Zach was vaguely aware the tow truck guy had stopped work to gape at the scene being enacted on the lawn. But he couldn’t tear his gaze from Jack Percy’s stunned expression.
“What would make you say that?” Jack asked. He might still have been going for belligerent, but his voice faltered.
Bran looked as hot under the collar as Zach had yet seen him. He snarled, “I walked in on you, in my parents’ bedroom. You were both so busy, you didn’t even see me.”
Jack took a cautious step back. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your mom came on to me, not the other way around.”
Bran leaned in, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “And that made it okay? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Ah...”
“You son of a bitch. Do you have any idea how much I wanted to tell Dad?”
A nerve beneath Jack’s eye twitched. “Why didn’t you?”
Bran huffed out a breath then turned his back on their father’s old friend. He walked in a small circle before facing him again. “I would have if my parents hadn’t split up anyway.” He shook his head. “But don’t you dare blame her. You were on top.”
Jack’s face worked. He was actually afraid, Zach realized. And maybe he should be. Bran had stored up even more hostility than Zach had realized, maybe because he’d had to keep his mouth shut while seeing the friendship endure between Dad and this man.
Jack looked sidelong at Zach as if suddenly becoming aware someone else was there. His expression of dawning shock gave Zach, at least, some satisfaction.
“Zach? Is that you?”
“It’s me.” He didn’t elaborate.
“What the—?” Jack’s gaze darted from one brother to the other.
“Do you want to know why I’ve been asking questions?” Bran had a grip on his temper again. His voice had become silky.
Jack didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“What I’d really like to know is whether you thought Sheila was as pretty as Mom. Whether you had a taste for little girls. Maybe you still do. What do you say, Jack?”
There was a frozen moment during which Jack processed what Bran had just suggested.
Then, with an angry roar, he flung himself forward, a big fist swinging for Bran’s face.
Zach stepped toward them, but Bran had already blocked the punch and stuck out his foot, sending their father’s old friend crashing to the ground.
Then Bran planted that same foot on his back and put some weight on it as he bent forward. “Want to try that again, Jack?”
The older man’s face flushed dark red. He didn’t move, but his glare could have lit the coals in a grill.
“Answer me, Jack. Did you ever even think about what it would be like with my little sister?”
“No! Goddamn it, no! That’s sick. I’d never...” His body sagged.
“But you’d betray your wife and your best friend both,” Bran said with contempt.
Jack’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your mom...she was so beautiful. I never thought I could have a woman who looked like her. I let it go to my head, but it’s not like I really had her anyway. Her interest didn’t last very long, you know. She moved right along.” Old hurt was in his voice. But something else, too.
Bran removed the foot he’d had planted on Jack Percy’s back. His eyes briefly met Zach’s, his naked torment visible.
Lip curled, Zach looked down at the piece of shit lying on his lawn. “I suppose you felt real bad after.”
“I always wondered if Michael knew,” Jack mumbled. “And Janet—” He choked. “I hope to God she doesn’t. I’m lucky to have a good woman like her. I just... I went crazy there for a while.”
Nothing he said suggested real remorse, Zach couldn’t help noticing.
“Get up,” Bran snapped.
Jack pushed himself awkwardly to his hands and knees, then by degrees to his feet. Grass stained his canvas carpenter pants. He brushed at his shirtfront. At last he lifted his shamed gaze to Bran and Zach, now standing shoulder to shoulder.
“Hate me for what I did, but nothing in the world would have made me hurt Sheila. She was the sweetest kid—” He swallowed. “And I got to say one more thing. All that talk about your dad...” He shook his head. “He’d no more have done something like that than I would have. You kids were everything to him. What happened to her broke him. His job was to keep her safe. He could never understand how he didn’t hear the back door opening and closing. Why didn’t she scream? Call for her daddy? And what if she had and he didn’t hear? Do you know how many million times he asked himself that? His little girl dying that way, him losing her, and then his wife and his youngest boy, too.” He looked at Bran. “He hid the worst of it from you, but it about killed him. I guess maybe it did, in the end.”