Harrison picked up with a sleepy, “Hello?”
“I think something’s going on between Dad and that realtor lady, Cat Shaw!”
“Good morning to you, too,” Harrison replied. “She’s the one who helped Maria and me buy our house, right?”
“Yes,” Lily said in a stage-whisper. “They’re downstairs in their bathrobes making eyes at each other over breakfast.”
“Aww.” He sounded like he’d spotted a puppy.
“What do I do, Harrison? He made her an omelet!”
Her brother took a deep breath. “I think it’s sweet, Lil. I do. You said you were worried about him, that he seemed depressed, that you think he’s lonely. Maybe Cat Shaw’s good for him. Maybe…it’s time.”
“Oh, God,” she said. It was a cross between a whine and a moan. She leaned back against the wall and slid slowly to the floor until she was sitting on a fluffy shower rug. “It can’t be time.”
“Mom would want him to be happy.”
“Mom was a saint. I don’t want him to be happy. I want him to keep grieving her forever.”
“No, you don’t,” Harrison said. “I know you better than that.”
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. She took a deep breath and lowered her chin to her chest. Then from somewhere beyond her brother, she heard Maria shout, “Oh no, this is awful!”
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked. “Is Maria okay?”
“Hang on, she’s showing me something…oh, hell. This is bad. I’m forwarding a link. Where’s Ethan right now?”
“Out at the bunkhouse, last I saw him,” she said. “Why?” Her phone signaled, and she clicked the link her brother had sent. Her eyes rounded, and her jaw dropped. “Holy fu–dgesicles.”
And like a bolt from the blue, she understood where her sainted mother’s favorite exclamation had come from. She’d used it to keep herself from dropping f-bombs.
That was almost as big a revelation as the gossip site’s sensationalistic hit piece about Ethan Brand’s drug-lord father having murdered his birth mother.
When Ethan had looked at his phone, he hadn’t been able to believe his eyes. There was an image of him on stage, head back, guitar high, wailing, with backlighting that cast everything in red. Underneath the image there was a caption: “Ethan Brand’s Wholesome Image Hides a Violent Past.”
And then he saw the little inset with de Lorean’s face-front mugshot, and the caption, “Brand’s father—drug dealer and cold-blooded killer.”
He swore softly and tapped the link. It took him to an article in one of the celebrity gossip sheets, claiming he’d just inherited a fortune from the same man who’d killed his own mother, a crime lord worth millions. It made him sound like a greedy, grasping fraud.
“While his music praises his small-town home and family values, it appears Ethan Brand is actually sole heir to the fortune of a murderous organized-crime boss, earned by smuggling cocaine and fentanyl into the country.”
The article made it sound as if the idyllic upbringing he’d talked about in every interview and written about in most of his songs had been made up out of whole cloth.
“Hell and damnation.” He pushed a hand through his hair. That was the point where he’d looked up to find Lily on her way out the door.
His phone stopped buzzing and started ringing. Angelo Barrone was on the screen. His manager. He had to answer. He had no choice but to let Lily run off angry. He could make things right later. Or…not. He was leaving. What difference did it make? It might even be easier to let her stay mad.
He answered the phone. “Hey, Angelo.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ethan!”
He sighed and said, “Look, I was adopted as a baby by the Brands of Quinn, Texas. Everything I’ve ever said or sung about my childhood is the truth. It’s verifiable. My birth father’s behavior isn’t my fault.”
“No shit. It’s all true then?”
“Yeah.”
“He killed your mother?”
