Danny opened the backdoor and stepped into the hallway leading to the large kitchen. Just inside the doorway to his right was another hallway that led to a small dining room that had been set aside for the servants. The laundry room was on the other side of the doorway.
Before heading in to see his father and older siblings, Danny wanted to see the two people he truly considered his family. He set his bags down right inside the laundry room and then tiptoed across the hallway to the servants’ lounge, hoping to surprise them. He hadn’t seen them since last Christmas when they came to drop off presents at his apartment.
“It’s just not right, Thomas.”
Danny smiled, his heart warming as he recognized the soft voice of his family’s housekeeper Clara. The older woman had kissed his booboos, made him cookies, and helped him with his homework. She had even given him a lecture about the birds and bees when he discovered he liked boys…more specifically a guy on his high school football team.
“There’s nothing we can do about it, Clara.”
Danny’s grin grew. He knew that voice, too. Where Clara had kissed his booboos, Thomas had tossed a ball with him and taught him how to be proud of who he was, to work hard for what he wanted, and to never give up his dreams.
Danny was so excited about seeing Clara and Thomas, it was all he could do to tiptoe down the narrow hallway. He didn’t want to make too much noise because then the others would hear him and he might not get a few minutes with the servants.
“You know what Sir said, Clara,” Thomas was saying in a low voice but loud enough for Danny to hear him from where he stood. “If we say anything to Daniel, he’ll—”
“Say anything to me about what?” Danny asked as he stepped inside the room.
“Daniel.” Clara sniffled as she pressed her hand against her collarbone. “We weren’t expecting you for a couple more hours.”
“I caught an early bus.” Danny shot a glance at Thomas, wondering why the older man was avoiding his gaze, and then looked back at Clara. The woman had tears in her eyes.
“Is something wrong?” Danny could feel his chest start to tighten at the cautious frowns on the faces of the two people he thought wanted to see him. Could he have been wrong? “Do you want me to go?”
“Yes, actually,” Thomas said.
Danny inhaled a shaky breath, trying not to cry as the only good memories of his childhood came crashing down around him. “Okay,” he whispered as he started to turn and leave.
If Thomas and Clara didn’t want to see him, he had no reason to stick around. He would just go see what his father wanted and then go home. Maybe he’d stop for another pint of ice cream on the way. If he was fast enough, he might be able to get it home before it melted.
“Thomas!” Clara’s admonishing voice filtered through the grief gripping Danny. “Do something.”
“Come here, son.”
Danny didn’t want to but he had never defied Thomas before. There wasn’t really any reason to start now, even if he thought about it for half a second. He turned and stepped back into the small lounge area, keeping his eyes down so that no one would see the tears gathering in his eyes.
“You’re twenty-five, son. You’re an adult now.”
“Yes, sir.” Danny nodded. He kind of thought he had become an adult when he turned eighteen, maybe twenty-one. But twenty-five? He had been an adult for a pretty long time. Hadn’t he? He lived on his own and paid his bills like an adult. He went grocery shopping and cooked for himself like an adult. He even drank alcohol on occasion.
But maybe he was wrong.
“Clara and I stayed until you became an adult but it’s time for us to be heading home, Daniel.”
Danny gulped as his eyes snapped up. “Home?”
“Back to Pacific Cove,” Clara supplied. “We’ve talked to you about the town we’re from, Daniel.”
Danny nodded. From the time he had been a toddler, Clara had regaled him with stories of the sleepy little town on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. He always planned to visit one day but there had never seemed to be time.
“Whe–when are you planning on going?” Danny hadn’t really thought about it but he kind of assumed that Clara and Thomas would always be around. Now he knew he had been fooling himself.
Thomas glanced at Clara. “We just wanted a chance to tell you ourselves before we left, Daniel.”
“Wow.” Danny swallowed hard. “That soon, huh?”
“Daniel,” Clara said as she hurried forward and wrapped her arms around Danny’s shoulders. “You know we love you.”
“I know.” Danny clutched at Clara as he buried his face in her neck. Her unique scent—lilacs and baby powder—wrapped around him, reminding him of the good parts of his childhood. “I love you, too.”
“You knew that one day we would retire and go home to our family.”
“I knew.” Danny had just thought he was part of their family. Now, he realized he wasn’t and he never had been. They were going to leave him and go home to their real family, probably never even sparing him another thought.
Danny squeezed Clara one last time then dropped his arms and stepped back. He refused to let them see how much he was hurting. It wasn’t their fault he had seen something that wasn’t there. He plastered a smile on his face. “Is there anything I can do to help you pack? I don’t have finals for another few weeks so my weekends are free.”
Clara smiled, but Danny could see that it was a wobbly smile as if she was trying to put on a show just like he was. “You always were a good boy.”
“We have everything taken care of, Daniel,” Thomas said. “But thank you. We just want you to concentrate on your studies.”
“I am.” Danny twisted his lips trying to think of something else to say to fill in the silence that hung in the air. It had never seemed so hard to find a topic of conversation before. Now, he just felt awkward.
“Charles is waiting for you, Daniel,” Thomas said. “You might not want to let him know we spoke to you.”
Danny’s head cocked to one side. “Why not?” he asked. “Why would he care?” He never had before. As long as Danny was out of sight, Charles was pretty happy.
“That’s what Clara and I were discussing when you came in. Your father asked us not to say anything to you about our retirement.”
“Why ever not?”
Thomas suddenly seemed older than his forty-five years. He pushed his hand through his short salt and pepper hair and sat down heavily in one of the chairs around the small table. “Sit, Daniel.”
Danny shot Clara a look before taking a seat next to Thomas. He had no idea what the older man wanted to say to him but it didn’t seem like Thomas wanted to do it.
“When you were born, your grandmother asked us to come here and look after you. It was a great honor for us to be able to do this. Clara and I both knew it would be many years before we saw our home again and yet it as worth it to watch you grow up.”
Danny could feel a tremble start to shake his limbs. “Yo–you knew my grand-mo–mother?” He had no memories of his grandmother, nothing except a picture of her taken right after he was born. In the picture, the older woman was holding him. It was the only thing Danny owned that said he even had a connection to the woman.
Clara smiled. She still had tears in her eyes. “Yes. I’m your aunt.”
Danny’s jaw dropped. That meant that Thomas was his uncle as Clara and Thomas were brother and sister. For a moment, elation ran rampant through him as he realized he had relatives other than his father and siblings.
“Why did you never say anything?” Danny didn’t want to ask the question but he felt compelled to know why he had never been told. “Did you not want me to know we were related?”
And then he remembered that they were leaving him and his heart sank.
“We were sworn to secrecy by Charles.”
Danny’s eyebrows shot up. “You were sworn to secrecy?”
“That was one of the stipulations for us being here,” Thomas said. “We had to agree to not tell you that we were related.”
“And if you did?”
“We would immediately be removed from our position and sent home.” Thomas shrugged. “We wouldn’t be allowed to see you anymore.”
Danny pressed his hand to his chest when it began to tighten with anguish. “Why would he do that?”
“It was right after his wife was killed,” Clara said. “I think he was in a lot of pain and wanted to leave it all behind him. Since he had custody of you, he could demand whatever he wanted. It was the only way he would allow us to be here to look after you.”
“I figure since we’re retiring,” Thomas said, “it doesn’t really matter if you know or not. It’s not like Charles can fire us now.”
“The hell I can’t!”
Danny jumped up so quickly his chair fell back and he tripped over it trying to get away from the loud voice shouting. Danny went down, crashing into the hard tiled floor. He cried out as his broken wrist slammed against the floor as he landed. Danny quickly cradled his injured wrist to his chest and clenched his teeth, trying not to cry and show weakness in front of his father.
“Get off the floor, Daniel.”
Danny ground his molars together as he drew in a deep breath as he could speak through the pain ripping through his arm. “Yes, Father.” He rolled to his side and then onto his knees, still cradling his cast to his chest. Another deep breath and he was able to stand, pushing up with one leg at a time until he was on his feet.
Thomas had taken up a stance between him and his father, something the man had done often when Danny was growing up. Danny was pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good this time.
Charles O’Shay looked pissed.
“Daniel, go to my office,” Charles said in one of the sternest voices Danny had ever heard. It made him shiver and step back, his usual fear of his father multiplying by a thousand. “I need to deal with the servants.”
Danny didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to piss off his father and have the man’s rage come down on his head. But he didn’t want it to come down on Clara and Thomas either. Despite the fact that they were leaving him, they had still devoted twenty years to him, caring for him and making sure some part of his life wasn’t miserable.
“Thomas and Clara were just saying good-bye,” Danny said, forcing himself to step around Thomas and closer to his father. “They were telling me that they had decided to retire and I probably won’t see them again.”
“You’re damn right you won’t.” Charles’s fist slammed down on the small table, making it creak. “I want you packed and out of my house in one hour.”
Danny blinked back his tears as Thomas stepped over to stand next to Clara. He doubted he would ever see the two people that had meant so much to him growing up ever again.
“Thank you,”
he mouthed as he slid between the table and the older couple. He hoped they understood that he was thanking them for everything they had ever done for him. They had gone above and beyond what any normal servant had been required to do, and that deserved something. They certainly wouldn’t receive any thanks for his father.
“What did you need to see me about, Father?” Danny asked as he tried to get his father’s mind on something else. “It seemed rather important.”
“Do you really believe I would call you here if it wasn’t?”
“No, of course not.” Danny could see the fire raging in his father’s eyes and knew he probably wasn’t going to come out of this confrontation unscathed. “I saw the cars in the drive. Are the others here?”
Mentioning his siblings seemed to have the desired effect. Charles turned and started to leave, glancing back over his shoulder. “Thomas, bring refreshments to the study.”
“Very good, sir,” Thomas replied, although Danny saw the former butler roll his eyes and doubted the man would be following through with his father’s order.
Daniel cast one last look over his shoulder and then followed his father out of the servants’ lounge. He was kind of surprised that Charles even knew the small room existed. He had certainly never seen his father in there. He had never even seen him in the kitchen. Charles O’Shay did not do manual labor. He might sweat and that would mar his perfectly pressed suit.
He hired people to sweat for him.
The silence that followed him as he walked toward his father’s study was ominous. Danny was still confused about why he had been called home. Whatever his father had to say to him obviously involved the entire family.
Danny couldn’t rightly say what scared him more, the fact that his father had called him home or the fact that all of his siblings seemed to be there as well. If he had a choice, he would turn and hightail it out of the family home just as fast as his feet would carry him.
Danny’s jaw dropped when they reached the foyer. He wasn’t standing in the middle of the foyer he remembered from his childhood. He wasn’t even sure he was in the same house. The old wooden stairs that went to the second and third floors had been replaced with white marble, the railings glittering with gold filigree. A huge crystal chandelier now hung from the middle of the ceiling.
Was that a Ming vase?
“You redecorated.”
“My wife didn’t like the décor.”
Danny almost tripped over his feet as he skidded to a stop. “Your wife?”