Jet’s heart was hammering as they entered the house. Shane wrapped an arm around her just inside the entrance. “Don’t worry,” he said, kissing her. “Everything will be fine.”
If only she could believe him. Her head tipped and she looked up into his eyes. “Will it?”
“Yes. Regardless of the outcome, it will be fine.”
“That’s not really what I wanted to hear.”
His mouth quirked. “I know. But I learned early that you don’t always get what you want.”
His mocking tone made her feel a little pang. “But you might just find you get what you need?”
He kissed her again, ignoring the Sheenans surrounding them. “I love a little Rolling Stones,” he replied before letting her go.
With an easy smile, he turned away and followed Brock down the hall.
Shane wasn’t nervous as he headed down the hall to Brock’s study, but he wasn’t quite as calm as he appeared, either.
He’d waited years for this moment and now that it’d come, he wasn’t sure he was ready for it. But then, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for it. Perhaps it was a good thing Jet had forced the issue.
Once they were all in the study, the door closed behind Trey. For a moment no one said anything, they just took positions, conscious of the space around them.
Shane had now met them all, except for Brock, and it was Brock who was staring at him, his hard features shuttered even as his narrowed gaze studied Shane intently.
Shane would have known Brock was a Sheenan anywhere. He was big like the others, and solid. In his early forties now, he exuded strength and a quiet, no-nonsense confidence.
“You were at the cabin at Cherry Lake.” Cormac broke the silence, his tone more challenging then aggressive. “Why?”
“I wasn’t sure if it was the place I remembered. I hoped it was.”
“And?” It was Brock who asked the question.
Brock was definitely the big brother here, and had become the head of the Sheenan clan in the absence of their father.
“It was,” Shane answered, meeting Brock’s dark intense gaze. “And then I went to the cemetery and found her grave and Grandmother’s, too.”
The silence was deafening. No one said anything for an endless span of time. They all just looked at him.
Shane opened the Bible and flipped to the page he’d shown Jet last night. “This.” He put his finger on the blank space. “This is me.” And then he handed the book to Brock.
Brock didn’t even look down. He just gave the Bible to Troy who was standing on his right and then the Bible was passed to the other two.
Shane just waited. This was no longer his big revelation. This was theirs. He would let them control the conversation, and the questions.
“I don’t understand why you’d rent the cabin. Why the Cray cabin?” Trey asked.
“Because it’s the only memory I had. Or thought I had. The only time I could see her was when she was at Cherry Lake, with you all.”
Cormac frowned. “According to this, we were born less than a year apart. So where have you been?”
“At Flathead Lake with Grandmother until I was four, and then she died and I went into foster care.” Shane was careful to keep his tone neutral. He wasn’t here to be accusatory. They were in no way to blame and they deserved to know the facts.
It crossed Shane’s mind that they either didn’t believe him, or didn’t want to believe him.
“We didn’t even see Grandmother,” Cormac said eventually.
“That’s not true,” Troy answered. “We’d go to the cabin at least once a year and I’m sure she came to see us.”
Brock’s deep voice added, “We went to see you.”
Every head turned towards him.
“Mom called you a cousin. She’d say, ‘your cousin Sean Cray is here to play,’ and Gram would sometimes bring other Cray cousins, or Finley cousins, and we’d swim in the lake and Mom would sit in a chair near the water’s edge and just drink you in.”
“I don’t remember that,” Cormac said.
Trey’s forehead furrowed. “I remember swimming in the lake with other kids. There were girls and a boy. Two or three years old, but he could swim better than the girls.”
Brock nodded. “That was Shane.” He looked to Shane. “You have two names because Mom and Gram wanted to protect you. They couldn’t use your birth name because Dad didn’t know that it was Gram who adopted you. He was told you were with a family in Sheriden, Wyoming. But Gram took you and raised you, and then she had a heart attack and there was no way Mom could bring you home. And she was never the same after that.”
Cormac crossed his arms over his chest. “We haven’t run a DNA test. We haven’t seen the results. This could be just another one of his stories. We don’t know that he really is related to us—”
“I’m sure,” Brock said flatly.
“How can you be sure?” Cormac retorted. “You were seven when he was born!”
“And eleven the last time I saw him, and I know him. I would know him anywhere—”
“But there was a DNA test,” Shane interrupted. “I hired a PI. We used a paper cup Troy discarded to test. Troy came back a ninety-nine percent match. I can’t speak for everyone, but Troy and Trey are both full-blood brothers.”
“I don’t need a DNA test,” Brock said impatiently. “I know him. I know those eyes. And that scar, the one on his chin. I was there when he got it. He was playing with a sharp stick at the lake and he fell and it went through the inside of his lip and out his chin. I held him in the car while Mom raced him to the hospital—”
“Mom couldn’t drive,” Troy said.
“Yes, she could. She always drove when we went to Cherry Lake. Dad just didn’t let her drive often here.”
“Why?” Trey demanded.
“Control.” Brock’s expression was hard. “That way she couldn’t know too much about his business. Or where he went.”
“Like meet with Bev,” Troy said bitterly.
Brock nodded. “It’s why I left. Why I moved out. I hated how he treated Mom. We’d come to blows over it. Mom couldn’t stand him it so I left, hoping things would get better, but they didn’t.”
Shane had been listening to this but there was another memory whispering. He remembered pain and blood, tasting blood and someone running with him, a boy, a big boy, and the boy kept telling him it would be okay, he was getting Mom…
Shane drew a sharp breath and looked away. The boy was Brock. Brock running with him, and Mom was his mom….
“I remember,” he said quietly. “I remember falling, and crying, and blood was everywhere and you ran with me. You had to run a long way, and you kept telling me it would be okay.”
Brock’s jaw worked. Shadows filled his dark eyes. “You tried hard to be brave.” His rough, low voice deepened. “You clutched my thumb and looked up at me the entire time, and I—” He broke off, voice hoarse and then he walked out.
For a long moment no one said anything and then Cormac turned to face Shane, and he stared searchingly into Shane’s face. “I’ve heard that story, of how Brock helped one of our cousins from the reservation. I had no idea—” He stopped, frowned. “I still can’t believe—” He broke off again, clearly uncomfortable.
“It’s taken me years to come to terms with all this,” Shane said, trying to ease some of the awkwardness. “And I’m still trying to make sense of it. I don’t expect you to open your arms and welcome me in as some lost brother. I’m too old for that. We are all too old for that—”
“I’m not.” Trey looked grim. “If DNA tests say you’re a Sheenan, you’re a Sheenan.”
Shane made a rough sound. “And what will you do with another Sheenan now?”
Troy shrugged. “Same thing we’re doing with our two half-sisters. Get to know them better. Figure out how to be a family with them. We’ve only known that they are Dad’s daughters for the past year and a half. It’s still an adjustment. Not seamless.
But we’re trying.”
Trey nodded. “What’s another adjustment?”
Shane glanced from Trey to Troy to Cormac and then nodded briefly before heading out to look for Brock.
Shane found Brock in the barn, feeding his horses. “I’m sorry,” Shane said. “Sorry to just roll up like this and drop a bombshell—”
“Don’t say that again. Don’t be sorry.” Brock’s voice was hard, strained. “I’m sorry. I knew you were out there somewhere and I tried to help Mom find you. In high school I helped her do this search—you’ll find her efforts in the attic in one of those boxes with her name on it—but you’d bounced around so much and the records weren’t well maintained and she couldn’t find you and then they told her you’d been adopted and were happy—”
“It wasn’t true.”
“She said as much. She told me that she felt you, and she felt your unhappiness, and it crushed her.”
Shane held the stall door for Brock as he entered with fresh feed. “Her death…” Shane didn’t know what he was trying to say. He struggled with the words. “Tell me it wasn’t because of me.”
“She grieved for you. I can’t deny that. But there were other things. Dad. His relationship with Bev. That minister fellow, from the traveling church.”
“Did they have a relationship?”
“I don’t know if it was ever consummated, but she carried a torch for him, for years. I think that’s what drew her to the revivals every summer. I think she had this fantasy that he’d take her away and give her a better life.” Brock returned the bucket to the corner. “Dad figured out something was going on, and put two and two together and created nine.” He exhaled and shoved a hand through dark thick hair. “I think you were sent away because Dad thought you might have been the minister’s.”
“So there must have been a physical relationship between Mom and Pastor Newsome.”
Brock shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. There are boxes in the attic. All of Mom’s personal things. Dad had us box everything up after she died. It was that, or burn them. You might be interested in those boxes, but the rest of us, we don’t look at them. We don’t want to look at them. She didn’t have an easy life. It’s hard enough living with the memories without reading about it in her diaries and letters.”