I linger a moment. I could barely see the cuts on his face from yesterday in the dark hallway, but I could definitely see the one on his lip.

It’s not my fault he got into a fight. But still…

Walking over to the door, I raise my hand to knock but then stop myself. I lean my ear in, but I don’t hear anything, and I struggle to walk away.

I have ointment…for his cuts…if he wants.

I…

Oh, never mind. I close my fist and finally drop my hand, turning to leave.

I head downstairs, spotting Jake outside on the deck, and walk out, joining him. He hands me a mug of coffee and stares out at the forest and the mist that hangs around the trunks.

“I like getting up early,” he tells me. “It’s the only time the house and land are quiet, and I have the energy to enjoy it.”

I look up at him. Me, too. Taking a sip of my coffee, I force the words out, even though my instinct tells me to be quiet. I want to make an effort.

“I like that you all work at home,” I tell him, seeing him look at me out of the corner of my eye. “There’s always people here.”

People who are a little abrasive, rude, and over-bearing, but I have a couple of those undesirable qualities myself.

He half-smiles down at me, and I drink some more of my coffee before setting the mug down on the railing.

“Come on,” he says, setting his down, too.

Walking around me, he leads me down the stairs and toward the barn, picking up a tool belt from the worktable in the shop as we pass by.

We walk beyond the stable to the paddock where Bernadette and Shawnee are already wandering and getting some fresh air.

I stare at the back of his head as I follow him and he buckles on his tool belt.

Questions. He mentioned I never asked them questions.

It’s not that I don’t have questions, but questions start conversations.

“Hold this up for me,” he asks, lifting a piece of the fencing around the corral.

I come in and lean down, lifting up the board so it’s level as he dips through the opening in the fence to the other side. Pulling out a hammer and nail, he bolts the board back in place as I help hold on.

“Why doesn’t Kaleb talk?” I ask.

He doesn’t look at me as he pulls out another nail and starts pounding. “I’m not sure I should talk about it, if Kaleb won’t.”

“Does it have to do with their mother?”

His eyes shoot up to me. “What do you know about their mother?”

I shrug. “Nothing, really,” I say. “But the boys obviously came from somewhere and not from the twenty-five-year-olds leaving your room every morning.”

He chuckles, pounding in the nail. “It’s not every morning, thank you.”

But she is twenty-five. Or younger, because he didn’t correct me on the age.

The silence hangs in the air, and his expression grows pensive as he fits another nail.

“Their mother is in prison,” he states. “Ten to fifteen up in Quintana.”

Quintana.

Ten to fifteen…years?

I stare at my uncle who’s not making eye contact, a whole bundle of questions now ready to pour out. What did she do? Was he involved?

Do Noah and Kaleb still talk to her?

He moves down the line, and I follow him, noticing another board kicked off.

When was she sentenced? How long has he been raising the boys by himself?

I soften my eyes, watching him. That must’ve been hard. It’s a different pain, I’m sure. Having someone taken away from you versus someone wanting to leave you.

“You loved her?” I ask.

But then I drop my eyes, embarrassed. Of course, he loved her.

“I dove into her,” he explains instead. “Because I couldn’t stop loving someone else.”

I narrow my eyes.

He stops and pulls out his wallet, opening it up and taking out a snapshot.

He hands it to me.

I look down at it, recognizing him instantly and smiling a little.

It’s actually not a snapshot. It’s a Polaroid with a sharp crease down the middle and faded faces staring back.

He lays there, on a picnic blanket, no shirt and long khaki shorts, hugging a dark-eyed girl to his body, her midnight hair splayed out behind her.

He’s pale and a lot scrawnier than what he is now, but he has that same smile that looks like he’s either laughing at you on the inside or thinking things that are only suitable to do behind closed doors. But with a preppy haircut and baby face that makes him look like he should be the douchebag quarterback on a CW show.

“You?” I look up at him, trying to hide my amusement.

He snatches the picture back, frowning at me. “I was quite the belle of the ball back in the day, you know?”

Was? Seems he still is.

He grabs a shovel and starts packing dirt back into the hole where the fence post stands.

“Your grandpa had a house in Napa Valley,” he says as I hold the post upright for him. “We’d go up there in the summer, play golf, get drunk, fuck around…”

We… My father, too?

I barely remember my grandfather, since he died when I was six, but I know he divorced his first wife—my dad’s mother—when my dad was about twelve, and chose another Dutch woman for his second wife. She already had a son of her own—Jake.

“I was eighteen, and I met Flora,” my uncle continues. “God, she was fucking beautiful. Her family worked on a vineyard. Immigrant. Poor….” He glances at me. “And, of course, our families couldn’t have that.”

I almost have the urge to laugh, not because it’s funny, but because I get it. For the first time, I realize Jake and I are part of the same family, and he knows them as well as I do.

“She didn’t have a swimsuit,” he mused. “All summer, I remember. It didn’t even occur to me she couldn’t afford one, because I loved that she swam in her underwear and undershirt when we went to the lake. Her body was so beautiful, the way the wet clothes stuck to her.”

I picture him, his hormones and emotions raging. What’s he like when he’s in love?

He sighs. “It was sexier than any bikini. I never wanted that summer to end. We couldn’t stay off each other. I was totally gone for her.”

But she’s not here now.

“One night your mother…”

“My mother?” I dart my eyes up to him.

But he’s avoiding my gaze, and his lips are tight.

“Your mother was a rising star, and your parents had just started dating,” he explains. “She took Flora out and got her drunk, and when Flora woke up, she was in bed with another man.” He finally looked over at me, pausing in his work. “Another man who wasn’t me.”

My mother took her out, got her drunk, and…

“My father,” I say, putting the pieces together.

Jake nods. “Your grandfather knew I wasn’t going to let her go, so your parents helped get rid of her.”

I blink long and hard. I can’t believe I defended them to my uncle. To him. No wonder he hates them.

“She felt so guilty, thinking she’d had sex with another man,” Jake continued, leading me into the stable to fill the horses’ food, “it was a piece of cake for the family to convince her our relationship was over unless she wanted me to find out what she’d done. ‘And hey, here’s fifty grand to cover moving expenses. Disappear, kid. Don’t call him.’”