Feeding the Fire (14 page)

“I think Reverend Yates just broke a record for the shortest service in history.”

Pepper turned to Ivy and tried not to smile. It didn’t seem appropriate since the pallbearers were carrying Estelle’s casket past them and out to the hearse. Aside from that, she was happy that Ivy was still in Rosewood and was able to attend this with her. She wasn’t ready to sit next to her family and pretend like things hadn’t changed. There was no way she could sit with her parents and her brother and not spend every moment thinking about what her mother had told her.

Norman Chamberlain was sitting a few pews ahead of them with Helen, Simon, Maddie, and Hazel. She could only see the back of his head, but his cruel expression as he turned away and the conversation she’d had with her mother came easily to mind. She’d lain in bed Sunday night, not enjoying her fully functional bedroom but mentally envisioning the whole argument her mother had with him. She could picture the smug look on his face as he offered her mother a check and told her and their unborn child to get lost.

At the moment, she had a hard time looking at any of the Chamberlains without dark thoughts clouding her mind. Even Blake and Grant, two Chamberlains she’d learned to not only tolerate but like, were hard for her to talk to. Suddenly being around the man she’d gotten close to the last few weeks had become infinitely more difficult. Grant valued honesty over all else, but she couldn’t tell him about this. She couldn’t tell Ivy. She couldn’t even tell Logan.

Reverend Yates asked the congregation to join him in singing Estelle’s favorite hymn, “How Great Thou Art,” as the family shuffled sadly out of the chapel. Robin was tearful, clutching a tissue to her face. Her brother, Tom, held his toddler with a stoic expression. They went out and loaded into the limousine.

“Yep,” Ivy said as the hymn ended and everyone stood to leave. “Twenty-three minutes.”

“He’s probably hungry.” Pepper looked down at her watch. It was just after five in the evening. By the time the graveside service was over, it would be time for Reverend Yates to eat, take his pills, and head home to watch his favorite game shows before bed. Just knowing there was a feast of massive proportions in the little church by the cemetery was enough to make most southern men talk a little bit faster than usual.

“I’m hungry, too. I didn’t eat all day in anticipation of the macaroni and cheese,” Pepper said as they shuffled out of the funeral home with the rest of the congregation. She slipped on her lined raincoat and popped open her umbrella the minute they cleared the protective awning. The herd moved out and across the street, gathering around the tent that protected the gravesite and the family from the elements.

It was a miserable day for a funeral. It had rained on and off for the last few days with temperatures never getting out of the high forties. The sky was a blanket of gray, with the sun nowhere in sight. There was only a light breeze, but it was still enough to fling icy raindrops sideways and for the chill to sink in.

Once everyone arrived and the family was seated, Reverend Yates started the service again. Considering it was dinnertime and the weather was poor, the pastor wasn’t likely to get a good sermon rolling.

As he spoke, Pepper’s gaze strayed over the crowd. Her parents and brother were standing off to her left. Her father probably wasn’t strong enough to come to something like this, especially in this weather, but he was also stubborn. Logan was holding their father’s elbow with a tight grip to ensure he didn’t lose his footing on the lawn.

Just beyond them were the Chamberlains. Pepper wondered if Logan knew they were standing right behind him. He wasn’t uncouth enough to say something at a funeral, but she knew there had to be animosity growing between them since he opened his practice. He’d probably like to know if the old snake was nearby.

When Reverend Yates asked everyone to bow their head in prayer, she noticed that both Logan and Norman dipped their heads in just the same way. Their profiles were damn-near identical when you looked at them side by side. They had the same blue eyes, the same narrow nose, the same heavy brow, the same strong, square jaw. They were even almost the same height, with Logan just barely taller.

She’d never noticed it before, but her brother had almost never been in the same room as Norman. Curious, her gaze flicked over to Blake where he stood beside Ivy. Comparing the two men, there was a resemblance there as well. Blake and Logan had the same hair color; a light brown with blond highlights from the sun. Norman’s hair was more gray than brown now, but his hair was just as thick with a hairline that had only slipped a few centimeters back from where it fell on Blake.

Pepper felt her stomach turn. She searched Logan’s face, desperate to find differences between the two men. The full lips, the small, rounded ears . . . those were features Pepper shared with her brother. Features they shared with their mother. Glancing at their father, Vince, she tried to find resemblances there. Her father was shorter than Logan, with a slighter build. His nose was broad, his hair a darker brown.

The more she studied, the more painfully obvious it became that Logan looked very little like their father. Nothing at all like him, actually.

Her mother said she did what she had to do when Norman turned her away. Pepper had thought maybe she had given up the baby or terminated the pregnancy. It never once occurred to her that her mother had
kept
the baby and raised it as another man’s child.

“Amen,” everyone said aloud, reminding Pepper that she’d forgotten to pray.

Her mind was someplace else. The truth was all too obvious now. Logan was Norman Chamberlain’s son. She was certain of it. The bigger question in her mind was if her father knew. Did her mother throw herself in desperation at any man she could, pass off the child as his, and convince him to marry her? Daddy loved both her and Logan so much. It would kill him to know his son wasn’t his own blood. Could her mother really have lied to everyone like that?

Someone starting singing “Amazing Grace.” Pepper had a vague recollection of the voice in the background, but that was all. All she could see was her daddy holding on to his son’s arm with misty tears in his eyes.

Shaking her head, Pepper turned and her gaze locked with her mother’s. Without the slightest gesture or word, she saw her mother stiffen and visibly pale. Pepper nodded. She wanted her mother to know that she knew the truth.

Please
, she mouthed silently.

Pepper could only turn away. Shifting her umbrella, she stared down at the ground and hoped she could just make it all go away. She gazed long and hard at the soggy brown turf, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Pepper?”

She snapped her head in the direction of the sound and found Ivy looking at her with a quizzical expression on her face. “What?”

“Are you okay?” she asked with a crinkled nose.

No
, definitely not okay, but she couldn’t tell her that. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about something.” Apparently she was thinking hard enough not to notice that the service had ended and everyone was making their way over to the church.

“Okay,” Ivy said, although there was a touch of disbelief on her face. “Are you going to come to the church to eat with us?”

That had been the plan initially, but suddenly she needed to get far away from here. Far from her lying mother, her ignorant father, and the smug face of the man who caused it all. If she stayed, she would say or do something she would regret. That wasn’t how she wanted to honor Estelle’s memory.

“Actually, I think I’m going to skip it and head home. I’m pretty tired.”

Ivy watched her with concern for a moment and then nodded. “Okay.” She leaned forward to hug Pepper. “I’ll see you later. I’ll come by the shop tomorrow. I leave first thing Friday morning.”

Pepper tried to give the friendliest nod she could and waved as Ivy and Blake disappeared into the Fellowship Hall with everyone else. Before anyone could talk to her, she bolted in the other direction, back toward the funeral home and her car. She needed some wine and a brownie and some time to process everything she’d just learned. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Her brother was a Chamberlain.

Chapter Thirteen

After an hour of mindless television and two stiff drinks, Pepper had finally achieved the mental numbness she desired. When she left the funeral, she’d gone home in the hopes of burying her head in the sand for a while. The whole town was at the church dinner, then probably staying on for Bible study since it was Wednesday night, so she anticipated a peaceful evening where she could process everything she’d pieced together this afternoon.

She had a sibling who was half Chamberlain. Realizing that had nearly knocked her off her feet. Everything she knew about her childhood, her brother, her father . . . now it was all tinged with the color of deception.

She was taking her last sip of coconut rum and Sprite when the doorbell rang. With a sigh, she got up from the couch and looked through the peephole. The only person she expected to see was Grant, straight from the end of his long shift, but she was disappointed. It was her mother.

Pepper swung open the door and stood there, a stiff barrier to the house. She wasn’t really interested in talking about this tonight. She didn’t have nearly enough rum. “Mother,” she said, acknowledging her mother with a cold tone.

Kate was standing alone on the porch, clutching a piece of cake wrapped in plastic wrap. “Hi, Pepper. I brought you a piece of cake.”

She didn’t really feel like cake of any kind, but she accepted the plate anyway. “Thanks. Where’s Daddy?”

“Logan took him home about halfway through the dinner. He got tired standing at the service for so long. I needed to stop at the grocery store, so they went on without me.”

“The Pig is three blocks that way,” she said, pointing down the street.

“Pepper, we need to talk,” she said.

Pepper snorted and shook her head. “I’m not the one you need to talk to, Mama. I already know too much for my own good. Logan is the one who needs to know the truth.”

Kate swallowed hard. “Can I please come in?”

As much as she didn’t want to, Pepper stepped back and let her mother into the house for the first time.

Kate stepped in slowly, looking around the space with a small smile curling her lips. “Your house looks lovely. I love the warm color on the walls and the artwork is perfect. I can tell you’ve put a lot of hard work into the place.”

“I have Grant to thank for most of it,” Pepper said, knowing that answer would just antagonize her mother.

Kate lowered herself onto the couch with a sigh and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit down, please.”

Pepper reluctantly did what she was told, keeping a full cushion’s distance between them. She faced her mother, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Somehow that protective pose made this discussion more palatable.

“Today at the funeral,” Kate began. “It became apparent to me that you’ve pieced together the rest of my story.”

Pepper nodded. “Is Logan really the child you were talking about on Sunday?”

Kate’s dark eyes, the same as her own, looked at her for a moment before sadly nodding. “Yes. Your brother is half Chamberlain, genetically. But,” she added, “he is nothing like that miserable family.”

“Stop it, Mama,” Pepper snapped. She was sick of her mother hating on the Chamberlains. It was bad enough she’d let her mother poison her entire outlook on the family, but now that she knew better, she didn’t want to listen to it anymore. “You’ve got issues with Norman, obviously, but stop lumping the whole family into the same bucket. If Logan is a Chamberlain, you’re insulting him every time you say it, and he doesn’t even know it. When he finds out the truth, how will all the awful things you say about them affect him? Will he think you hate him because he’s part Chamberlain?”

Kate’s mouth dropped open. “Of course I don’t hate my son. That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Well, that’s what you’re insinuating and you’re wrong. Grant is a good person. So is Blake. I don’t know the whole family, but it feels like you taught us to hate them our whole lives for no real reason.”

“That’s not true, I had several reasons. For one thing, I had to raise Logan to hate that family or he would get too close to the truth. What if he and Blake hung out together and someone noticed a resemblance like you did? Or worse, what if he wanted to date one of the Chamberlain girls? I couldn’t have this turn into a V. C. Andrews book.”

“And me?”

“And you had to stay away so you wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made. Whether or not those boys are as heartless as their father, they still have his sex drive. You can’t tell me that they haven’t made their rounds through this town. I thought it was better for you, healthier for you, to stay out of all that. I know they’re charming men, with those big blue eyes and strong hands. They smile and say soft words and you feel your knees give out beneath you. But they don’t mean any of it.

“When Norman rejected me,” Kate continued, “I wasn’t just upset, I was broken. I had no self-esteem. I was convinced that I was ugly and fat and no one would ever love me. I didn’t even believe your father cared for me for a while. I thought he felt sorry for me. I didn’t want you to ever feel that way about yourself. You’re beautiful and talented and smart. I didn’t want their manipulative lies to destroy your self-confidence.”

“Speaking of Daddy and lies”—Pepper wanted to get off the current subject as quickly as possible—“what did you tell Daddy? Did you just seduce him and trick him into thinking Logan was his son?”

“No, of course not. You must really think badly of me after all this to say such a thing. Your father knows Logan isn’t his son. He’s always known.”

Pepper’s jaw dropped. Just when she thought she knew what was going on, she got hit with another bomb. Did that mean her father had lied to her, too? “What?”

“Your father had been in love with me since the eleventh grade. We’d gone out from time to time, but I didn’t let myself fall for him when I thought I could have Norman. He was away at college most of the time, but when he came home, he only had eyes for me. I want you to understand that it wasn’t some casual fling, Pepper. Norman and I wrote letters and talked on the phone while he was gone. We stole away to secluded corners of the lake with a picnic and made love in a field. I gave him my virginity because I thought he loved me. I was certain that once he graduated law school and came back to Rosewood that he would ask me to marry him. And then everything fell apart.”

“And you ran to Daddy once Norman was out of the picture for good?”

Her mother pressed her lips into a flat line of displeasure. “No. It wasn’t like that at all. Your father had always been a presence in my life. He was just there to help, to talk to. He was my best friend and that was all I saw in him because I was blinded by my love for Norman. I didn’t realize the depths of his feelings for me at first. After my fight with Norman, I ran to Vince in tears and confessed everything. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Kate shook her head as the memories of the moment replayed in her mind. “Vince held me in his arms and said that I was strong and I would get through this. He got down on one knee, right there at the gas station where he was working, and asked me to marry him. I thought he was crazy, but he told me that he loved me and wanted to do this for me. He insisted we could be happy together and that we would raise that child, and any other children that came along, as our own. No one ever needed to know any different.”

Pepper didn’t know what to say. In the last two weeks, her life had totally turned upside down. She’d hated the Chamberlains for so long. Now the waters were muddy, her own version of reality shifting the more she learned.

“I thought Norman loved me, but I learned what real love was when I agreed to marry your father. We eloped the next day. When your brother was born, Daddy held Logan in his arms and cried just the same way he did when you were born. Logan was his son; there was never any question of it for him. In that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice. We never had much, but it didn’t matter, because your father is a good man, probably a better man than I deserved. You and Logan couldn’t have asked for a better father. And as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t lie to you because Daddy
is
Logan’s father. He’s the one who taught him how to ride a bike and throw a ball; how to be a man and how to treat a lady.”

Pepper understood. Her father was an amazing man and she was a daddy’s girl at heart. She had never once had doubts about Logan’s paternity because their father had never given them any reason to doubt it. “Has Norman ever acknowledged in any way that Logan is his son? I mean, he obviously knows.”

Kate nodded. “Just once. I did my best to avoid him, especially when I had Logan with me. But one day, we were all at the Fourth of July picnic at the park. You were only a few months old at the time, and Logan was a rambunctious little boy, running all over the place. I had a hard time keeping up with both of you. At one point, I lost sight of Logan and I started to panic. A few minutes later, Norman walked up, holding Logan’s hand and he was covered in mud.

“Norman passed him off to me with the closest thing to a smile I’d seen from him in years. He told me he’d found Logan in a puddle with another little boy. He said that beneath all that dirt, he was a handsome child and that it must run in the family. Then he turned and walked off.”

Pepper couldn’t believe the man’s audacity. “What did you do?”

“I was shaken by the whole encounter, so I used my muddy child as an excuse to go home and I never went back. I was just so thrown off guard and Daddy had to work, so I was there alone. It was just easier to leave.”

“And he never spoke of or hinted about Logan’s paternity ever again?”

“That was it. It certainly made for an awkward parent conference when Logan broke Blake’s nose after school. I’m responsible for that, raising him to dislike the whole family, but I never expected him to get into a fight. It could’ve been so much worse. The one thing I can say is that Norman refused to make a big deal out of it. He could’ve gotten Logan suspended, but he talked the principal out of it. He said boys were boys, and once he got Logan and Blake to agree to stay away from one another, it was over and done.”

“What a saint,” Pepper muttered.

“No one is perfect, especially me. But I did what I had to do. I think both of my children have turned out well, in spite of everything.”

It was true. They had both grown up in a loving home. They might not have had all the latest and greatest clothes and toys, but they were happy and well-adjusted. Pepper credited her parents for that. They worked very hard to keep the roof over their heads and food in their bellies.

But that didn’t change the truth. Logan still needed to know that the arrogant lawyer he competed with was actually his biological father. “We did. But you’ve got to tell Logan, Mama.”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because of your father. He took on another man’s child and raised it as his own. He’s a good man, and I won’t have him become the subject of town gossip or have Logan harbor any ill will toward him. You know how people are around here. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“But Logan
deserves
to know. Even if no one else ever finds out, he should know the truth.”

“What good will the truth do, Pepper? It will only hurt people, like it’s hurt you. I regret that I’ve had to keep these secrets, but I couldn’t risk Norman retaliating if the truth got out. If we were smart, we would’ve moved far from Rosewood and no one would’ve ever known the truth, but this was our home. I wasn’t going to be run off by the Chamberlains. In the end, things worked out the way they were meant to. I love Logan, and have since the moment I found out about him. I made the choices I had to make to protect him. I found the best father I could for you and Logan. You are both our children in every way that matters.”

“He can’t go on not knowing who he really is. Logan needs to know that his business rival is actually his father.”

“I can’t do it, Pepper. You just don’t understand how hard this is. I couldn’t even admit the truth to you until you figured it out for yourself.”

Pepper swallowed the lump in her throat. “You will, Mama. Or
I
will.”

Thursday night, as Grant prepared to head home from the firehouse, he found himself at a loss. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself in the evenings anymore. He’d spent so much time with Pepper that it felt odd to return home to his loft apartment and not see her. He missed her. He liked sleeping with her in his arms. He enjoyed waking up with Pepper and her crazy morning hair, and sharing a cup of coffee. And yet, he didn’t want to constantly show up at her place and make a pest of himself.

When he told her he’d never seriously dated anyone, he’d meant it. He wasn’t entirely sure how to handle things. He’d also never found himself in the position where he wanted to see a woman every day. He’d thought at first that he was just intrigued by her because she turned him down. Pepper had been a new challenge. But now that they were past that point in their relationship . . . he still wanted her. She wasn’t just beautiful and infuriating. She was smart and funny. She was adventurous enough to jump on his motorcycle and drive with no destination in mind, but cautious enough to temper any crazy, reckless thoughts that might run through his head, like popping a wheelie on the bike to show off.