“That’s not funny.”
“Only because you don’t have a sense of humour.”
That wasn’t true at all. Or not completely, at least. “He’s hiding something.”
“It’s not drugs.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think it was, but thanks for telling me whereyourhead is at.”
Matt flipped him the bird. “Eff you, too.”
“So you do know what’s going on.”
“You should talk to Sean.”
“I tried.”
“Okay, you should try to talk to him like a brother, and not a father.”
“I don’t—” But he did worry about them like a parent. Not a father, really. They had one of those. More like the mother they lost way too young.
Turned out, Dean wasn’t as naturally nurturing as they’d needed.
He’d tried, damn it. But times like this, he failed pretty hard. “Maybe I’ll get Dani to talk to him.”
“That’s a good idea. Stress out the pregnant woman.”
Shit. Right. Hey… “So it’s something stressful?”
Matt laughed. “Seriously, it’s your first day of being your own man. Take a knee. Have a beer. Trust that whatever Sean’s stewing about is going to be there tomorrow and you can enjoy the bloody holiday like the rest of us.”
That didn’t sound like a feasible plan at all. “I’ll talk to Dani in a non-alarmist way.”
“Whatever. Good luck. Remember to try and have fun.”
That was Matt’s motto in life: have fun. Dean’s motto…well, until yesterday, it had been the motto of the provincial police, where he’d worked for eighteen years. A personal motto?
Dean didn’t have one. He didn’t really have a personal anything.
He had work, and his brothers, and carefully constructed relationships that allowed him release and escape when he needed it—and ensured zero extra responsibility, because he sure as shit didn’t needthat.
A pang of guilt lanced through him. His brothers weren’t a responsibility he resented. He watched Matt amble toward the tent where the Legion ladies were setting up cold drinks and bowls of potato chips.
For all his muttered concern, he was damn proud of the men his brothers had grown into.
And he knew he needed to let go of the irrational worry that brewed deep in his gut when it came to them. But it was hard. He’d basically raised them for six long, anxious years. And when he’d made the agonizing decision to go to Police College and leave Pine Harbour for a year—that turned into four when his first OPP posting had been further up north—he’d done so only after making sure that every adult member of their tiny community was watching out for his brothers.
Because their father sure as shit hadn’t been.
The Colonel had only been there for them in the strictest sense. A financial provider. Someone to pay the bills. But he’d never made a school lunch or read a bedtime story. Never really given two shits about what time Matt came home, or Sean woke up.
Part of Dean had hoped that when he went south for college, their father would step up and fill the gap. Instead, it’d been Jake who’d taken a turn at parenting the youngest two Foster brothers.
When Dean left Pine Harbour, his next younger brother had been a gangling teenager. When he’d come back, Jake had sprouted into a young man, intent on a career in construction and ready to join the army reserves just like Dean had.
And when Matt and Sean each turned seventeen, they did the same. Following in the Colonel’s footsteps, despite everything.
How would their lives have been different if their mother had lived?
