No worries. Giselle.”

“Serena,” Ilora said through gritted teeth. “Please go make yourself useful in the kitchen.”

Serena’s nostrils flared and she did as she was told, though not without a glare at all three of them.

“That was impressive,” Bryce murmured.

“It’s my house,” she replied, then smiled. “I am so happy to see you.” She paused. “You look like … well. Um, you look like you’re comfortable.”

“Comfortable?”

“With yourself. I never thought you looked comfortable. Anywhere. Or at least, not with family.”

Bryce took a few seconds before answering. “I am. Yes. But I went through hell for it.”

She reached up and touched his face. “I see that. You’ll have to tell me about it. When can we get together?”

Bryce looked at Giselle, looking completely lost, then looked back at Ilora. “Uh, I’m meeting Serena tomorrow morning at Country Waffles at eight.”

“No, I need to talk to you.” She looked at Giselle. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Giselle shrugged. “Um, no. I mean, it’s up to him. We had originally planned to go back home tonight, so … we’re playing it by ear.” She paused. “Why do you all want to talk to him alone?”

“Serena probably wants to find out if you’ve strayed,” Ilora said, somewhat bitterly.

Bryce barked a laugh. “That’s a definite yes.”

“Well! I’m glad at least one Kenard kid did! Wish your dad were here so you could rub his face in it.”

Giselle’s eyebrows rose. So the older daughter-in-law really was a ballbuster.

Bryce gave her his phone and she thumbed in her number. “I’ll text you tomorrow,” he said when she gave it back. “Is there anything you need help with? Legal, forklift, simple plumbing?”

She opened her mouth to decline automatically, but then snapped it shut. “Actually … I might. Thanks.” Then she was gone.

“It’s probably time to go,” Giselle murmured.

Bryce squeezed her hand and the three of them made their way to Walmart for toothbrushes.

BRYCE HAD NOT been aware that he grasped Giselle to him in his sleep while in the throes of nightmares he didn’t remember having until she’d brought the subject up to his therapist, but he was fully aware that he needed her to be his teddy bear that night as they lay in bed not sleeping, not talking.

He couldn’t even begin to sort anything out because he had assumed Serena’s motives from her demeanor and his history with his father, but she’d shattered those assumptions with I’m not Dad and You’re not the only one with daddy issues. Was she just that conditioned to this lifelong behavior of taking prisoners immediately or was she just that conditioned to how to view Bryce that she thought she could snap her fingers and he’d jump?

But he had, hadn’t he? When she’d called, his first instinct was to charter a flight, although he hadn’t done so until after talking to Giselle. His second was to call Knox. It had vaguely occurred to him to say no, but … he hadn’t. Why? He did not want to be here.

Yet since he was, he hadn’t wanted to walk into this alone, which also made him feel weak.

Then again, Giselle would have insisted on coming and Knox would have had his ass on the plane before Bryce could say no. He’d always loved poking at Bryce’s family and Bryce had always found the dynamic between Knox and the Kenards fascinating, like a glimpse out of a prison window at the sunshine. But Giselle wanted to protect Bryce the way she protected everyone else.

He didn’t want that.

We’re partners. You help me. I help you. That’s the way marriage is supposed to work. Stop keeping score, trying to stay ahead of me.

He just … didn’t want to drag Giselle the way the rest of her family did—

You aren’t the rest of my family. You are my yin. I live with you. I sleep with you. If you aren’t in balance, I’m not in balance, and we have never been in balance.

Since she framed it like that, he could tell himself he was doing this for her because like it or not, whether he could live with never speaking to his family again, she had to sacrifice her and his child’s wellbeing on the altar of guilt and fear.

So he had thought he was preparing for war, to defend himself, to rip his sister to shreds since his father wasn’t available to be ripped, but now he didn’t know what he was supposed to prepare for.

Ilora wanted to talk to him, too, but she hadn’t come at him with instant hostility and she seemed genuinely happy he was here.

He finally slept, though he hadn’t taken his sleeping pill because he didn’t want to oversleep his alarm, but he was still two hours ahead so he was up at five anyway. Giselle was asleep.

It was funny how, he thought as he washed his hair, as soon as he hit up the sleeping pills, their marriage had smoothed out substantially. He’d always thought Giselle was just hard to live with and acknowledged that he was just as difficult, and had resigned himself to that, but once he started to sleep, she got much less irritable and irritating.

You couldn’t sleep so I couldn’t sleep.

He hated going to the therapist. He dreaded every session. He didn’t feel like he was any different, just that his long-buried feelings were being dragged up to damage him all over again. He had no idea how that was supposed to help.

But this was the only real thing she had ever asked him to do for her, so …

“Leaving,” he whispered in her ear with a kiss.

She smiled, but didn’t move otherwise. “I love you,” she croaked. “Good luck.”

He slid into the rented car and, with a dead weight in the pit of his belly he hadn’t felt since he’d sat at the defendant’s table at his criminal trial, got closer and closer to the restaurant.

He’d dressed appropriately, it seemed, in jeans and plain white tee shirt and running shoes. It was a miracle he and Knox had been able to find clothes that fit them on such short notice and off the rack, and they’d ended up at a department store anyway.

Serena was already seated when he walked in—late. On purpose. It was a power play he used often. Knox hated it, but it was effective, especially combined with an air of superiority.

She was alone, looking down at her phone, not scrolling, so she was reading long form. Or watching TV. What the hell did he know or care?

He startled her when he pulled out a chair across from her and noticed that her eyes were very red. She was probably tired, cranky, and had obviously been crying.

The hostess brought him a menu and utensils, and restaurant life went on around them while they looked at each other and then by mutual agreement read their menus.

The first time they spoke was to give the waitress their orders.

Serena’s mouth quirked when he told the waitress what he wanted to drink. “Milk?”

He shrugged. “I don’t get it at home,” he said before he thought.

Her white-laced orange eyebrow rose— Just. Like. Dad.

“Giselle has a strict diet. Nothing off plan comes in the house unless we have guests.”

“I … ” She paused. “That’s very kind of you.”

That surprised him.

“When, uh, when’s your flight home?”

“I chartered a plane, so whenever I feel like it.”

She looked a little stunned. “Um. Oh. I didn’t know regular people did that.”

“I’m not regular people,” he said tightly.

She deflated. “I … know. Now I do. I had my granddaughter do some digging,” she muttered, looking down and playing with her utensils. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your fire and what you went through. That must have been hell.”

“It was.” He paused. “Thank you.”

“I … Did you ever talk to Dad or Mom after you moved to Kansas City?”

“Dad, no. He didn’t call and I had no reason or desire to call him. Talked to Mom every so often, two, three times a year, but she didn’t seem interested in anything except the kids, and even that seemed cursory, so … ”

She looked at him in horror. “He never called?”

“No. But I’m glad. I was busy and I was going through hell with Meryl, so I didn’t need his bullshit on top of that.”

She flinched at bullshit. “I … cannot imagine not speaking to my children and grandchildren, not at least attempting to bear their burdens with them.”

“Did you have any oops babies you didn’t want when you were on the edge of an empty nest and menopause?” he asked blithely.

Her mouth trembled and her eyes gathered tears. “Um … no,” she replied. “You have to understand something. When Mark and I were young, Dad was easygoing, fun. Mom baked cookies and made Christmas magical. As we got older and he got more involved with church, he got stricter and more unhappy. It happened gradually. Mom didn’t seem to change. We didn’t really start to notice until you were born. We thought he got on us more because now you were in the picture. I was fifteen. Mark was eighteen and going off to college and then his mission so it didn’t affect him. But it affected me because by the time I was eighteen, I wasn’t allowed to date at all.”

Bryce stared at her. “Eighteen? Not allowed to date? I thought most parents get tired and get more lax.”

“Oh, that’s what happened with me and my kids, but— You had kids. You should know.”

“I have never had a child live into double digits,” he said coolly. “I wouldn’t actually know.”

She gulped. “Right. Well.” She took a deep breath. “I blamed you for how Dad changed.”

“And you were still blaming me yesterday when you came at me with guns blazing.”

“I didn’t sleep last night,” she said abruptly, but pausing while her breakfast was set in front of her. “After the gathering, I had my granddaughter help me research and find out what happened to you. Leda said your wife told her you didn’t feel wanted here and I realized how long it had been since we spoke. I realized you just … disappeared, like you never existed. For whatever reason, I went digging in my attic for my old journals.” She smiled wistfully. “The rantings of a sixteen-year-old girl whose father was turning into a tyrant and she didn’t know why other than there was a new baby in the house.”

Bryce dug into his waffles. “This isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about yesterday.”

“No.”

“What changed?”

She flushed and didn’t meet his eyes. “Your, um … face. Your wife.” She puffed a laugh. “Knox wasn’t much of a surprise.”

That did make Bryce’s mouth turn up a bit.

“Anyway,” she said with a long exhale, “with a lifetime, four kids, and seven grandchildren behind me, I read my teenage journals and it made me wonder what your upbringing must have been like and I made a few assumptions. I don’t know if they’re right, but I got married when you were a toddler and I couldn’t pay much attention. I was really just angry that you appeared to be the cause of Dad changing.” She barked an unamused laugh. “He changed so much, he picked out my husband for me and told me to marry him.”

Bryce gaped at her.

“I barely knew Orin and he was a pushover and suddenly I ended up being his mother. The only thing he was good for was a paycheck, health insurance, and kids. Somehow we made it work, but I wasn’t happy until my kids came along. I buried myself in them and romance novels until they got too bitter for me to swallow and then I just got and stayed angry.” She paused. “Romance novels lied to me. I really hate my husband.”

In that instant, Bryce’s anger and resentment rushed away. “So … fix it. That’s what divorce lawyers are for.”

She sighed. “You are the first person I have ever said that to.”

“Including yourself,” he guessed.

“Yes.”

“And Ilora?”

“Mark was just confused. The Dad he knew and the man Dad became were two totally different people. Dad loved Ilora at first, but then some time after you were born, he started trying to control her too and she wasn’t having it. Mark wanted to please Dad because he always had, and then there were all these new things Dad was saying, so he just went along with Dad and grew into that too, especially as he rose through the church ranks. Ilora refused to toe the line and every single family gathering got more and more contentious until Ilora finally refused to speak to any of us and she told Mark to cut Dad off or she’d divorce him. So he cut Dad off.” That shocked Bryce. “Dad was furious. How dare Mark choose his wife over him. But I stayed the course. Orin did what Dad told him to do and didn’t make waves. As for me, it was a different time for a woman, so I didn’t have much choice.”

“And you just had this epiphany last night.”

“Yes.”

She stopped speaking to eat, and Bryce needed to rest also. That was a helluva waterfall to have to endure in a few hours. How did one suddenly realize after thirty years that one hated one’s spouse? It was bad enough Bryce had to confront his buried truths twice a week.

It took a while, but Serena started up again. “I started getting angry when you were born and then I realized what I’d married and so I’ve been angry at … everything … for years, and then I was even more angry that you didn’t show up to Mom’s and Dad’s funerals. So I decided if you didn’t want to be part of the family, I didn’t want you to be.”

That didn’t hurt as much as he thought it might because she was clearly in some agony and had gone through her own hell. “Did you even know where I’d gone after I graduated from law school?”

She shrugged. “Somewhere in the Midwest. I was busy and Dad said you chose Knox over him, so … ”

“I did,” he said flatly. “Dad offered me rules and despair and damnation. Knox offered me faith and hope and salvation.”

At that, tears started to roll down Serena’s cheeks but she ducked her head to attempt to discreetly mop them up with her napkin.

“Didn’t you try to find me to tell me about Mom’s and Dad’s funerals?”

She shrugged. “Mark said he did. I took him at his word. He said you probably didn’t want to be found.”

Bryce didn’t know what to do with this information—any of it—and now Mark was dead and couldn’t explain himself.

“For what it’s worth,” he mumbled. “I hated Meryl, too. But she was sexually deviant, unfaithful, and abusive. At least two of my kids wasn’t mine. She manipulated me into cutting Knox off, though, so … score one for Dad, I guess. I had to get my kids away from her because they were already messed up and I wasn’t paying attention because I was working a hundred hours a week and fulfilling church callings. I had to change my entire life around to deal with it, and I was in the process of divorcing her when my fire happened. If she’d been less evil, I guess I could’ve dealt with it the way you deal with Orin.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “If you and Knox weren’t on speaking terms at that point—?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you have anybody?”

He hesitated. “I had to have had help to get and keep me out of trouble while I was comatose, and I think I know who, but I don’t know how they did it without legal authority and they’ve never said and I haven’t asked. If they wanted me to know, they’d have said something.”

“I meant … all those years. You had no one but Knox and then no one after that?”

Bryce shook his head. “Not till I met Giselle. Now … She’s got this … village … she calls a family and … I’m not doing well with the noise, the chaos, the … suffocation.”

Serena nodded slowly, as if trying to visualize that. “Tell me about your wife, then.”

He took a breath. “She’s Knox’s cousin, but I didn’t know that when I met her. In fact, meeting her is how I got Knox back, too. Her family is big on faith and … I don’t function that way. It’s … difficult.” He paused. “I have PTSD,” he blurted. “I’m … working through it.”

“I can’t see how you wouldn’t,” she said softly.

“Giselle’s pregnant and … I don’t want to visit my … trauma … ” He grimaced. “ … on my kid.”

“Wise. Leda was quite taken by your wife. She loves color because she—” She laughed suddenly. “—doesn’t get it at home.”

Bryce must have looked utterly confused.

“Her mother—my daughter-in-law—Jennifer—has a mommy blog. Leda’s and her siblings’ whole ‘perfect—’” She made air quotes. “—lives in their perfectly beige and designer-perfect house are chronicled online. I don’t approve, but I don’t want to be that mother-in-law, so what am I supposed to do? Leda spends a lot of time with me to get away from the cameras because she gets bullied at school a lot over what her mom posts. I expect her siblings to show up any day now.” She shrugged. “Jen doesn’t make much money at it, but she’s got this fantasy … I suspect she’s competing with another woman in the ward who’s been doing it a lot longer.”

“Oh. Huh. Giselle finds putting your kids on display to be almost as evil as stealing your kids’ social security numbers to take out loans.”

“That’s a good way to look at it. I’ve offered to homeschool Leda and her siblings, but Jen won’t hear of it. My son … ” She shook her head. “He doesn’t see anything wrong with it as long as it makes Jen happy and who am I to say anything? Orin does whatever I tell him to do, but there is nothing he can do to make me happy.”

As Giselle would say, that was a helluva pickle. “What does Orin do for a living? His Rolex is real.”

She shrugged. “I.T. Knows some ancient computer languages nobody else does. He did a favor for Bill Gates a long time ago. He gave him the watch. It’s pretty much the only thing he’s ever accomplished.”

“Retired?”

She shook her head. “I won’t let him. I can’t stand him now. I don’t want him on top of me twenty-four seven.”

Bryce sighed. This conversation was nowhere near anything he could have anticipated. “Look, Serena, if you decide to ditch the dead weight, you’re welcome to come see us and … I don’t know. Get out.”

She shook her head. “It’s tempting, but I can’t leave Leda and her siblings right now. The rest of my grandchildren are fine.”

The two of them were silent for a while to yet again rest. Thirty years. Serena now knew what happened to Bryce because the internet was forever, but honestly, it hadn’t occurred to him his siblings would have their own problems.

“Where are you with the church?” she asked hesitantly. “You aren’t wearing your garments.”

Yesterday, Bryce would have let loose on her. After all this, though …

He picked at his breakfast and wondered what to say. After spending time with Giselle and her family, trying to understand their viewpoint, he didn’t quite have words.

“I go every once in a while,” he finally said. “Giselle likes me to, but she doesn’t pressure me. My fire.” He covered the left side of his face with his palm. “Well, before that, actually. Years.” His jaw clenched. “The Lord abandoned me. Then the church did. Spent my whole life serving and … that was my reward.”

Serena’s mouth trembled.

“So, I have always felt that the Lord broke his covenant with me. After that, I did what I wanted and indulged my nature that Dad tried to emotionally beat out of me. Giselle and I have only been married a couple of years. We slept together on the first date and got married two weeks after that.”

Her eyebrows rose again.

Why had he told her that?

“We just … knew. Her family says she’s spiritually gifted, although I don’t know what that looks or feels like. Her family is … different. She comforts me, gives me a frame of reference for the here and now, for the future. Knox gives me a handle on the past.”

He debated whether to tell her this or not, but …

“He feels that my fire was meant to release my children from a lifetime of misery and me from Meryl’s grasp. A refiner’s fire. He thinks that since I didn’t have the courage to defy Dad when I should have—when Knox hounded me to—or gotten rid of Meryl earlier than I did, that the Lord had to finally step in to do what I wouldn’t.

“Even if I can accept that, well, okay. But then, after all my time serving, the church just … forgot about me. Same ward, same people I’d been with for years. Five years. Didn’t remember I existed until Giselle and I got married, and she worked the stake leadership up and down for it—publicly—because they were responsible for me at that time.”

“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered, horrified.

“Giselle’s grandfather was a church bigwig back in the day. A general authority.” He laughed a little. “He was a bootlegger during Prohibition, so he saw and did things differently. Kansas City Mormon royalty, essentially. Anyway, The Miracle of Forgiveness came along and I guess he threw a fit that anything so foul could be considered canon and threatened to quit if it wasn’t disavowed, then had to make good on that. Anyway, her family refuses to even acknowledge its existence and when forced to, they call it The Rule Book.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Didn’t Dad and Knox get into it over family Sunday dinner once?”

Bryce chuckled wryly. “More than once. But it was the only thing I knew at that point. So basically, here it is twenty years later and I’m having to re-learn everything from scratch. But it’s not from scratch because it’s already there in my head and I can’t partition it off or delete it, and so it’s confusing and I feel like I’m asking the stupidest questions, and that’s even if I can figure out what the questions are.”

Serena sighed and bowed her head.

“I’m curious. What were you going to talk to me about before your revelation last night?”

She shrugged. “Yell at you for not coming to the funerals and … I don’t know. Unload. Then Leda … ” She puffed a laugh. “She’s appalled and thrilled that you have a box at Chiefs stadium. She can’t wait to tell her flag football team.”

That did make Bryce smile.

“Your face. Then Leda told me you thought you weren’t wanted and then I … I don’t know. It just hit me that you had no family and maybe … maybe you’d never had any family. You chose Knox over Dad and he never spoke of you again. I didn’t notice. I was busy. I would never have done such a thing to one of my children, especially over something so petty. It struck me suddenly how cruel that was. You chose Knox over Dad because at that point, maybe he was the only real family you had.”

Bryce had never looked at it that way, but it was exactly right and he nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry about yesterday. I’m just … I’m always angry.”

“Seems to be a Kenard trait,” Bryce mumbled. “Giselle, she … she can leach that off. Somehow. I don’t know. She has a soul of steel.”

“She … um. I guess I can see why she said what she did.”

“Don’t expect an apology. She’s the one stuck cleaning up the mess of my burned-out soul.”

“I don’t. I suppose I would say something like that for a man I loved. If I had one.”

Intense sorrow immediately flooded him.

“I certainly would for my children and grandchildren. So, um, I suppose Knox is a stake president by now?”

That made Bryce laugh. “Um … no. He was excommunicated years ago.” Her jaw dropped. “He inadvertently got the church caught up in a PR nightmare so it was the most expedient thing for them to do. But that’s not my story to tell. I’m sure your granddaughter will be happy to do some more digging. You can connect the dots from there and just assume they’re true.”

It took a minute for Bryce to realize they had finished their meal and Bryce dug his card out of his wallet and gave it to the waitress when she handed him the bill. She disappeared.

“How do we go forward?” Bryce asked slowly. “I didn’t expect this. I was expecting to be in court this morning.”

“I’m not sure,” she sighed. “I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”

“And decisions to make,” Bryce said pointedly.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“All right, well, if you want to escape, you’re welcome in our home.”

“Won’t your wife mind?”

He shook his head. “Not after this conversation. She is incredibly empathetic.”

“Are you happy?”

“Getting there. I’m happiest when it’s just me and Giselle being quiet together.”

“I’m glad.”

The waitress returned and Bryce signed.

“Yesterday, I got the sense there’s a lot of bad blood between you and Ilora.”

She shrugged. “No more than I have with anybody else, which is pretty much everybody.”

“Before you hit up a lawyer, I think you and Ilora need to sit down and have this conversation.”

“Probably, but … I have to get used to this first.”

“Understood. For what it’s worth, Giselle was quite impressed by Leda, too. Let her know she’s welcome to join us at Arrowhead in our box anytime she wants, especially if we’re hosting the Chargers.”

For the first time, Serena smiled. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that before. “She would love it, but I’ll have to get my son to convince Jen to allow it. If he feels something strongly enough, he’ll overrule her, and Leda’s flag football is something he is adamant about. Well, football in general. He got a scholarship to college and then screwed up his knee, so there went his NFL aspirations.”

Bryce winced.

“He’ll ditch church if he’s got tickets, which makes Jen mad, but … Well, anyway, Leda’s his football buddy. When the others get bigger and can understand the game more and find their own teams to play on, they’ll get dragged into it, too.”

Bryce nodded. “Whole family, then. Something new for the blog. Our treat. All of it. Whole family.”

“You know, that might work. Thank you.”

With that, Bryce rose and she did too. They strolled out to the parking lot. They looked at each other and for the first time in his forty-two years, he and his sister hugged.

GISELLE WAS EATING a steak and staring at her phone when he returned to their hotel room. She looked up at him in question.

“Not what I expected.”

“Good or bad?”

“Complicated.” He put his phone down on the table and hit play.

Listening to it a second time was odd, but also comforting. It was something he could refer back to when his memory failed him, as it did at times. Serena’s voice was filled with more pain than he had noticed the first time around.

The conversation wasn’t as long as it felt at the time and Giselle listened without comment, eating calmly throughout. Bryce simply relaxed on the sofa, his hands behind his head as he looked up at the ceiling.

Something in him was settling.

Finally, it was over.

“How are you doing?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“No idea. I was gearing up for a showdown and … ”

“That was intense. Thirty years of ‘I hate my husband.’ Good gravy. And here I spent fifteen years crying because I wasn’t married. Does she work?”

“Don’t know. Where’s Knox?”

“Beach.”

Of course. “No surfing for you?” he asked playfully.

“I prefer my water sparkling blue with lots of chlorine, thankyouverymuch.”

He sighed heavily. “Still have another one of these conversations to go.” He caught his phone when Giselle tossed it to him. He thumbed his phone and the return text was almost immediate.

i have lots of leftover lasagna. come over for dinner. 7p

“Dinner not till seven at Ilora’s house. Want to go to the zoo?”

“Sure.”

ONCE AGAIN BRYCE found himself at Ilora’s house, but this time there was no one else around. Ilora greeted him at the door with a smile, drying her hands on a towel, an apron around her waist. She didn’t seem like a grieving widow, but what did he know?

“Came alone as instructed,” he said lightly. “No cops and the ransom’s in the trashcan down the street.”

She laughed and pulled him in the house, giving him a quick side hug. “Come on into the kitchen.” She gestured for him to have a seat at the table that was already set while she gathered drinks.

“Milk if you have it,” he said when she asked.

“Ah, no. Lactose intolerant. Nothing with caffeine, either. Juice?”

“Water’s fine.”

She sat and looked at him expectantly. He stared back. Then he realized what she was waiting for. “Ah, no.”

She folded her arms and bowed her head, so Bryce did the same and listened to her prayer, which was the standard meal blessing all over English-speaking Mormondom.

“Before we get this party started,” he said as he dished himself some leftover lasagna, “my breakfast with Serena did not go as I expected. I told her she needs to have a conversation with you and tell you what she told me. Her head is not in a good place.”

“Oh, it hasn’t been for years,” Ilora said dismissively. “One of these days she’s going to realize she hates her husband and is tired of being his mother.”

Surprised, Bryce barked a laugh. “Yeah, she knows. I told her to suck it up and get a divorce.”

Ilora nodded. “Better late than never.”

“Speaking of divorce, she told me you didn’t put up with my dad’s shit on pain of divorce.”

“Yes, and that’s one thing I wanted to talk about. What Mark didn’t know was that your dad and I had a come-to-Jesus meeting soon after I hired a divorce lawyer.”

Bryce’s eyebrow rose. “At your behest or his?”

“His. He thought he could summon me to the stake president’s office, but I never played those games, so I told him if he wanted to talk to me, we were going to do it in my lawyer’s office at my convenience.”

Bryce’s grin grew. “That’s something my wife would do.”

“I would expect no less from a woman who shows up to a funeral in red,” she said cheekily.

“Um, forgive me, but … you seem a little too chipper for the circumstances.”

She blinked and her fork paused halfway between the plate and her mouth. “Mark died years ago. I mean, not literally, but he had early onset dementia. He hasn’t lived here in two, three years. He forgot who I was a year ago. He’s been in memory care. I’m just happy he’s released from his prison and so am I and so are my kids and grandkids. I did my grieving years ago.”

Bryce’s heart twisted and he felt sick. Dementia. He was already having problems with his memory, but was that from his fire, or … ? Could he really allow Giselle to suffer that with him?

“Um. Oh.”

She watched him soberly. “Serena’s sharp. Your dad and mom were sharp to the end. Don’t live your life worrying about it. You won’t know what’s happening anyway and you can afford the best care available. And your wife will grieve you long before you die.”

Then he shrugged. “I’ve already been on death’s door. Death doesn’t bother me. Suffering bothers me.” He paused. “No, making my wife suffer bothers me.”

“Ah, well. I’m sorry.”

“So this tête-à-tête? Did he comply?”

“Yes. He brought his lawyer.”

Bryce chuckled. “Smart man.”

“In a word, he folded and he had wanted to do it in private. I was never sure if he just didn’t want to have a divorced son or if he took a good, long look in the mirror. If both your sons cut you off, one daughter-in-law can’t stand you and deliberately makes your life miserable, and your third child barely speaks to you, a wise man might get an inkling that he’s the problem. Anyway. He was a beaten man and he looked it. I said something like trying to control everyone around you in perpetuity will age you prematurely. Then I dressed him down. Every slight, every insult, every time he tried to put me in my place or control me. He was angry and he tried to get a word in edgewise, but I didn’t let him. I asked him what happened to him because he wasn’t that way when Mark and I were dating. Then he ’fessed up. He was visited by Spencer W. Kimball himself—”

Bryce’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

“—and he got a taste of higher church leadership’s approval and he wanted to make sure his children were perfect to look good to the higher-ups. He was asked to participate in editing Kimball’s stupid book and he got dazzled by their power. He never came out and said he regretted how he acted versus his failure to produce perfect sons, so I don’t know which it was, but he was definitely defeated. Being summoned to your uppity thirty-five-year-old daughter-in-law’s lawyer’s office after she’s declared war has to be humiliating.”

Power.

All he wanted was some penny-ante power.

Not even real power, the kind Bryce had.

“That’s … ” He grappled with his feelings to find the right word. “Luciferian.”

“Yes. And I pointed that out.”

“Did he ever get above stake president?”

“No, and I suspect that was why he seemed so beaten. All that effort and nada. Of course, our lawyers had no idea what we were talking about, but I realized then that he didn’t actually know his theology.”

Bryce was confused. “Yeah. Knox had him nailed to the wall more times than I could count.”

“Well, he may not have taken it from a teenage trust-fund brat with an ego, but he was going to take it from the mother of his grandchildren who was about to disappear with them. I had power Knox wouldn’t have had.”

“Was he that involved with them?”

“He wanted to be. He saw them as his second chance at molding perfect humans in the hopes he could rise higher, but I saw what he did to you. I knew Meryl wasn’t how she presented because I was not naïve. I saw how beaten her parents were and had a suspicion why. I was not going to let that happen to my children. I wanted my divorce lawyer there to get it all on the record.”

Bryce had never known much about Ilora. Right now he just felt a little awed to be in her presence.

“I wish I had had that courage,” he muttered. “Knox hammered me about it, but—”

“You were young and confused and brainwashed and you wanted to be loved. That is not your fault and you were not a coward. I was an adult and a mother and I was going to protect my children at all costs. Let me tell you. Rile a mother up and watch her cut through anybody she has to.”

Bryce rarely wept. Occasionally, his eyes watered and stung. They were doing so now.

“So. Watching you showed me my children’s future and I did something about it. My kids aren’t perfect and they’ve had their misadventures and half of them have left the church, but you know, you’re not raising good kids. You’re raising good adults. I wish they’d made different choices here and there, and they hurt my heart sometimes, but for the most part, they’re good people and once I got Mark on board, I think we did a good job. I’m very sorry you had to go through that, but your suffering saved my kids the same.”

“Giselle would probably see it the same way,” he murmured, still picking at his food. Then again, this lasagna was atrocious.

Ilora finally took her first bite of the lasagna, then made a face. “Gross,” she muttered around her bite. In a flurry, she picked up the lasagna in its disposable aluminum pan and dumped it in the trash, snatched her plate and scraped it into the trash, then Bryce’s plate and did the same. “Vegan. With zoodles and fake cheese. I knew I should’ve told her not to bring food. Let’s go to Subway.”

Suddenly Bryce laughed. “Sure.”

As Bryce handed Ilora into his car and while on the ride to Subway, he explained the driver, the chartered plane, and well, who he really was in the world.

By the time they had their food and sat, he had her laughing about installing a senator and why.

“Your dad would be sooooo jealous!” she squealed in delight, clapping. “He wanted so badly to have power of his own and … ”

“I don’t understand. He had his own company. He made a lot of money. In southern California.”

“Yes, but he had no real power, no real connections, nothing the world or the church valued, and that is what he coveted. I have never met anyone so eaten up with envy. What I suspect he hated most about Knox was that he came from money, wealth. Real wealth. People at that level of wealth have connections. You were now connected—by accident!—and the only power he had was that the prophet knew he existed.”

“Knox doesn’t know that and he never really cared about money or connections. His father started from scratch and was active in the church and Scouts, and his uncle was too grounded to let him get a big head. His mother dragged him to society things if she needed her trophy son to make an appearance, so yes, he knows how to act like he’s from wealth when he has to. He saw my dad as a tyrant. That was all he needed to know before he started treating him like a cat toy.”

Ilora snickered around her sandwich. “‘Cat toy.’ Well, he was young, too, so … I don’t know for sure that was why he hated Knox, but he tried to run his ward and stake like that too, and it never went over well.”

Bryce shook his head. “Didn’t know that, either.”

“As far as I know, I was the only woman who ever stood up to him—”

“You were not,” Bryce said emphatically.

“Oh?”

Well, why not tell her? She’d given him more understanding of his dad than he’d ever had. “Had a professor in college. Her name was Mia Yoshida … ” He left out his sexual fantasies. “ … I had never seen him put in his place like that, before or after.”

Instead of making her laugh at the end of the tale as he had intended, her eyes were glistening. “And then you got stuck with Meryl.”

He sighed heavily. “Well. Yeah.”

“And your wife?”

“She’s … everything I ever fantasized about and more.” And so he told her about that pivotal moment when he saw a very young karate instructor and carried her as his beacon of hope, a tiny match in the darkness, for fifteen years. “And then … turns out, I was married to her.”

Now Ilora really did have tears rolling down her cheeks. “What an awful story,” she whispered, to Bryce’s shock and dismay. “That you had to go through all that just to— To have love. To have a basic human need met, and for so long.”

Oh. When she put it like that, yes, he supposed it was awful.

“Did—” He stopped. He didn’t want to know. “Did my dad love me at all?”

She looked at him, her expression sad. “I don’t know.”

“I knew I wasn’t wanted, but … I mean, at some point, you stop thinking of your kid as a mistake and start to love him, right? So I just told myself … ”

“I’m not sure he loved anybody once Kimball—may he burn in hell—got hold of him. While Mark and I were dating, he was perfectly fine. Smiled, joked, not a control freak. I’m telling you, it was like some switch flipped, or he was possessed. I would absolutely believe Kimball was a demon who got his hooks in a weak man.

“Mark was so confused and so while I’m watching this change, seeing how your dad was when you were little, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that this is my kids’ future, I’m trying to pull my husband out of the muck. Mark had me in one ear pointing out how he was behaving and why it was wrong, and this guy he’d always loved and respected turned into a different man altogether who was saying things he’d never even hinted at believing.”

“Where did you get the strength to blow all that up?”

She shrugged. “I’ve always known who I was and my parents fostered that. It was a gift and I didn’t know until I watched your dad change and my husband stumble around like he was dizzy. And I was not going to let that happen to my children.” She paused. “The next-to-last straw was when Mark was reading a book and your dad hit the roof when he mentioned it. I have never seen someone get that red in the face. Here’s Mark, a grown man, mid-thirties, with a professional career and kids and a wife and a nice house—and he’s standing there completely bewildered by why his dad’s yelling at him—in front of his kids—over a book.” She took another bite. “So of course I had to read it to find out what the problem was and—wow. What a ride.”

Bryce looked at her in question.

“The Fountainhead.”

Bryce gaped, then started to grin, then started to laugh.

Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “I figured you might get it. That was a turning point for Mark. That book spoke to him somewhere deep inside and then the divorce put him over the edge.”

“So after your meeting with my dad, what happened?”

Ilora shrugged. “He backed off. I never told Mark about it because I felt it would make him feel bad for not having his head on straight enough to do it himself. But he was so bewildered and he didn’t have a firm enough handle on theology to straighten himself out. I just told him he needed to cut his dad off until further notice or I’d pull the trigger on the divorce, take everything and the kids, and he’d be paying me crippling alimony for the rest of my life. Eventually, oh, three, four years, I guess, your dad came to me and asked us to Christmas dinner. He seemed penitent, so okay. And he was quiet. He tried to be nice grandpa for the kids, but they were young and he was more of a curiosity than anything else. I could see him struggle to keep his mouth shut, especially if the kids said something stupid or used the wrong fork. Honestly, I think your mom had something to do with that.”

“I’m not sure she loved me, either,” Bryce grumbled.

“She most definitely did,” Ilora contradicted stoutly. “However, she was already tired before she got pregnant with you, being a bishop’s wife for years and then a stake president’s wife. People taking from her constantly, giving nothing back, not even a thought or good vibe directed her way. She had to have a complete hysterectomy after she had you, and she hit menopause immediately. Try having postpartum depression and menopause at the same time, with no one to help you, and the wonderful and doting man you married and had two other kids with has slowly turned into an arrogant tyrant who doesn’t spare you a thought much less lend you a hand. It was about all she could do to drag herself out of bed most days and I’m shocked she managed as well as she did.”

“Oh,” Bryce said, because there was nothing else to be said.

“She was long past putting up with anybody’s crap, and that included your dad’s and most everybody she knew, so she kept to herself. She had been a very loving woman and I honestly believe she did the best she could, but she had nothing left to give anybody. Stopped going to church because she was constantly hounded for something, but nobody checked up on her. I babysat you most days after you were weaned, until you went to school—”

Bryce didn’t remember that.

“—and then … she seemed to disappear into herself. A ghost. I never asked her to babysit my kids and I always hosted holidays, and then when I cut your dad off, I told her explicitly she was to come. She did and my mom pampered her. Life went on, you went away, and then she found out she had cancer, which she told no one about until she had to have someone to take her to chemo, and she asked me.”

That made no sense. “Well, why didn’t my dad—”

“She hadn’t told him her diagnosis because he didn’t go to her first appointment with her because he thought she was being dramatic. Go to the doctor. Why do you need me there?”

Bryce didn’t think he’d ever felt rage surge so hard and so fast in his life, not even at Meryl, but somehow he kept it together.

“When I brought her home after her first chemo and she was a mess, as one is after, he was in his office reading his scriptures. She went straight to their bedroom, slammed the door, locked it. He came out and asked me what was wrong with her. It was all I could do not to slap him. I asked him if he understood what chemotherapy actually did to people. He looked at me as if he had never heard the word before, and then I wondered if she’d told him anything at all. I said he was a disgrace as a husband, father, and priesthood holder, and left.”

Now it didn’t matter to Bryce whether his mother had loved him or not. She’d spent the last years of her life married but alone, the same way Bryce had.

“After that, I don’t know if he offered or tried to take care of her and she refused, or he didn’t for whatever reason, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. If I couldn’t make her appointments, my mom or dad took her. I made freezer meals, kept her fridge stocked, did laundry, and generally whatever your dad should’ve done or paid to have done. She wasn’t volunteering information and I wasn’t going to poke in her business, but not only did your dad not step up, neither did anyone in the ward, and there he is out there helping others, counseling, advising, looking like the perfect stake president and being smug about it. To the ward, she just … didn’t exist.”

And she’d gotten the same reward for her service that Bryce had—nothing.

“Where was Serena?”

Ilora tsk’d. “Don’t blame her. She had her own problems. She was going it alone in her marriage too, plus she had kids and her youngest son was a nightmare—which your dad made sure to hit her with every time he saw her. Kid was headstrong. Thought he knew everything. Got caught up in the wrong crowd, drugs, rehab over and over again, gambling, you name it. Orin has no spine, then or now, so Serena had no backup and the justice system isn’t set up to help parents with a rotten kid. So that one, well … ” She heaved a sigh. “Vehicular manslaughter.”

Bryce choked on his sandwich.

“He was drunk. Did some time. No idea where he went when he got out, but we do not talk about that. So, your mom didn’t want Serena to know about the cancer because she was also hanging by a thread, and we respected that. We told Serena they caught it too late for treatment, but you know what’s most heartbreaking about the whole thing?” Bryce couldn’t imagine anything worse, but now Ilora was getting wound up. “Your mom refused to speak. To anybody. Unless it was ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘pass the salt’ and ‘double-double.’ I tried to engage her. My parents tried. She was pretty much invisible to the kids because they’re kids. That’s what they do. Her funeral was … sparse, which is probably why Serena was so hateful about your not being there, and your dad was collecting condolences like he’d achieved something big, pontificating about sin from the pulpit—”

She would have kept talking, but Bryce put up a hand. It was too much. He needed silence for a bit—a long bit, it turned out. Ilora scrolled her phone, ate, drank, respected his need.

He had a twinge of guilt for not being there for his mother, but realistically, he couldn’t have been, and he shouldn’t have had to be anyway. That had been his father’s job and— Bryce couldn’t imagine leaving Giselle to face something so devastating alone, much less accuse her of being “dramatic” if she felt off enough to mention it. His heart ached and hate was starting to flow through him.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “Um. So,” he croaked, “about that. The funeral. Serena said Mark tried to find me to notify me about both, but I was—” He pulled his hand down his scarred cheek.

Ilora nodded and finished her bite. “We didn’t even know where to start looking. We didn’t know Knox’s last name. We didn’t know where he was from. We knew he was an heir to a big corporation, but couldn’t even remember if we’d ever known its name.”

Bryce tried to think, but it was so difficult right now trying to trudge through this vat of cold molasses. “My dad. He had access to church records. He would’ve been able to find me, at least call my bishop and ask why I wasn’t answering the phone or … ”

Ilora studied her sandwich with pursed lips. “He … refused. Refused to call. Refused to give us any information. Mark begged. The more he begged, the more he dug his heels in.”

That shoved a spear right into Bryce’s gut so hard he couldn’t breathe. He bowed his head and tried to calm his racing heart.

“That’s another thing Serena doesn’t know.”

“He hated me that much,” Bryce rasped, his damaged vocal cords burning.

“I don’t think love or hate has anything to do with it,” Ilora said softly. “He found you to be disloyal and was angry. He was punishing you the only way he could for choosing Knox over him, the way he resented Mark for choosing me over him. He was rotten with pride. Desperation. Insecurity. And that didn’t start happening until Kimball came to town.”

Loyalty. Bryce hated that word, hated the whole concept. It was one of the reasons Bryce hated how Giselle’s family treated her, always in the name of loyalty. He stopped being loyal the second he realized his kids were in danger from their mother, then left Marston and took clients with him.

Finn hated Bryce for doing that, for stabbing him in the back, but Bryce also suspected Finn was one of the people who kept him afloat through his coma because Finn wasn’t an asshole and he knew Bryce. Finn also had enough power and connections to make an end run around legalities to act on Bryce’s behalf.

At this point, Bryce was not going to recover enough to have any further conversation and Ilora seemed to know that, because she went back to her phone, which was good because Bryce could barely lift his head, much less finish his food.

Some time passed. He didn’t move when his phone chimed, but Ilora picked it up, read, put it back. She arose, cleared the table, and held her hand out for Bryce to take. He took the hint and arose, letting her guide him to the car. They didn’t speak except for Ilora telling the driver where to take her. Once at her home, she hugged Bryce and slipped out of the car, allowing the driver to escort her to her door.

“Hotel, sir?”

“Yeah.”

Once in his hotel room, Giselle took one look at him and just … knew. Somehow. She went to the bathroom and started running water while he collapsed on the sofa and buried his head in his hands. She drew him up to start undressing him. She took his wallet and phone out of his pockets, tapped stop on the recording, then went about the business of getting him into the tub.

The nice thing about expensive hotels, he thought vaguely as he soaked in the hot water and bubbles, was that they had nice, big tubs he could fit in. He was spoiled after Giselle had redone their bathroom to accommodate an enormous soaking tub.

She kissed the top of his head, then disappeared.

He knew what she was doing and he knew what she would do when she finished listening to the whole conversation.

Never, in his most nihilistic dreams could he have imagined his father could be that cruel.

It had never been about the church at all. Just one petty tyrant with a tiny taste of power in a niche community exacting revenge from someone he ultimately couldn’t control.

Bryce had been out with Ilora for about an hour or so, he guessed, so it was about an hour before Giselle came back, nude. She laid her hand on his shoulder and pressed him forward so she could slip in behind him.

He laid his head back into her bullet-pocked left shoulder and let his eyes close.

GISELLE AWOKE THE next morning to an empty bed, as expected. Bryce had reluctantly gone surfing after Knox had hounded him into it at an impressive volume. Funeral’s over. I’m going surfing and you’re going with me. But she lay there and sobbed for her husband, the one person she couldn’t protect, the one person whose burdens she could not help carry because he wouldn’t share them with her.

How much pain did one man have to carry before he caught a break? Or broke?

“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you let him go through that?”

And why had Ilora told him all that? Maybe she just thought he should know the truth, which was fair. Giselle would want to know. Maybe she didn’t think the conversation would get that deep.

Why did anybody have to go through all these bad things? Now Giselle really felt ashamed of being so whiny about not being married and not having children when this man, this strong, valiant warrior she loved had endured so much pain alone and, except for Knox, had never had a scrap of love until she showed up forty years after he was born.

No wonder he was so stunted.

She had a family that loved her. Shit, even the guy who’d tried to kill her loved her and would do almost anything for her so long as she didn’t come between him and OKH or insult his wife. She did not understand how a father could just …

A boy does not become a man until his father dies.

She dragged herself out of bed, into a maternity swimsuit and shorts, down to the restaurant for breakfast, just wanting to go home or, in the alternative, splash in the pool. She didn’t know how long she lounged on the pool deck, if she slept or dozed, if she astral projected somewhere, before Knox and Bryce found her. They were laughing, which was good, but Bryce’s laughter died when he saw her splotchy red face because she cried ugly.

“Uh … ” Knox said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll go fetch the plane.”

“No,” Giselle croaked. “You’re both happy and you need to go back out tonight. Tomorrow. Couple more days. I didn’t—I didn’t understand how cathartic it is, and Bryce needs more.”

“Come with us,” Bryce murmured gently. “I’ll teach you.”

“I don’t like the ocean. I can’t keep my balance wading, I can’t keep a foothold in the sand, and I don’t know how to swim.”

Shocked silence. “You … don’t?” Knox asked carefully.

“No. Neither does Sebastian. We never got lessons.”

“Why don’t I know this?”

Giselle shrugged. “It’s not something you randomly ’fess up to. One of those basic life skills you need but we never got because we were poor, and then we were too old.”

“Then come and watch,” Bryce said. “Please.”

Giselle looked into Bryce’s beautiful green eyes and realized what he was asking: He needed to show off for her. “Okay.”

THEY ARRIVED AT the beach at five a.m., Bryce and Knox both dressed in swim trunks, with boards and various beach accoutrements under their arms. The very expensive pro-level equipment they’d bought would be left behind for some poor struggling surfers. Giselle tagged along carrying shit she’d need to set up shop on the beach and watch. There were a lot of people here already, relatively speaking, for five a.m.

They got their spot staked out and Giselle set up her chairs and umbrella, drinks and food, music and binoculars. Bryce and Knox did something to their surfboards and chattered excitedly, as if the days before had not happened. She didn’t know if she should help them do something or not, or just be the groupie. There were a lot of those around, it seemed.

The two of them were starting to attract attention.

“Hey, weren’t you here yesterday?”

“Yeup,” Bryce said to the young man who approached.

“You weren’t half bad for newbs. What’re you doing on this beach?”

Knox laughed. “We are far from newbs. Just rusty.”

“Where you from?”

“Kansas City,” Knox answered.

At the kid’s skeptical expression, Bryce added wryly, “I’m a native. I grew up surfing on this beach.”

“Cool! Good talk!”

And off he went. “He looks like Junior,” Giselle observed, watching him go. “Only bigger.”

“Oh,” Knox said, startled, looking after him. “Yeah, he does.”

“Who’s Junior?” Bryce asked.

“Eric Cipriani, Junior,” Knox said. “Simone Whittaker’s kid, whom she got pregnant with while Eric was at BYU, yet named him as the kid’s father on his birth certificate. That was a helluva knot to get untangled. Got him off the birth certificate but the court refused a name change because the kid was too young to give his opinion.”

Soon they were finished and Knox broke into a run toward the ocean, board under his arm. Bryce kissed Giselle lustily, but when he would have pulled away, she drew him tighter, lengthening the kiss, deepening it. “I love you, Ares,” she whispered.

“I love you, too, Wife. I don’t know how I lived my life without you.”

“I just want you to be happy.”

He smiled and stroked his crooked finger down her cheek. “I have never been happier in my life than I am right now. My beacon of hope watching me do one of my most favorite things in the world.”

Then he turned and ran to the ocean, his native habitat, with a roar, and she watched, proud and humbled that that magnificent man loved her.

★