“What?! We can’t go without Brodie!”
Brodie grinned, thought wistfully of crashing through the waves, spray on his face. “I’ve got some stuff to deal with here.”
“What the heck do you have to deal with that’s more important than San Diego?”
Brodie looked in the window of the pantry at his mom ladling glossy crimson jam into rows of glass jars. “Just life stuff,” he said, knowing it sounded cagey.
“Sounds to me like you’ve got a better offer, Brodie. Do I know her?”
“No it’s…” He didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to have the outside world intrude, so he said, “No you don’t know her.”
He glanced up and saw his dad turn away like he’d been listening. Brodie sighed, of course his dad would overhear that bit.
After some more attempts at persuasion Caleb rang off.
Brodie slipped his phone in his pocket.
Above him, he heard a noise and saw a roof tile slide down from where his dad was trying to fix the leak and had obviously fumbled it in his hands. It caught momentarily on the gutter and his dad shouted, “Watch out!” Then it fell and cracked when it hit the ground.
“Darn it.” From where he was sitting astride the roof, his dad started to move himself along back toward the ladder. Fumbling roof tiles was not Emmett’s style. He didn’t make mistakes and wouldn’t be happy about it.
“Do you want another one?” There was a pile of fresh tiles by the side door.
Emmett paused.
“Stay there, I’ll bring one up,” Brodie said, determined suddenly to be seen as of use, maybe just to be seen.
Emmett didn’t reply but didn’t move any further to the ladder. Brodie took that as a yes.
He picked up a new tile and started climbing up. He stopped at the top and stretched over to hand it to his dad.
“Thanks.”
Brodie nodded.
He was about to go back down but his attention was caught by the view. He could see the whole ranch from up there. The red-rooved barns, the paddock, the pastures, right up to the mountains.
His dad said, “Something wrong?”
Brodie frowned at his tone, like he wanted him gone. “No, was just checking out the view.”
Emmett gave it a cursory glance then went back to his tiling. He’d clearly seen it a hundred times before.
Brodie got the impression that he was being dismissed. He imagined if he was Noah, his dad would probably ask his advice. Noah would climb agilely over and they’d fix the roof together. Heck, they probably rebuilt the barn together in the first place.
He wasn’t jealous. He didn’t want that. He had a great life doing things he enjoyed. Again, he thought longingly of the sailing trip and kicked himself for turning it down.
“Are you going to stand there all day?”
Brodie stared incredulously at his dad, at his whitening beard, the battered hat forever on his head, the plaid shirt, darned and patched so much it probably didn’t have any of the original material left, his face set in such familiar stern lines. But then, before his eyes, his father suddenly seemed older—maybe frailer—than he normally did. Or perhaps that was the reality, whereas all Brodie ever saw was the fearsome memory.
He had grown up terrified of this man. Always on guard around him for the constant reprimands, the dressing-downs, the sighs of discontentment, the looks. But what he struggled most with was that feeling of being disliked but endured. The impenetrable disappointment, like his dad put up with him because he had to. There was no love, no respect. If he had to give one of his children away, Brodie knew he would pick him. Even Jack, while he and Emmett fought, had been a good ranch hand when forced, and a ruthless competitor. Brodie just never came up to par. He liked fun and jokes, meeting new people and having a good time—everything his dad despised.
Looking at him now, head bent over his work, he thought that as a father, Brodie would never want to be like him.
And yet, he found himself wanting to tell him about making Zoey row and how she’d enjoyed it in the end. What did he want from Emmett? Pride?
Being his son held him in eternal thrall to this man. And yet his father seemed to have no idea how monumental his role was in Brodie’s life.
