Rhys scrubbed a hand across his face, the stubble scratching his skin. “When Dad is stable, I want to go home and get into the study. We need to find out what the hell is going on.”
“Agreed,” Reikart replied.
“We’ll probably have to kick down the door,” Ian mused.
“What if Dad dies?” Greyson asked, staring directly at Rhys.
“He’s not going to die,” Rhys said, refusing to even acknowledge the possibility. “He’s too damn stubborn, for one thing.”
“And he won’t let go without seeing Mom again,” Reikart said. “We have to find her.”
Rhys nodded as if it were simple, though they’d had a team of the best private investigators working on her case for two years after she had vanished, and they had found nothing. The investigators had said they’d seen enough cases like hers, cases with no signs of foul play, to believe she didn’t want to be found. That her leaving was purposeful. They’d even gone so far as to investigate the foster system she’d told their dad she’d grown up in, and it turned out, she hadn’t. There were no records of her in the foster system. She’d lied. When they’d confronted Dad, he’d claimed she’d had to make up a past to explain why she had no family since she was not from their time. Recalling Dad’s utter denial of the truth made it seem like it had all just happened. He breathed in a long, deep breath. It was as though she’d never existed.
Except she had.
He couldn’t say how long they sat there in the waiting room because he didn’t look at his phone, but when Dr. Jameson finally came out to talk to them, it felt as if it had been years. Rhys stood, as did his brothers, and before the doctor said a word, Rhys knew it was bad news. Dr. Jameson had that look about him, the one people got when they had something unpleasant to tell you. His face was pinched, his hands twined together in front of him, and his gaze kept shifting from one of them to another. He finally settled it on Rhys. Everyone always did. It was part of being the eldest.
“Your father is in a coma,” he said plainly.
Rhys jerked at the news. “Will he live?”
“We’re hopeful,” Dr. Jameson said. “We’re treating the dehydration, which should bring the swelling in his brain down, and once that happens, hopefully he’ll wake.”
“How long will that take?” Greyson asked.
“I can’t say for certain,” Dr. Jameson replied. “We’ll let you in to see him one at a time. He won’t respond, but he might be able to hear you. Don’t say anything to upset him. Oh, and he kept asking for his wife earlier, before the coma. Is that your mother?”
Rhys nodded.
“Is she…” Dr. Jameson shifted, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “If she’s willing and able to come see your father, it could help.”
Rhys didn’t have any idea if she was able, but she clearly wasn’t willing or she’d have never left. And he wasn’t about to stand here and tell this doctor that she’d apparently created an identity out of thin air, lied about who she was, and left them all without a backward glance. Or worst of all, that their father had lost touch with reality. That he’d convinced himself she was from another time. That he believed their mom had believed that, too. According to their dad, she’d told him as much. Rhys jerked a hand through his hair as the doctor stared at him. None of them had ever been able to pinpoint exactly when their dad had broken.
Rhys cleared his throat, thought about what to say, and decided in this instance, it was easier to not say much at all. “Thank you. We’ll do our best to find her.” His brothers looked at him as if he was crazy; they all knew they’d already done their best. But maybe they’d find a clue in their Dad’s study, a piece of her history he had discovered. It didn’t seem likely, but Rhys had given his word, and he had to try.
Chapter Two
Have you ever had that feeling?
That you are completely lost.
Your mind and senses reeling,
As in a dark, foreboding frost.
~ Bernard Shaw, “Completely Lost”
Rhys was numb, and it had nothing to do with the tequila shots Ian had poured them all earlier when they were looking for the key to their dad’s study. Rhys stood in the middle of the disaster zone that was his father’s private office. He clutched an unopened box in his hands that he’d damn near broken his neck on when he’d kicked in the study door. As he took in the utter disarray of the space, blood surged through his veins, making him edgy. It’s how he often felt before entering the boxing ring. He was keyed up and ready to fight, except this time, he wasn’t battling an opponent he could easily see and target. He was fighting his dad’s mind, his imagination, the desperate fantasy he’d created when their mom had left.
Rhys’s gaze swept across the mounds of papers and books on the ornate desk that was the focal point of the room. He couldn’t even see the desktop. His dad was a neat freak—or had been. Apparently, neatness and sanity went hand in hand. The oriental rug and gleaming hardwood of the office were buried under a sea of even more papers and books. Some of the books were open, others closed, and on the walls…
“Jesus,” Reikart said from behind Rhys. “Dad thumbtacked ancient maps straight into the mahogany. Remember how he used to yell at us if we so much as grazed his ‘hand-carved, imported—’”
“‘Straight-from-London wood,’” Greyson finished, quoting their father.
Of course Rhys remembered. The vein in Dad’s neck would bulge every time he yelled at them not to damage his desk. Rhys walked over to get a better look at the maps, paper crunching under his shoes with each step. His arm brushed the edge of the heavy silk drapes as he raised his hand to touch one of the maps, and he moved in so close that when he inhaled, a musty scent filled his nose. The map wasold. He’d spent enough time in the Harvard libraries reading old Gaelic books that he’d never forget the particular smell of moldy paper. He scanned the single scrawled word at the top of the first map, and a fist clutched his heart as realization dawned. It was a map of Perthshire, Scotland, where their dad swore their mother was from. That part was fine. It was the part where Dad firmly believed that she had lived in the year 1286 that made Rhys’s gut clench and mouth part with shock, just as it had when his father had first made the claim not long after she’d disappeared.
His heart rate sped up as he moved over to the next map, which was a detailed drawing of the land around a place called Castle Hightower, also in Perthshire. Rhys squinted at his father’s familiar scrawl on the map and read the words aloud, feeling his brothers behind him like the weight of the world at his back.“Shona’s home.”
