“Your father and I have had a lot of differences over the years, as you are well aware, but I can tell you that he did love your mother, your real mother… and so did I. I was devastated when she died.”
“How did she die?”
George sighs deeply and leans forward. With his elbows on his knees, he lets his face fall into his hands. Clearly, he’s still torn up over it. Even after all this time, he looks like reliving the memories is extraordinary hard on him.
“At the end, it was our rivalry that killed her,” he admits, and the pain in his voice is almost too much for me. “She loved us both, and even though she had a child with Lionel, she would come to see me. He tried to forbid it, of course, but she was a bit untamable. That was one of the things I loved about her…like a wild horse, she would gallop wherever she pleased…” he trails off seemingly lost in his memory.
“She would frequently sneak out in the middle of the night to meet me somewhere,” George continues after a while. “One of those nights she had a car accident on her way home, a drunk driver swerved into her lane, hit her straight on… she died instantly.”
A tear trails down my cheek as I mourn the death of a woman I didn’t know and never will. The woman who gave me life. The mother I didn’t even know existed. The mother I would only ever know from stories and pictures.
“Your father blamed me, of course. If I had stayed away from her, she wouldn’t have been on that road. What he didn’t understand is that I tried, but she wouldn’t let me go. She loved me, and she wasn’t going to give me up. If your father would have accepted that fact, then she wouldn’t have snuck around in the middle of the night. He tried to control her, and he drove her away with that. She would have eventually come to me anyway.”
“So, you blamed each other for her death,” Sullivan points out.
“Yes… it was the seed that started it all, the seed that sprouted into hate and resentment over the years and led to a rivalry that has now touched the next generation, or so I thought. Obviously, you have somehow overwritten the hatred between our families.” George looks at Banks and at our intertwined fingers.
“But at what cost?” Oliver blurts out. “We were fighting for years, Sullivan almost lost everything, Harlow has been through hell and back… Christ, she almost died, and for what? Because you two couldn’t share the blame? Because from where I’m standing, it was everybody’s fault.”
“Maybe you’re right, but you can’t change the past, and I accepted that a long time ago. We can only control our own paths now and steer into the future we want. Now the question is, what kind of future do you want?”
“I want a future where I remember my past. I want to know where I came from, and I want to know where I belong,” I admit.
“You belong with us,” Oliver says, making his dad shift in his chair uncomfortably. I wonder if he knows what kind of relationship I have with his sons? Maybe he is trying to figure it out, or maybe he already suspected it. Either way, he is not saying a word about it.
“You know what I want for the future? I want Harlow to be safe,” Banks barks. “I want Shelby and whoever has been trying to hurt Harlow behind bars for good. And then I want everybody to leave us the hell alone and let us live our lives as we please.”
“Wait, why do you want Shelby behind bars? Isn’t she your friend?” George asks, looking between all of us with confusion.
“I remembered something… about Shelby. She was the one that hit me with the car.”
George looks genuinely shocked. “Did you go to the police?”
“Yes, we called the detective on my case. They are looking for her right now. But last we checked, they hadn’t found her yet.” I contemplate telling him about seeing Shelby and Dad together but decide against it. There is no real reason for him to know that part. “I wanted to talk to my dad about all of this, but the guys think it’s a bad idea.
George’s gaze collides with Banks’ when he speaks again. “I want you to stay out of this. All of you,” he looks to Sullivan and then Oliver. “I know you want to help Harlow, but you really need to stay out of it and let the police handle it.”
Banks sighs beside me, his fingers tightening around mine. He doesn’t answer, but I already know what he would say if he did. Something along the lines of, don’t tell me what to do because I’ll do what I want.