Old Fashioned - Becker Brothers

He pressed his palms on top of his desk, leaning over it with a sympathetic expression, like he felt sorry for us.

I surged forward again, but my brothers held me still.

“While I expect this sort of behavior from you lot,” he said to me and my brothers before turning to Mallory. “I’m disappointed in you. I raised you to be smarter than this. And regardless of how you feel about me, I expected better.”

To her credit, Mallory didn’t react to his insult. Her gaze was steady while I felt completely unhinged.

He turned back to us, standing tall, voice booming. “I am Patrick fucking Scooter, you dimwits. I own this town and everyone in it. You won’t win. Do you hear me? You will never win.”

He stood even straighter, somehow, before sniffing as if he’d just realized he’d let himself get a little carried away during a board meeting.

“Now,” he said. “If it will make you feel better, I can write you a check for two-hundred-thousand dollars. That’s more than just a little something to help your mom, and we can put this all behind us.”

I roared, and my brothers no longer held me back.

“You heartless sonofabitch!” I yelled first. “How dare you! That’s our father. He was your friend!”

“You have the nerve to offer us money for his death?” Noah barked.

Logan was right behind us, and being that he was the peacekeeper of our family, I was shocked when he lunged at Patrick and I had to hold him back. “He trusted you,” he screamed, his eyes glossing with tears. I knew he was angry they were showing. “He came to you with what he found and you betrayed him, betrayed your own father and his dying wishes!”

Mallory grabbed his arm, and her tender touch seemed to rein him in just enough not to kill her father, but it was still complete and total chaos. We were all flying toward him, screaming, asking him how he could live with himself, how he could do this to us, to his daughter, to someone who used to be his friend. It was like a tornado unleashed in that study until an unfamiliar voice broke through it with a high-pitched scream.

We all fell quiet, turning to find Mary Scooter standing in the office doorway.

“That’s enough,” she said, chest heaving as she looked at her husband and then at the rest of us.

“Mama…” Mallory said, standing.

It was quiet as her mother looked at her — really looked at her, not the way she had when we first got to the house, but as her daughter. Her eyes took in Mallory’s swelling belly, and then she covered her mouth as tears flooded her eyes.

“This is business, Mary,” Patrick said to her dismissively. “We’ll be done soon, I assure you.”

“No.”

It was one, simple word, but when it came from that little woman’s lips, it felt like an earthquake.

Mary looked so much like Mallory, or maybe it was Mallory who looked like her. The angle of their eyes, the slope of their noses, the pinch between their eyebrows as they watched each other in that room. Mary was shorter than Mallory, and her hair was a dark brown where Mallory’s was naturally a dirty blonde. But it was there, the resemblance, and it was almost like they’d just noticed it in that moment, too.

I’d rarely heard Mary speak in all the years I’d known her. She was soft and quiet, always standing behind her husband and smiling, playing her part.

But in that moment, she stood on her own — for maybe the first time.

I felt it.

Everyone in that room did.

“Enough,” she repeated, shaking her head. “I’ve had enough. Of your lies, your corruption, your… power trips. This is our daughter, Patrick.” She pointed at Mallory like her husband must have forgotten that fact. “She’s pregnant. We’re going to be grandparents. And whether you like it or not, Logan is the father, and that means the Beckers are our family, too.”

“They most certainly are not,” Patrick argued.

“We have to make this right!” she screamed back at him, shaking her head. “I never knew… not for sure. I always wondered, but I never questioned you about that night.” She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. “That’s me, right? Always content to sit back and let you run the show, to tell me what part to play. But… I heard everything just now,” she confessed. “Everything, Pat. And I swear to God that I will testify against you if you do not make this right.”

Patrick’s mask crumbled a little at that, and he seemed genuinely surprised and hurt as he stared back at his wife. “Mary…”

“No, don’t even try,” she said, holding up her finger. “I love you, Patrick Scooter, but I will not watch anyone suffer any longer, paying the price of a scorned man who never got over his first love rejecting him.”