“And he took that?” Charlotte shook her head. “That was a low thing to do.”
“He left us destitute. Then my mom lost her job because she couldn’t afford a babysitter.” Anger made his voice harsh. “She’d always been so proud of giving me and Sailor everything we needed, but without a cushion of savings, we had nothing. We ended up in an emergency shelter.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything, just held him.
“I don’t think I can ever forgive him.”
“Then don’t.” She looked up. “But don’t nurture the anger. Be kind, be the better man. Be the man I know.” Touching his cheek again, she said, “He’s a sick old man who’s lost everything and everyone. You have a huge heart, Gabriel—find room in it to be kind.”
Gabriel wasn’t sure he was that good, but as time passed that morning, those wrinkled checks lingered on his mind. Brian Bishop was finally trying to fix his mistakes. Too little too late as far as Gabriel was concerned.
Be kind, be the better man. Be the man I know.
Rising from his chair, he stepped out to where Charlotte worked. “What time was his appointment?”
“Ten. Are you going?”
“I don’t know.” He still wasn’t sure when he parked the car in the hospital’s parking garage, but he got out and made his way to the correct ward.
You have a huge heart, Gabriel—find room in it to be kind.
Pushing the door, he went in.
31
A WHISPER OF EVIL
“ARE YOU OKAY?” CHARLOTTE asked when he returned to the office, rising to give him a tight hug.
Gabriel held her close. “He’s so old and frail.” A shadow of who Brian had once been. “Weak of the soul too.” That, he’d realized as he spoke to Brian today, was a frailty nothing could fix. “It seems a waste of time to be angry at a man like that.”
Brian had no strength, physical or emotional, was no kind of true opponent. Gabriel could destroy him in a heartbeat. Once, however, he’d have done anything Brian asked, been the son who shouldered any burden. He saw that knowledge in Brian’s eyes too, the knowledge of what he’d thrown away—and it just made Gabriel feel sorry for a man who’d realized his mistakes far too late to fix them.
“I’ll never see him as my father, but yeah, I can be kind to an old and sick man.” The bonds of family had been permanently broken; all he could offer was decency.
“For him,” Charlotte said, “I think it’ll be enough. He’s full of regret.”
Gabriel had no intention of ever becoming the same, of waking up one day to realize he’d wasted his life in anger at Brian, so he let it go. If the anger returned, he’d make the same choice. Because Charlotte was right: holding on to it was toxic, would hurt only him and the people around him.
“How bad is it?” he asked after claiming a deep, hungry kiss.
“I’m holding the wolves at bay.” She gave him two notes with phone messages. “Urgent, but I can clear you another hour if you need it.”
“Do it,” he said. “I need to talk to Sailor.” His brother had fewer memories of the time after Brian left, fewer negative emotions, but he’d stuck loyally to Gabriel’s stance.
When Gabriel tracked him to the commercial greenhouse where he was planting seedlings, Sailor gave him a disbelieving look. “You stayed with the bastard through his chemo?”
“Part of it.” Yet even that had made Brian pathetically grateful. “Charlotte says he’s not worth the energy of hating and she’s right.”
Sailor snorted. “Not worth our time either.”
“No, but Mom is,” he said, squeezing his brother’s shoulder. “Do this for her. If we don’t, she’ll end up going with him because she’s got a soft heart.”
Sailor blew out a breath. “Fuck. I’ll take him to his next appointment.” He took off his gardening gloves, put them down. “I’m not inviting him into my family—I don’t trust him.”
“Neither do I.” A tiger couldn’t change its stripes. “I’ve made sure he has good care.” For now it was as far as he could go. Perhaps Brian would one day redeem himself, but until then, Gabriel would try to be the better man Charlotte saw in him.
GABRIEL HAD BEEN BACK in the office for a couple of hours, the two of them frenetic with work, when reception called up to tell Charlotte she had a delivery. Tuck was the one who brought it up.
“Someone likes you, Charlotte,” he said with a wide grin before leaving.
It was a bouquet, but each “flower” was made up of pages from old romance novels. Smiling goofily, Charlotte searched for the card. There wasn’t one. A second later, she realized the writing was on the wide silver ribbon around the bouquet.
Other than her name, it had only a single line: Our story is just beginning.—T-R.
A little teary, she traced her finger over the signature. The gift meant all the more today, when she’d pushed her way into his emotional life, when she’d exercised her right to look after his heart as he looked after hers.
Plucking out one of the flowers, she took it into Gabriel’s office. He was standing by the window, arguing with someone on the other end of the phone, but waved her in. Going up to him, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, the text flower held in one hand.
She felt his smile in the way he closed his hand over her own, though the tone of his negotiation never changed. Dropping a kiss on his back, she put the flower by the small electronic calendar to one side of his desk and was about to leave when he turned to scrawl a note to her on the back of a draft report for the board.