Chapter Thirty-Six
Brock
I sit across from my father in his home office. He doesn’t speak at first, but it’s clear who’s in charge here. He has an office in the business building on the property, and he works a lot outside, but here—in his home office—is where he does his most important work.
The work that centers not on the business but on his family.
I never doubted that family is the most important thing in my father’s life. He’s made it clear since I can remember, when Brad and I were little. He taught us ranch work, and he taught us how to protect ourselves. We’re both crack shots, and we both know how to defend ourselves against an unarmed opponent as well.
He taught us the ins and outs of the business, the value of money, and how to be a leader.
Brad and I owe him everything.
While he taught us how to be men, our mother taught us compassion. How to care for other human beings. Our father may have taught us how to care for the animals on the ranch, but it was Mom who taught us how to care for each other.
Not that Dad doesn’t care for us the way Mom does. He would take a bullet for either one of us. I know that without a doubt.
But Dad is tough. Hard on the exterior. Hard as a rock, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look harder than he looks right now.
I wait. I know from experience that it won’t do any good to pressure my father into speaking. We’ll talk only when he is ready, and my impatience will have no bearing on anything.
So I keep my mouth firmly shut.
And I wait.
I could ask where Mom is, but I’m pretty sure she’s working on her latest book. She seems to spend every free moment she has, even on Sundays, working on her research or her writing. That’s been her focus since she retired from private practice.
Dad rakes his fingers through his black-and-silver hair. And I look at him. I gaze upon his face, and I notice that he’s starting to look…not old, exactly, though he is sixty-three.
But his face has the slightest of wrinkles, and he’s gray at his temples and on the stubble that graces his jawline.
So, no, he does not look old. But he does look…weary.
Not tired weary, but weary in a different way.
As if something is raining down on him—something he hoped was in the past forever. Buried.
Finally, he speaks.
“Your great uncle—half uncle—”
“Stop,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep emphasizing that he’s my half great uncle. Because he’s not direct blood.”
“So what?”
“Neither is Uncle Ryan, Dad. He has a different mother from the rest of you, but you don’t call him my half uncle. Dale and Donny don’t have any blood at all. You don’t call them my adopted cousins.”
He clears his throat. Gazes at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then, “You’re absolutely right, Brock. But the truth is, I don’t think of him as family. None of us knew him. We didn’t even know of his existence until about twenty-five years ago.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It makes all the difference. You grew up with Dale and Donny. They’re family to you. I grew up with Ryan. He’s family to me. Blood doesn’t make family.”
“I agree, Dad, but this guy does share our blood. His descendants want some of the Steel money, and they probably have a good claim.”
“Your uncle Bryce and I have been looking into this. They don’t have a good claim. I told you that it was my father who built this company into the enterprise that it is. He took it from a million-dollar company—a very small million-dollar company—to a billion-dollar company.”
I narrow my eyes. “How, Dad? How exactly did my grandfather do that?”
Dad goes silent once more.
“Why won’t you answer? I’m your son. You’re my father.”
“There are things… I wish I could change some of the things my father did,” he finally says. “He was a good man at heart. I try hard to believe that. I try hard to believe that he loved my mother. But he made her life hell. She was ill, Brock. So very ill. We didn’t know until we were older than you are now. This man—my father, your grandfather—faked his own death twice.”
“Yes, you told me.”
“He also faked his wife’s death.”
I try not to act surprised. I don’t want to act surprised at anything my father says. If I do, he may stop talking. In truth? I’m shaking on the inside. With fear. With anger. With shock.
“Just how ill was she?” I ask.
“Mentally ill, not physically. Apparently she suffered from dissociative identity disorder, and then she eventually broke with reality altogether. She was committed from the time Marjorie was about two years old.”