Chapter 1
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honor the memory of Evelyn Louise Parker. Born in the dustbowl of Oklahoma on November 22nd 1972, Evelyn spent most of her young life on her family’s ranch...”
Logan squinted at the coffin, his eyes safely hidden behind a pair of designer shades. It was a hot day. Much hotter than he’d anticipated. But then again, he didn’t have much of an idea what to anticipate. He had never been to Detroit. He’d never even been to Michigan. At least, that’s what he’d believed up until a few days ago.
“...cherished by all those who knew her, Evelyn Louise was a beloved mother, daughter, and friend...”
A trickle of sweat ran down the back of his neck, and Logan shifted uncomfortably in his suit. He was the only person at the tiny cemetery who was wearing one. A fact that made him stick out like a sore thumb. Everyone else was in their best approximation of Sunday finery. Skirts. Slacks. Loafers. There was enough polyester to cover a city block. The sunglasses didn’t help. Neither did the ten-thousand-dollar watch. At this point, he could only be glad that he’d asked his driver to park the limo around the corner—where it wouldn’t draw attention.
Not that it really mattered. He had never seen any of these people before in his life, and there was little likelihood he would see them again. He’d never been to this city, never set foot in this tiny cemetery. He didn’t know the woman they were burying in the ground.
Truth be told, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing there.
He didn’t owe allegiance to this woman. He hadn’t been obligated to get on a plane and fly halfway across the country to attend her funeral. He hadn’t even heard the name Evelyn Louise Parker until a few days ago when his secretary had placed a sealed file on his desk.
He’d been hard at work when it happened. Elbow deep in a conference call that spanned across three different continents, as he tried to finalize a construction deal that would allow him to build a luxury resort in both Barcelona and Guam. He didn’t recognize the writing scrawled across the manila envelope, and such things were rarely written by hand. It was rarer still that a package from an unknown source would wind up on his desk. When he flashed a questioning look at his secretary, she had shrugged apologetically and pointed to the notarized stamp in the upper left-hand corner. ‘Wayne County Coroner’s Office.’ His eyebrows lifted slowly as the phone came down away from his ear.
Yeah—he would have put it on his desk too.
He got off the phone quickly, dismissed Annalise on the day’s eighth coffee run, and proceeded to read about the death of his birth mother. A woman he’d never met. A woman he had no real interest in, until discovering that she had suddenly passed away.
“...a hard woman, who led a hard life,” the minister continued in a grave voice. “But a pure joy to those who knew her. Her work at the local food bank touched hundreds of lives...”
When the coffee came back, he’d ignored it and opted for something stronger. Reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk to pull out a bottle of scotch. The first glass was to get over the shock. The second glass was to steady his hands as he opened the dossier and began slowly reading through the trials and tribulations of Evelyn Louise Parker.
There wasn’t much to tell. She was born in a small town, moved to a bigger town, got pregnant young, and had proceeded to hold a series of meaningless jobs until finally succumbing to cancer at the age of forty-four. The woman had abandoned him at birth, gave him away to strangers. What kind of mother would do that? He sighed. She must’ve had her reasons.
Then a single sentence changed his world. A sentence that changed everything. One that Logan heard the minister repeating as the final flowers were laid upon the casket.
“Evelyn is survived by her two sons, Logan and Dylan.”
Two sons. Not one, but two. Logan had a brother.
“Some of you don’t know that she gave birth to two boys and gave them up for adoption,” said the minister. “She hid it well for years. But before she died, she wanted them acknowledged here today. She loved her sons and hoped one day to meet them.”
Logan swallowed hard.
Tears welled up in his eyes when they lowered her into the ground. When his own parents had died, taken in a car crash when he was seventeen, he’d been inconsolable. He crossed himself, as this was a Catholic neighborhood, and went back to the car. Before anyone could spot him and ask for his name. Before any devoted family and friends of Evelyn Louise Parker could discover that one of her sons had come home.
“How was it, sir?” Jerry Holbert, Logan’s personal driver, quickly lowered his newspaper and went around to the back of the limo to open the door. “Looked like a beautiful service.”
Logan glanced back at the ceremony, then shrugged out of his suit jacket—quickly exchanging it with the one Jerry was holding in his hand. When he’d seen the overall attire of the other attendees, he’d forced the poor man to trade with him. Not that it mattered in this neck of the woods. These people didn’t care about labels. A suit was a suit.
“Yes, it was a beautiful service,” Logan said.