Torin and Summer

Chapter 6 (Torin): Watch List

"What? What are you talking about, Torin?" Summer demanded. "You've been trying to watch out for Elijah while you were working to find his daddy? That's not what it looked like to me."

I scrubbed my hands over my face. "Terry left me a letter. From the date on the letter, it was from about a year after Elijah's birth and in it he explained a few basic facts. Elijah wasn't Terry's son; Elijah was his brother's son. Before Terry married Bridgette, he had an avuncular DNA test done because no way was he tying himself to her without good reason."

"I thought DNA tests proved paternity."

"They do, but they can also prove whether or not you're the uncle if the dad's not around. You share enough DNA with your brother or sister to determine if a child is related to you."

"OK, but I'm not sure I understand why Terry married her."

"Terry was never sure who his brother worked for. All he knew was was that Curt left him a note that said he was going to be completely out of contact for up to ten years and if anything happened to him, Terry might never know."

"What does that mean?"

"Terry wasn't sure what the hell it meant, but he tried to figure it out. He thought maybe it could mean his brother was serving a prison sentence, but that didn't mean he couldn't be in touch. Maybe he worked for a newspaper and was going undercover, but ten years seemed like a long time for that. Maybe he was a police detective and going undercover to bust a drug ring or organized crime. But the more he thought about it, he thought maybe his brother, when he was a SEAL, got hooked up with an agency and would be going deep undercover. Curt had mentioned it once to Terry, that he'd like to do something like that, where he lived an undercover life for years. At the time, Terry thought he was just talking out of his ass, but then he thought, maybe he wasn't. Maybe that was his brother giving him a heads up."

"Where does Bridgette fit into this?"

"A couple of places. She found Terry when she was about six months along and told him she was pregnant with his brother's child. His brother had disappeared four months earlier, so Terry said he was sorry, but he couldn't help her get in touch with Curt since he had no clue where he'd gone. Bridgette told Terry either he stepped up in his brother's place or she'd put the child up for adoption. To buy some time, Terry said he wanted a DNA test done and Bridgette agreed. DNA test came back proving it was Curt's child. So Terry was torn, but he married Bridgette because he didn't feel right about letting his brother's son be put up for adoption. When Elijah was two years old, Terry got deployed for the first time, but he was quietly trying to find out who his brother worked for to see if it was possible to get at least a hey! it's a boy! message to him somehow."

"Two years and not one word from his brother?"

"Not a word. But he kept trying. When he got back, Bridgette was off. She kept asking if he'd heard from his brother and if he had any luck finding him. She'd never asked before he got deployed. He didn't give her any information, just let her think he'd given up. So they lived together, married but not married really and he got deployed again. He'd kept trying to find out who his brother worked for, just to get him a simple message, but he never let on to Bridgette that he was still searching."

"I don't blame him."

"He came back home, had about a year and then we were deployed again together. Elijah was five when Terry and I were deployed that time, and Bridgette ate up Terry's pay like it was nothing, he said. And every time he communicated with her while he was deployed, she hammered him with questions about Curt. Any luck finding him? Any word? Any leads, even? He didn't trust her."

"Smart man, unlike some others."

I deserved that, but not in the way she thought. Summer didn't have all the pieces, and I knew I needed to start giving her them because I'd been shitty to her for the last year because of my frustration and inability to let her know anything.

"I never trusted her, Sum. I had Terry's letter before I got back stateside. Terry warned me about her, told me where he'd been looking for his brother and explained what he'd done. He'd updated the letter every year since he started it to me. Left me some contacts that hadn't panned out but he had a feeling about. The letter, combined with what he made me promise when he was dying, painted a pretty vivid picture of the situation."

"A picture you never painted for me," she looked at me angrily.

"I told you about the deathbed promise I made to Terry, but I didn't really go into detail, and that was because I really wrestled with all of it. I hated talking about it, so I didn't say much, not even to you, Summer, because...fuck, because of the guilt. It sat on my shoulders like a twelve-ton weight. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that you're only here because someone took a bullet meant for you, and then, while he was dying, asked you to keep a promise because he wasn't going to make it. That really fucked with my mind, and it still does."

"I figured, but you wouldn't talk about it so I didn't know how to help you, and then you started spending more and more time with Bridgette and Elijah and getting meaner and meaner to me."

I rubbed my chest. 

"To explain that, I need to explain about a visit I had at the house one day while you were out. I had a different contact at the agency that Terry was trying to get an answer from about whether or not his brother worked there, and I must have reached the right one with the right name. Or, the wrong one with the wrong name, depending on how you look at it. You weren't home and two agents came here, and they suggested strongly that I should stop trying to find Curt."

"Why? Was he...gone?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. They knew where he was and based on one or two things they said, he was in so deep no one was communicating with him, wherever he was."

"So, no way to tell him Elijah was his son?"

"No. But that wasn't even the most interesting part of the conversation. They offered me a job. Said they'd been planning to approach me for a while since I had a natural in and wanted me to work it."

Summer just looked at me suspiciously.

"You know the first six months, I'd see Elijah occasionally. Then after my guests paid me a visit, those visits with him ramped up significantly because they asked me to get closer to Bridgette, as she was a person of interest on their watch list."