“There was just so much pressure on my Colin,” Kim said. “Shep was determined he’d play college ball. I should have brought my baby back here once they started fighting, but what did I have to offer? I told myself that it would be okay, that Acacia was there, too. And Colin worshipped her. He worshipped Shep, for that matter, when they weren’t fighting.”
“They were a family,” Savannah said softly.
Kim closed her eyes. “I always thought Shep married your mother for the money, but when he saw how she was with Colin—that’s when he fell in love.”
Grayson felt the way that statement hit his sisters, both of them.
“Do you still have the slips?” Savannah asked him, her voice curt, the change of subject intentional.
Grayson nodded and withdrew them from his suit jacket. “Before he left,” he told his aunt, “your brother made fairly regular withdrawals of relatively small amounts of cash. Two-hundred seventeen dollars. Five hundred six dollars… you get the point. Your name—or what we believe to be an abbreviation of your name—was written on the back of the slips.”
“He brought me money now and then,” Kim admitted, her tone defensive. “Never too much. He didn’t trust me with too much.” She narrowed her eyes at Grayson. “Only even amounts, though. Two hundred or five hundred or what-have-you. The rest must have been for himself.”
Grayson seriously doubted that Sheffield Grayson had withdrawn seventeen dollars—or six—for his own spending needs.
“He came here and brought you money,” Savannah summarized. “Did he bring anything else with him when he did?”
Grayson saw the logic of her question. If Sheffield Grayson had been hiding something—like, say, records of illegal transactions—his estranged sister’s house, a world away from his own, would be a good place to hide it.
“Besides the money? No.” Kim shook her head—and averted her eyes.
Gigi leaned forward in her chair. “What aren’t you telling us, Aunt Kim?”
Grayson instantly saw what it meant to the woman for Gigi to call her that.
“Shep would talk to me for a bit,” Kim said hoarsely, “then he’d leave the money on the kitchen counter and go shut himself in Colin’s room.”
“What did he do in there?” Savannah asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim replied. “Just… sit, I guess.” She paused. “One time, I tried to go in and talk to him. He yelled at me to get out. There was something on the floor. A box.”
“What kind of box?” Grayson pressed.
“Wooden. Nice. Real nice. He left it here, in Colin’s closet, told me that if I ever touched it, if I ever even looked at it, he’d stop coming, and I’d never see another dime from him.”
Grayson exchanged a look with Savannah. We need that box. “Could we see Colin’s room?” he asked—but it wasn’t really a question.
Kim’s eyes narrowed. “The room,” she repeated harshly. “Or the box?”
Gigi was the one who replied. “Our dad is gone,” she said simply. “He left, and he never came back. And now we’re finding out that he wasn’t who we thought he was.” She swallowed. “Who I thought he was,” she corrected.
Savannah met her twin’s eyes, just for a moment, before turning her attention to their aunt. “I found out about Dad cheating on Mom, about the fact that he had another kid out there, when I was fourteen,” Savannah said.
Grayson doubted she’d ever said those words out loud before.
“And my dad, he acted like it was nothing. But all I could think”—Savannah’s words slowed—“was that he had a son. Basketball was always our thing, but when I hit middle school, I noticed that he stopped saying that I played basketball and started saying that I played on the girls’ basketball team.” There wasn’t a hitch in Savannah’s voice, but Grayson felt the effort it took her to fight it. “He started asking me why I was such a tomboy.”
Kim frowned. “You don’t look like a tomboy to me.”
Savannah fingered the end of her long blonde hair. “Exactly.” She drew in another steady breath. “Our dad loved Colin. Maybe he loved us, too, but we weren’t Colin.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Kim asked.
“Because I want you to understand,” Savannah replied. “Our dad abandoned us, and we deserve to know why. Our mom’s in trouble. Whatever Dad was keeping in that box—what if it could help her?”