Chapter 74

74

There were ghosts on Bonnie's face when she looked at Gunnar. He waited. She had information they could use. He just had to be patient to learn of this Grundenman. And go from there. But damn it, when would this stop hurting this beautiful woman in front of him?

"Coleson Hospital was started over one hundred years ago. The largest hospital on our family estate closed thirty-eight years ago. The first baby born in that hospital when it was no more than a two-room shack was a little girl born to Andreas Coleson and his Fiona. Mary Margaret Coleson. The last baby born in that same hospital was Marigold Marcia Coleson. Coleson to Coleson, generation to generation. Girls, you all come from remarkable people. Don't you ever forget that. They changed the world—in good ways. Saved lives. I don't want any of you to question that." Bonnie reached out and patted Zoey on the hand gently. Then she looked at the rest of the crowd.

And continued.

"The main hospital closed a few months after Marcia was born, and just a handful of doctors and staff remained. Daddy moved the hospital to the newer, slightly more modern facility nearby, hoping the smaller facility would keep the hospital going. And it did, really. That building served as a functioning hospital for eighteen or nineteen more years until the Garrity Medical Clinic basically drove it out of business. After that, Daddy turned the building into the rehab facility and built his living that way. Heather, Joy, Eden, Samia, Summer, and Hope—they were all born there. Hope was the last baby born there. In that…place. Before the doors closed. Where the fire…Eastman…How many more of our babies have been born there since my father closed those doors? That question haunts me sometimes." Bonnie said, looking up at Zoey directly. "How many are still out there? I can't sleep at night, just wondering how many nieces and nephews might be out there, needing their family, knowing I can't get to them. How old they are. If they look like Oakley or Orion or Iagan or my grandchildren."

"I know. I have the same ghosts now. They haunt me too. I am going to find them, though, Aunt Bonnie, I promise," Zoey said in return.

"Mom, you don't have to talk about it," Hope said. "We can."

Mom. She called her sister mom because Hope had never really known the people she came from. Gunnar could only imagine that hurt. Why had this family had so much hurt ? It was more than one family deserved.

"No. I can do this. If it means…people stop being hurt. Our hospital was small, and quiet, and away from everything. But it served a real need in Garrity County. Not as exciting, nor as well paid, especially for the younger staff as the larger hospitals though. Barratt County Gen meant more money, and I already rented a little house there for me and Cashlyn and Cara. The preschool in Value was better for Cara's needs at the time and had a former nurse on staff for Cashlyn's."

"We lived in Garrity, then," Eden said. "We'd lived in Waco before Samia was born. But we moved to Garrity when she was a baby."

"I don't really remember Waco," Samia said. "Or moving."

"It was your father's idea. Timothy loved the Coleson hospital. Far more than anyone not a Coleson ever had. The legacy it represented, I think. For his children. Timothy was the kind who needed a mentor. Very brilliant, like his daughters, but he always needed guidance. He didn't always make wise decisions."

" He is probably the man responsible for creating OPJ," Gunnar said. "Do you think he could do that?"

Bonnie looked up at him and shook her head lightly. "Honestly, that would shock me completely. He is a smart man, yes. Could he intellectually, most certainly. But would he, ethically? I don't think he would, knowing what such a drug would do to people. Not him. At least not the Timothy I once knew. He was very compassionate, actually. He was good at his chosen field. Anesthesia. Specifically labor and delivery. I don't really understand how he could be involved in creating a drug like OPJ."

"Your brother-in-law…tell us about him. When was the last time you spoke with him?" Daniel asked. Gunnar didn't miss the impatience. He shot the other man a look. Bonnie was still very fragile, he suspected. He wouldn't have Daniel upsetting her more than necessary.

"It was about a year after we buried Angela, I think. He called to check on the girls, to see if they needed anything. He had just moved into a new house somewhere and asked that they visit him on their next school break, but the girls all refused. After that night, he would send a three thousand six hundred dollar check every January first, and I would send him yearly letters, updates on what they were doing." Bonnie put her hand on Summer's shoulder. "There was…a custody battle after we lost Angela. A small one, it never made it to court."

"You sued for custody?" Gunnar asked. "And won?"

"Not…exactly." Bonnie looked up at Gunnar for a moment. "First, and I want you all to understand this, Timothy loved and adored my sister. And he was a good, if slightly absent, father to the girls and Trey. But that last year, Angela was sick for several months. Watching her fade was incredibly hard on all of us. All of us. And coming so shortly after losing my father and stepmother the way we had—Timothy practically worshipped him too. He did not deal very well with their deaths, with Angela's illness. He changed after Angela was diagnosed. He was not emotionally capable of raising three grieving young girls then. I do think he understood that on some level. Other than the first initial arguments, he did not fight me very hard for the girls. I think he knew…"

"Or he just didn't want us enough to fight," Summer said, shrugging.

"He had Trey living with him then too. Trey was always causing trouble. Bullying people, including us," Samia said. "Trey got worse when mom was sick. He was big, he was mean, we were all afraid of him, and he liked it."

"How did you end up with his daughters?" Daniel asked. His impatience was hard to miss. Gunnar resisted the urge to kick the man.

Heather looked at Daniel and almost snarled in warning. Daniel held up his hands. But the way he looked at Heather had her pulling back against the couch where she sat.

She was still afraid of Daniel. No one could miss that.

Mac kicked Daniel lightly with his left foot. Mac had put himself in front of Powell—and Heather. He was in the floor now. Between his sister and Heather's feet.

Protecting.

Hell, Gunnar understood.

"My sister, their mother, passed away. I had temporary guardianship while he took care of Angela. The girls told him they did not want to go back to Texas with him. Timothy…did something. And we used that as leverage to get him to back off. To honor the girls' wishes." Bonnie and Heather shared a look Gunnar did not miss.

Norm had shifted, putting his hands on his wife's narrow shoulders. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead when she looked up at him.

"Let's be honest, Mom. I did it," Heather said bluntly. "After what he did at the funeral."

"That day was not your fault, Heather Holly," Norm said, almost rumbling. "You were just a child. It was his, and his alone."

Heather turned to the rest of the room. "At Angela's funeral, Timothy turned violent. He cornered Marcia. The girls were already living there, and we had the funeral in Oklahoma, with a private graveside burial scheduled for the next day in Coleson Hollow. Marcia and I took Samia back to the house with us. Timothy showed up."

"Timothy and Heather had had a rather acrimonious relationship since the loss of my father and stepmother," Bonnie said. "And we are almost certain Timothy was drunk or on drugs that day. He was highly agitated at the funeral."

"What happened between you and Grundenman before?" Miguel asked Heather. Seconds before Gunnar was going to ask it. It was a given that something had.

"After the funeral for my parents, he started pushing Bonnie, badgering her. He didn't agree that we should go with Bonnie and not him and Angela," Heather said. "He thought that with Bonnie already having Cashlyn, who was still very ill, and Cara, who had just been diagnosed as having autism, that Bonnie wouldn't be able to handle it, and well, he wanted Hope, to be blunt. Not me, Joy, or Marcia. He wanted Hope. But he wouldn't have been averse to having Marcia in his house either. "

"He had always favored Hope," Bonnie said. "He actually delivered her six weeks early during a rushed emergency delivery, and she was almost lost to us then. And when we realized how ill Hope was, he was very almost paternal with her. Overprotective. He suggested to me and Angela that they should keep Hope and let me have the teenagers. He thought he and Angela could give Hope more. He wanted to raise her with their girls. He thought he could give her a better future since we had already recognized how bright she was. And he pushed. Which they honestly could have, and she'd have been well-loved and cared for with Angela—I don't doubt that, but my father wouldn't have wanted the girls split up. Heather overheard the conversation."

"We argued that night. Pretty heatedly," Heather said.

"Especially Heather and Timothy. Angela and I agreed—the four girls stayed together. No matter what. Timothy did not like being thwarted. Not by women—and especially not by a thirteen-year-old girl. That was just not something that was done to Dr. Timothy Grundenman. Once he became my father's right-hand man of sorts after they married, he had a bit of an inflated sense of self-worth. Angela always thought it was because he was not of prominence as a child. Being in charge, being the owner of the hospital's son-in-law, made him feel like he mattered."

"I don't know if it was because of the age difference between our twins and Hope, but Timothy wanted two things from our father," Marcia said quietly. "The so-called money he said our father had. And Hope."

"That, and she did greatly resemble Angela's daughters. Especially when next to Samia," Bonnie said. "He always favored Hope. Always."

"Tolerated me, watched Marcia, and despised Heather—don't forget that," Joy said.

"So what did he do the day of Angela's funeral?" Daniel asked.

"He showed up, making odd demands. About my father's money and demanding to know where we were hiding it. Wanting his share or something," Heather said. "He never had believed it when dad's attorney said there wasn't anything left for his family. None of us really believed that."

"He had people with him. Two men," Samia said very quietly. "They were waiting in his car that day after we got there. I remember looking at them."

"I was out in the backyard," Heather said. "I ran in the back door to get to Marcia. I heard her yelling. Timothy had Marcia pushed against the counter. Yelling at her about the money and about taking what he wanted. From her. He was ripping at her dress, then. He had always freaked me out a little, the way he'd started to watch her after our parents were gone. Especially while Angela was so sick and they weren't…intimate…any longer. I saw what he was doing, and I shoved him away from Marcia as hard as I could. Then he turned on me."

"Samia was there, yelling for him to stop," Marcia said, wrapping her fingers around her husband's hand. "Pulling on his arm. By that time, he had Heather on the counter, choking her. Screaming at her that she had ruined everything for him. That we all had. I was afraid he was going to kill Heather, to kill us all. I'll never forget the look in his eyes that day. He turned and lashed out. He hit Samia right in the face. I don't even think he'd realized it was his daughter there at first. And…then Norm was just there. Out of nowhere. This big, rather menacing man we had never seen before."

"I had come looking for Angela's family. To pay my respects. I heard shouting and screaming. And I ran in to help," Norm said. "I walked in just in time to see him hit his daughter and go at Heather again. Children. And I, well, it set me off. No denying that."

"You almost killed him that day," Heather told him quietly. "I remember seeing your face when you were hitting him like that. Pulling him off of me. I could breathe again. And I knew things would be okay then. I had no clue who you were, but I knew we were going to be safe."

"You rather were a fierce sight, dear," Marcia said.

"The only reason I stopped was Samia asking me not to kill her daddy. When I saw what he had done to Marcia, saw the marks on Heather's neck, I almost killed him anyway." Norm looked at Gunnar. "I could have killed him if I wanted, but I stopped. I dragged him outside as people started arriving and threw him in the car with his two friends. And told them to get the hell out of there. Before I killed him for real. And them right after. For some reason, I think they believed I meant it."

Gunnar would have believed him. He looked around the room. Maris was right there, next to her mother's knee. Her mother was caressing her hair, so gently. She was a teenage version of Heather, right down to the same shade of hair and the way that girl tilted her head. It wasn't that much of a leap to imagine what that scene had been like for Norm that day.

"I stuck around…after that. I was between jobs, just retired from the Green Berets, between states and houses, drifting mostly, and was basically in search of answers about my first family's…deaths in a car accident Angela had witnessed while I had been on an assignment overseas. I stuck with Bonnie and the girls because I was concerned he would come back. I slept in the barn. And watched over them."

"Mom put him to work for his keep. Practically from sunup to sundown," Joy said. "There was a lot of stuff we needed to do around the place."

"It was just to keep him too busy to drool over Marcia like he kept doing," Heather said, wincing as she shifted. "We were all drowning in the drool. I practically had to put pool floaties on the not-trips whenever Norm and Marcia were in the same room together."

The not-trips—Cara, Cashlyn and Hope. Three Colesons, within a year of each other. He could only imagine what they had been like.

Probably pure chaos, completely.

"There was a lot of drool from our not-so-normal Norm back then," Joy said. "He still drools over our Marigold Marcia, in case you haven't noticed."

"I always will."

"I remember following him around, fascinated by whatever he was doing. Cashie and Cara and I followed him everywhere," Hope said, then grinned at him. "We were such total brats."

"We worked at that," Cashlyn said.

"It was really easy," Cara added.

"Which I found particularly painful, to be honest. I had lost a daughter around their age less than a year and a half earlier. And there three of them were," Norm said, cupping Hope's head and kissing her on the forehead quickly. "You three about drove me insane back then. For a multitude of reasons. I wasn't going to leave you girls to face the world alone. Any of you. I walked in and found my…home. Just like that."

"But you did leave," Marcia told him. "You ran like your pants were on fire. I still haven't quite forgiven you for that, Norman Jonathan Halson."

"Hey, I came back," Norm said. "And never left you again."

"Six months later," Bonnie said. " I had to get her through the morning sickness myself."

"You have never let me forget it." He reached out, ruffled his daughter's hair. Megan just grinned at her father.

"Other than a few mentions through the years, usually around the time the checks arrived, we didn't really talk about Timothy after that. At least we as a family didn't," Bonnie added.

"We did. Eden and I did. And we told Summer," Samia said, holding Miguel's baby close. Gunnar could see the resemblance between Samia and Emilia now—the shape of their heads, chins, noses. The hairline. That was Grundenman's baby. He'd bet on it. "Occasionally. Especially when Sum had questions later. I always felt a little bad that we didn't want to go with him when he called. But we had friends here, and all of you, and after losing mom and…"

"He pulled away from us while she was sick. He'd get so angry. And it would be scary. Trey was lashing out at us constantly too. Especially Summer, who was so little. We wanted to be with the rest of our family where we felt safe," Eden added. "At peace; moving forward."

"I'm sure he probably saw that as a betrayal. But is that strong enough incentive to go after Heather eighteen years later?" Gunnar asked. "Something more is going on here. But what?"

"I think that is something you are going to have to ask my father," Samia said quietly. She shot Gunnar a look from big, dark eyes. She reminded him of Powell in so many ways. "Apparently, he's been around here or something. That's complete news to us."

"He has to know we are all living here, too," Eden said. "We haven't spoken to him since Summer graduated from high school at sixteen. So…eleven years? As far as I know, he doesn't even know about Iagan. Has he really been holding a grudge against Heather this long? She was just a kid."

"I was there that day, too," Samia pointed out. "Marcia was the only adult. He attacked her, and then Norm came out of nowhere and beat him up—shouldn't he be angrier at Norm and Marcia?"

"Human motivations can be convoluted," Miguel said. "He could have just fixated on Heather."

The Colesons—except Heather—all groaned at that.

"Gee. A man fixating on Heather ," Hope said. "Like that hasn't ever happened before. How many fixated-on-Heather dudes are we up to now, ladies?"

"What?" Mac asked.

"We are keeping count of the guys who get fixated on Auntie Heather," Crispin said seriously. "I may need to start a new page soon at this rate."

"Are we up to triple digits yet?" Cashlyn asked equally as seriously.

Gunnar really hoped they were joking.

"Ha-ha," Heather said and winced. "Everyone is so funny in this family."

They talked for another half hour or so. Gunnar was trying to make it make sense, but he couldn't. Not yet.

"Our next step is finding Grundenman and getting our answers," Gunnar finally said. Powell was practically wilting against him. He shifted her, pulled her closer. He dropped a kiss on her hair without thinking about it. No one in the room even blinked.

"Probably a good place to start," Zoey said quietly. "For now, I think we've overstayed our welcome."

"Zoey, you are always welcome here. No matter what," Bonnie told her, equally as quietly. "You, Penelope, the kids. Please, come by any time."

"They are all asleep," Cara said quietly. "Heather probably needs to sleep for a long time to get better, right?"

Gunnar looked at the couch. Hope and Heather were sound asleep, slumped toward each other now.

"Something like that," Cashlyn said. "It wouldn't hurt Hope either. I don't think she's slept much in a few days. None of us really have."

There was so much pain in that demon girl's voice it hurt Gunnar to hear it. This family had been through enough.

"We have her back," Eden said. "We'll focus on that for now. No matter what Timothy is involved in. We have Heather back."

"That's what matters most. Powell and Heather are safe," Samia added. She cuddled Miguel's toddler closer. The baby had been cruising from person to person for half an hour, just babbling and beautiful. "Should we leave them here? I'm worried that as much as Hope squirms in her sleep?—"

"I'll carry her to her room," Miguel said. Just like that, he lifted Hope into his arms. She never stirred. Two of Hope's nieces followed him down the hall. Gunnar found his arms full of a babbling Emilia Rose.

"We'll just leave Heather where she's at so we can watch her. Besides, she sleeps like a zombie anyway. She's not going anywhere," Joy said. Norm helped get Heather's feet on the couch. Joy covered her twin quickly.

"Please, you are all welcome to stay for dinner," Bonnie said. "We really do have plenty. To say thank you for, um…volunteering…to clean out our garage."

Gunnar looked at Powell. Curled up on her side, one hand beneath her face, she was sound asleep on the side couch. Her brother Alex was pulling a knit throw off the back of a nearby chair and covering her with it.

"We can just leave her here if Bonnie and the rest of you beautiful beasts don't mind?" Alex said. "When she is sleeping, she's not causing trouble, right? At least, that was the way it was when she was a kid. Mac and I lived for the hours she would nap when she was little."

"Something like that." Gunnar just looked at her, feeling like his whole world was right there in front of him. His arms tightened around Emilia when she twisted. She was a wiggly little thing. She babbled at him, something about duckies, he thought. Maybe. How was he to know?

Emilia spoke her own language, after all.

There were ducks in the backyard. There was a duck on her little T-shirt beneath the overalls. She was perfect. Beautiful.

This was the possible daughter of the man responsible for almost taking Powell away from Gunnar forever. And she was so infinitely precious. He wouldn't ever do anything to endanger the security this baby had with the father who loved and adored her. Gunnar would protect her, no matter what.

But Grundenman and OPJ tied to the Colesons? That was a bit farfetched. He wasn't stupid. That was far too coincidental for him. Something more was going on.

He just didn't understand how it all worked together.

But he was going to.

Dr. Timothy Grundenman was on borrowed time.

"Emilia Rose, want to go see the duckies?" Gunnar asked. He just wasn't ready to put her down yet. He just wasn't.

He needed to see the good things in life for a moment too.

The darkness was starting to consume them all.