Falling For The Brother

So her assumption about how Miriam had arrived at the Stand was wrong. Had the urgent care in Albina called him?

But...wait a minute. “Miriam told you Bruce did this to her...” She went back to the picture of a battered Miriam. Staring at it. As though that would make all of this seem possible. Make some kind of sense. “And you’re telling me now that Mason corroborated her story?”

“Not quite. Miriam Thomas claims she fell off a stepladder in her kitchen and sees no point in being here. Mason Thomas is the one who’s claiming the abuse. He insists that she stay inside the grounds at all times until further notice.”

Confused, alarmed, just plain beside herself, Harper pursed her lips and studied the screen. Scrolling down. Then up. Then down again.

“But...what about the police? You said they aren’t officially involved, but is there a report waiting to be filed?” As a private facility, the Stand could keep Miriam if she chose to stay. But only if she wanted to be there. They weren’t a prison.

Or...she could sign a form asking them to prevent her from leaving, for her own safety. Until she’d had some counseling. So many times victims who’d undergone years of mental or emotional manipulation would feel they had to run back to their abusers. They couldn’t trust their own minds.

It happened. More often than Harper would ever have believed.

If Miriam had signed the form, Harper and her team would prevent her from leaving, but only for the designated period of time. Or until she signed a retraction in the presence of witnesses, including a Stand counselor.

“Miriam has refused to talk to the police or press charges. She’s not budging from her stepladder story.”

Frowning, Harper began to focus. “So why is she here?”

“She made an agreement with Mason. If she agreed to stay here, and to sign a VNL, he’d do an investigation himself without making it formal or involving the police.” VNL. The voluntary no release form.

“And Miriam signed it?”

“Yes.” That report would be waiting in her in-box, too. She’d just gotten to work and clicked on resident status... “For how long?”

“Two weeks.”

Mason had been there. At the Stand. And would be around for the next two weeks? Or, at least, somewhere between Santa Raquel, where the Stand was, and two hours north in Albina, where Bruce lived—if he was, indeed, investigating.

There were going to be ramifications. She knew it and could feel them building. She and Mason in contact... Bruce being accused... She had to get all the facts she could before she started to feel things that had nothing to do with Miriam. Or her job.

“Bruce didn’t abuse his grandmother,” she said with certainty.

Why the hell would Mason do this to him?

And then it occurred to her. The brothers must be working together. They knew who’d hurt their grandmother—someone she was protecting—and Bruce, with his undercover skills, and Mason, with his investigative talents, were going to put the guy at ease. They’d let him think he’d gotten away with it, then set him up somehow, in order to find the proof that would trap him and put him away without Miriam’s needing to testify against him. Which, clearly, she was terrified to do. You didn’t get those bruises on your chin by falling from a stepladder.

It was a long shot, considering the fact that the brothers hadn’t had much to do with each other—as far as she was aware—in five years, but Bruce would put all differences aside to protect Miriam from danger. And Mason would come running if Bruce needed him.

“Bruce’s brother is absolutely certain he did it.” Lila’s tone had a different quality to it now. Not defense. Or even authority. More like...compassion?

“Did you talk to him yourself?”

“Yes.” Then that meant...

“You were called in?”

“Yes.”

Prior to her marriage, Lila might have been at the Stand in the middle of the night, since she used to stay at her apartment there as often as she went home to the condo she’d owned. Calling her in had been more common then, too; she’d had no family, no one else who needed her. But that had all changed since she’d finally allowed herself to love again.

She’d taken her son back into her life, trusting herself to love him and his family well. And married the man who’d been the only one able to break through the barriers she’d put around herself.

But now, to call Lila out of bed in the middle of the night... Someone had been pretty damned concerned.

Maybe Mason hadn’t known he could trust Lila with the truth—that he and Bruce were working together?

“So Bruce is still working and living his life as usual?”

“That is my understanding.”

“And Miriam’s injuries...they’re non-life-threatening...” She read over them again. Severe facial contusions in the chin area and a broken arm.

“Correct.”

“Maybe she did just fall.” The chin bruises, if she’d landed with her chin in something—say, the gold egg carton she was so fond of.

“According to Mason this isn’t the first time.”

Wow. She simply couldn’t grasp the reality. Couldn’t imagine how it must make the brothers feel, knowing someone was hurting their grandmother.

Brianna.

She became aware of the first ramification stirred up by this mess.

“How many times before?” Until a month ago, four-year-old Brianna had spent every other Friday night and half of Saturday with Bruce. And, since Oscar’s death two years before, since Bruce had moved in with his grandmother to help her out, Brianna had been with Miriam, too.

“The doctor suspects, based on previous bone cracks he could see on the X-ray, at least three.”

“To the same arm?”

“Yes.”

It made no sense to her at all.

“And the cracks had time to heal.” Which meant that whatever had been happening had been going on for a while.

“Yes.” Lila didn’t often point out the facts, didn’t explicitly share what she knew. Her way was to give her conversational partners the time and space—usually with a bit of guidance—to find the truth on their own. To figure it out for themselves, rather than be told. She was a huge proponent of helping people think their own thoughts, draw their own conclusions.

Because so many victims of abuse—as everyone now knew Lila had been—were denied that right to the extent of believing themselves incapable of trusting their own thoughts.

“Brianna stayed in that house every other Friday night.”

“I know the two of you used to go to Albina on your weekends off. I suspected she might’ve been visiting her father.”

“And my parents,” Harper said, her screen steady on the picture of an injured Miriam. “They have a small vegetable farm and I’d stay with them. Brianna would spend Friday night at Bruce’s. From Saturday afternoon until we came home on Sunday, we’d be with my folks.”

“What’s happened with her visitation since you accepted the new position?”