Fate (Killarny Brothers 1)

I stepped inside quietly, checking myself in the mirror of the nearest bathroom to make sure there was no hay in my hair. I was on a mission, and if I was stopped, I didn’t want any questions about where I had been, what I had been doing, or who I was doing it with. The last thing my father would want to hear was that I had been for a literal roll in the hay with a Killarny.

There was something for me to find. I knew there had to be, but I had no idea what I would be looking for or where I should start. My father was secretive by nature, but I hadn’t thought of him as someone who would deliberately tell a lie. We had always been so close, and it was difficult for me to think of him keeping something from me, especially something that seemed to be bothering him as much as this was.

There was only one reason he would do it — to protect me from some kind of truth he didn’t want me to find out. He had to know that I would eventually. The truth always came out, especially in situations when you didn’t want it to.

I opened the door to my father’s office with the key he kept hidden above the door frame. It was dark other than the lamp that he always kept on behind his desk. There was one single place I could think of that I hadn’t looked for any evidence of whatever was going on with the Killarnys, and this was the first opportunity I had been given to look there.

His desk. There was one drawer that he kept locked most of the time. I had always assumed that it was where he kept some valuables, but then again, he had never explicitly told me what it was for. I had caught him rummaging through it over the years, and he had been quick to close it, but I never asked what it contained. There are some questions you just don’t want to ask your parents and things you don’t probe about. I figured that if something was my business, he would tell me.

But now things were a little different. If he was keeping something from me or something underhanded was going on, I needed to know. I needed to know why he was so damn gung-ho about not letting the Killarny family race a horse in our derby.

I felt around the desk, trying to find somewhere I thought he might keep a key. If it was always on him, then I would be up shit creek, but suddenly I had a thought. There was a brass duck paperweight that he kept on the desk at all times. I picked it up and turned it over.

“Sara, all those mysteries you’ve read over the years have paid off,” I whispered to myself.

There on the underneath side of the duck was a small sliding panel. I slid it and inside there was a key. And sure enough, it fit right into the large drawer at the bottom of the desk, and the thing came open with a creak when I turned the key and pulled.

There was one file inside that was bigger than all the others, and I pulled it out first. The first sheet inside was a letter. I skimmed it enough to see that it was a letter from a woman to my father. The photo fell out and landed on the floor. I reached down to pick it up, and I thought the woman looked familiar, but it was an older photo, in black and white, of a woman who must have been in her early 20s, clad in a bathing suit, sitting poolside with a huge smile on her face.

When I turned it over and saw the name on the back, I knew exactly what this whole thing had been about.

The photo was signed, “Love, Emily.”

Chapter 9

Pete

The knock came on the trailer door early the next morning, but after Emma had already left to go find her friends for the day. When I opened the door and found Sara there, eyes red-rimmed from crying and a frown on her face, I had no idea what to expect. She pushed past me and sat down on my couch.

“Good morning?” I said.

She took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me that your mother and my father were having an affair while your parents were engaged?”

So, she had found the truth. I had a feeling that somewhere in all this mess that Ken Waters had the truth of what had been going on between him and my mother all those years ago, buried away, but close enough that he could look at it whenever he wanted.

“It wasn’t any of my business. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you because it is equally shameful to me.”

“It should be!” Sara shouted. “Your mother is the reason my parents’ got a divorce!”

I shook my head. “Sara, that can’t be true. It all occurred before your parents were ever married as far as I know.”

She nodded. “Yeah, you are right about that, but my father never got over your mother. Ever. Down to the day she died, the man was holding a torch for her and that now…now…that’s why he doesn’t want you guys to race.”

“I had a feeling it was about that. My father told me about it, after my mother’s death. There was no way he ever would have brought it up while she was still alive. That was something she did, and she felt a lot of remorse for it. My father and your father were best friends.”

“They were sleeping together, Pete. Your mother was sleeping with my father.”

I sat down beside her. “I know.”

“What led them to that?” Sara looked like she was in a daze.

I shrugged slightly. “The way my father explained it, it was not long after he and my mother got engaged. A few months or so. They got into a huge fight about something that he wasn’t able to remember, and my mother stormed off. They were at a derby in Kentucky, and your father was there. As my mother recounted it to my father and then he told me, she ran into your father who was very kind and supportive and had apparently always loved her. I think it was one of those situations where she fell into his arms, and he caught her. Things went from there.

My mother didn’t come back, and my father couldn’t find her again that night or the next day. It later came to light that she had gone to Tennessee with your father. She stayed at your grandparents’ estate for a few weeks before she came back and apologized to my dad.”

Sara just shook her head.

“I don’t know how my dad did it,” I said. “I mean, I’m glad he got over it or was able to work past his feelings or whatever. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t know how he managed to forgive your father, Sara. They were the best of friends and then…that all happened. It was like your dad was okay with throwing it away. Then years later, even though they were able to work with each other from time to time, things grew a little tense again. I think it was when my mom got sick. Your dad tried to come over and talk to her, but he was in a real state, and my dad didn’t want him upsetting her. He wouldn’t let him in the house. It wasn’t long after that my mother passed. Dad told me that he thought Ken might not take things so well as in, that he might try and do something because my father kept him from seeing her there at the end.”