Yours to Keep by Claudia Burgoa

Chapter Twenty-Two

Vance

Six weeksafter Beacon wakes up from his coma, he’s back in Baker’s Creek. He’s not walking yet, but according to the physical therapist and Hayes, he’s making a lot of progress. Grace and his bandmates are with him. Instead of feeling jealous about their relationship with my brother, I embrace them and accept them as part of our family.

They even help me sneak out of the house to be with Dare. That doesn’t happen every night, though. Unlike Beacon, I still try to adhere to the rules. I can’t believe he left town for days at a time, and we never noticed. I’m not sure if I should be impressed or angry.

As a family, we get back into a routine. Hadley, the baker’s daughter, becomes the nanny. A few weeks later, Sophia gives birth to her twins. Thayer and Holton are a handful. I’m thankful for those days when one of Beacon’s bandmates stays in my room so I can stay at Dare’s place. I won’t lie; there are nights when I just use his bed to sleep. Dealing with four babies, covering for Henry and Sophia, and doing my own work leaves me exhausted. The following day, I feel guilty and fuck him thoroughly, but it’s not the same as fucking him all night long as I had promised.

Mills becomes a total cliché. He’s fucking his kid’s nanny. I’m trying not to judge him. Also, I’m keeping an eye on Arden. The kid is falling in love with Hadley. I’m afraid he’s going to think of her as his mom, and when she leaves, it’s going to be catastrophic. I don’t like my brother at the moment, but there’s nothing I can do.

Though, having Hadley here seems to be a good thing. Her mother knew our father. I still can’t get over the news that he worked for the bakery in high school. We’re hoping that maybe her family can help us figure out why we’re stuck in this town. Well, we also want to know about our father’s past.

William left a letter for each of us. The lawyer has been handing them to us when he thinks it appropriate. Mills and I haven’t received ours. The rest are waiting until we get them to open theirs. I’m curious to read what he had to say to each one of us. There’s a letter he left for Leyla that makes us believe that he once loved someone, probably his soul mate. Also, that he had to leave her or him.

After months of researching the town, I concluded that our father didn’t have many friends. The few he had were male.

That’s when the theory of ‘what if he was bisexual like me and no one ever knew?’ is born. He might’ve been gay and in the closet because his father would never allow him to be himself. It’s possible since he made us believe that he had a meaningful relationship. A love he had to leave, but he never forgot. I can’t remember the words he said, but that’s how it felt. I haven’t told my brothers this theory yet.

Mills asked Hadley to search a little about our father among her family. So far, she hasn’t found much. Today, Beacon, Grace, Mills, Hadley, and I are meeting at her house to develop a plan that’ll help us find that someone, or at least clues about his past.

The first thing Hadley says makes us laugh. “You understand this is weird, right? I’m investigating a dead guy.”

“Researching,” I correct her.

“It’s just asking questions,” Beacon says. “They wouldn’t think much about it if it’s coming from you.”

“Why can’t you ask the questions?”

“We already tried,” I answer. “In a casual, amicable way. If we start pressing for more information, that’ll look weird. Your family knew him.”

“Neither Mom nor my great aunt remember him dating anyone,” she says.

“Did he have any friends?”

“Not that they recall. It was a long time ago. There’s that guy, Christopher, but Mills mentioned that you can’t find him.”

Beacon and I look at each other because that’s right. We can’t find shit about him. We did find out that Jerome Parrish’s name changed. He has a family. He’s not our guy, but what if he is?

Beacon suddenly says, “There is something between Jerome and our father that he doesn’t disclose. He claims they weren’t friends, but he knows a lot more than he wants to tell us.”

I nod in agreement. Jerome is the key to something.

“Who is he?” Hadley asks, a little lost.

“Jerome Parrish,” I answer. “Our father’s lawyer. More like the former lawyer and the executor of the will.”

“I’ve been following him almost since day one,” Beacon says. “He’s not our guy. Though, I agree he knows more than he wants to admit.”

“They were lovers?” Grace suggests.

“I’m listening,” Beacon says.

“They were high school sweethearts,” she continues, and I think this is the first time I hear her speak more than a few words. “They had to hide it from everyone because it was the late sixties or maybe the early seventies. It was the time when two guys in a small town couldn’t love each other.”

“I don’t see our father with a guy like him,” Beacon says.

I frown. “Why not?”

He looks at me. “Would you date a guy five inches shorter than you and lanky? I think you prefer a tall, strong guy who’ll make you feel good under his submission but will make you feel powerful when he submits to you.”

I stare at him, impressed. He just described the man I like. The physical appearance doesn’t matter as much as how he makes me feel.

“Why are you analyzing…? I wouldn’t want to know what my parents want from their partners,” Hadley says, a little disturbed.

Beacon laughs. “I’d like to say I’m good at reading people, but a friend of mine ran a profile on our father a couple of weeks ago. I gave him our mothers’ personalities. They don’t have anything in common. I wanted to figure out his type, but we can’t find it. The profiler said that he could be bisexual or pansexual. That would give us a completely different set of parameters to search. It means that he fell in love with people he connected with, and that includes men too.”

I look at him, impressed by what he just said and upset because he never told me that. “You could’ve brought that up to me.”

“I was still toying with the idea of him being bisexual. You just brought it up. I added this to the table. Though, if he was bi, there had to be a known lover while he was with our mothers and later in life.”

“And maybe that’s why we haven’t found anyone,” I say. “We have a list of women he dated after our mothers found out about us, but never men.”

“Are there any other children besides you?” Hadley asks.

“No,” Beacon answers. “I looked into it, and we couldn’t find any more. We don’t want someone to suddenly appear and say, ‘hi, I’m Bridgette, and this is your father’s child.’”

“Why Bridgette?” Grace asks, confused.

“I don’t know. It sounded like an exotic, rich-sounding name,” he answers.

She brushes her lips against his. “I love you, fool.”

“What if this Bridgette appears out of nowhere?” Hadley asks.

I shrug. “We don’t know, but I can see Jerome fucking us up and saying, well, all the Aldridge siblings should’ve been under the same roof. You lose.”

Beacon shakes his head. “He can’t. There are only eight names in there. His six children, Blaire, and Leyla. You really think there are more children?”

“It doesn’t make sense that it’s just us. How in the world do you go from procreating children with every woman he fucked to nothing?” I ask.

“It wasn’t every woman.” Mills speaks for the first time since we arrived and kissed Hadley with a claiming passion that only an Aldridge can pull out.

He’s falling for her, and when she leaves, I’m going to kick his ass for being stupid.

Beacon pulls out the list of women my father dated. “There were a couple of women during the time he was with our mothers. Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t have children with them.”

“Right, I forgot about them,” I say.

Grace says, “We should go back and try to find out about the men behind William Aldridge.”

“That’d be a kicker,” Beacon says.

“What?” I ask. “I thought you were the one who thought he dated a man.”

“Oh, I was thinking about something else. I’m past that, my dude. Keep up with me. So, maybe after he left his true love, our father lost his mind,” he continues. “Something that roots from his high school years. He was okay up until he left Baker’s Creek. He was an older man—a teacher—and left him behind. Then William tried to destroy everyone, even this town.”

“That’s insane,” I tell him, unimpressed.

“He hit his head too hard during the accident,” Mills says.

Grace glares at him. “Don’t ever joke about that accident, or I’ll kick your ass.”

Mills mouths, Sorry.

“Why do you think that his broken heart is what pushed him to destroy everything?” I ask.

“Bennett went all serial killer after you left him,” he reminds me. “I got the T-shirt and the marks. Want to see them?”

“Too soon, Beacon,” Grace says. “You Aldridges need to stop joking about it. It wasn’t funny.”

“Too soon,” I agree with her.

He rolls his eyes. “Fine, what’s the new plan?”

“I say we go back to the beginning and figure out who is missing on that list. Maybe I’m wrong about there being men in his life, but we’re definitely missing someone on this list.”