But it turned out, being kissed senseless by the man you had strong feelings for after hearing him declare to a known gossip that you sleptdependentlyhad a remarkably settling effect on a person.
Ten out of ten, strong recommend.
I couldn’t even work myself up to more than a mild annoyance about Kel’s emergency preventing me and Brewer from having our talk… and our jam cupboard reckoning. After the way he’d made love to me last night, after everything we’dalmostsaid this morning, I was confident Brewer and I were building a future on an unshakable foundation.
Silly me.
After I grabbed some coffee from the kitchen and fed Brewer’s dog, I opened my laptop, more determined than ever to finish Empire Ridge one way or another and put it to bed once and for all. I was surprised to find a new email from Amber at the top of my inbox.
“Well, well. Harmon Construction—Background Photos,” I murmured to Teeny, who’d flopped on the floor at my feet, apparently deciding we were best friends now. “Amber’s been a busy woman overnight.”
Curious, I opened the attachment.
The first shot was a black-and-white photo of a tall, smiling, broad-shouldered man in work clothes and a diminutive woman with a bouffant hairstyle, standing in front of a Queen Anne Victorian with a sagging front porch. The caption read:Harmon Construction Founder Barney Harmon and his wife, Elsie Brewer, outside the family home, 19 Halifax St, Southbourne, 1963.
The man’s smile beamed with so much pride I wanted to smile back… but found I couldn’t.
The Halifax Street property Anthony had sold to Empire Ridgehadbeen his family home, the one he seemed to have grown up in.
My brain kicked into gear, trying to find the angles here. Why hadn’t Anthony mentioned that? Anthony’s goal in getting me to write this article was to make himself a sympathetic figure—the little guy corrupted by the big, evil corporation. So why withhold information that supported this claim? It was so counterproductive it had honestly never occurred to me to go looking for this kind of thing.
I quickly reopened the email from last night and perused the deed of transfer again. Belles Pivoines Trusthad owned the property.Why did that name seem familiar? I’d need to go through Anthony’s financials again and see if it had been there. But who’d put the property in trust—Anthony or Barney? Who’d been the beneficiary? Why hadn’t I explored any of this before?
Frustrated now, I shot off an email to Amber asking if she could find any information about the trust in the heaps of research we now had.
Then I flipped back to the Background Photos email and kept scrolling, looking for answers.
The next items in the document were snippets from newspaper announcements, and I wondered idly if Southbourne’s library had digitized their old newspapers.
Announcement of Marriage: Mr and Mrs James Brewer are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Elsie to Barney Harmon of Southbourne.
I frowned at the clipping for a moment—ElsieBrewer?—before shaking my head at my own foolishness. This was one of those weird synchronicity things. Think of Brewer, find all the Brewers.
The two next clippings announced the arrivals of Elsie and Barney’s children, B. Anthony Harmon and Catherine Harmon.
And the one after that?—
My breath caught as my eyes landed on an obituary from ten years ago.
SOUTHBOURNE, NY - Barnum “Barney” Harmon, 87, beloved craftsman and founder of Harmon Construction, passed away peacefully…
Born February 3, 1930, to William and Martha Harmon, Barney founded Harmon Construction in 1962…
He was preceded in death by his wife, Elsie Brewer Harmon. He is survived by his son, Brewer Anthony Harmon, daughter Catherine Harmon Lovatt, and grandsons Brewer Harmon and Hayes Lovatt, all of Southbourne…
Shock turned my fingers ice-cold, and the edges of my vision went black.
Hand shaking, I somehow kept scrolling, wanting to find something—anything—that showed it was all a misunderstanding.
But the next image was of a short piece from theSouthbourne Courier. The headline read: “Father-Son Team Expanding Family Legacy.” Below was a photo of two men in tool belts standing side by side, grinning at the camera: an older man with graying hair I recognized as Anthony… and a younger man with a happy tip-tilted smile.
“Brewer,” I whisper-moaned to the empty room. “Oh, fuck.”
I pushed my chair back from the desk, and Teeny lifted her head in concern.
How was it possible I was writing an article about Brewer’s father? More to the point, how was it possible that I hadn’tknownall these weeks?
My brain started putting pieces together, trying to make it make sense. Coincidences like this were practically impossible, weren’t they? So had Brewer known I was writing an article about his father and then decided to?—?
