“Phil and Gordon told me you were old enough to be her father—”
“Only if I fathered her at the age of eleven. I was thirty when I met her.”
“Oh. Well, shit.”
“Cord, I mean no disrespect when I say this, but all is not as it seems in your family. Did you know that Veronica has a history of being bullied?”
“I knew there were a few times at school. But what does that have to do with—”
“I’m talking about within your family, and your family friends. I think you need to confront Phil and Gordon, and get the full story from your brothers, and your damned snotty sister, Addison.”
Cord snorted into the phone. “Hey, Jackson, Game Warden thinks Addison is snotty.”
Over the connection, Travis thought he heard a wry voice say, “He doesn’t know the half of it.”
Cord said, “Why would she think she was bullied at home?” In his voice as he asked was a trace of hurt—and maybe remorse.
“Do you recall her ever standing up for herself when she was picked on?”
There was a long pause. “That was pretty difficult for her. She was more likely to withdraw. That’s why they pushed her, I think, to get her to stand up for herself.”
“Their strategy didn’t work and it’s affecting her even now. It doesn’t sound to me like she learned how to stand up to bullies. She withdraws. That’s why she’s successful online. When she needs to withdraw she can do it more easily than she could face-to-face.”
“We tried to get them to stop, once we realized how it hurt her. There’s five years difference between us so she was still pretty young when we went to college. Jesse and Barry were little shits when they were teenagers.”
“Judging by what she’s told us, little has changed.”
“We took them aside before we left for school and told them that shit had to stop. Addison was more difficult. She never listened very well, the little snot.”
“When was the last time you saw her for the holidays?”
An even longer pause that time. “Last time we saw her at Christmas was when we barged in on her at her apartment for Christmas. She was working. She works a lot.”
“When was the last time she went home for Christmas?”
“Far as I know, her last Christmas at home was the year before she went off college. But we thought she was always working and just too busy to come home.”
“She lives in Billings. Your family ranch is less than an hour from there. It’s not like she had to travel cross country.”
There was an exchange of voices on the other end and a different male voice came on the line. “This is Jackson Benedict. So, you’re telling us that Veronica has been bullied all this time? And that she doesn’t want anything to do with her family, because that’s bullshit. We love Veronica, and we tried to get them to stop. We thought they did. She’s always been one to hide her feelings. When we call her, getting her to open up is still hard sometimes. She’s always busy with one deadline or another.”
Travis chuckled. That sounded like Veronica. Keeping busy enough so there was little time for a life.
“Veronica told us that you love her and we believe her, and it was obvious she thinks the world of you two. The rest of your family, however, doesn’t know the first damn thing about being a family. They were bullying on her to get her toughen up when they should’ve been defending her, starting with those two sons of bitches, Phil and Gordon. I swear if I ever meet them face-to-face—”
“Eh, they’re both dickheads. We already knew that.”
“Did you know those dickheads backed her into a corner at home on a regular basis, poking at her, teasing her for liking me, for being full-figured, for being creative? They bought into your family’s stupid dynamic and victimized her to the point where she couldn’t defend herself.”
“Damn it! No! See what I mean? Shit, just once I wish she’d called and told us. We’d have been home in a heartbeat dealing with those little shits, all four of them. All we ever heard was their side. Why didn’t she tell us?”
“I don’t know, Jackson. Maybe she was already used to taking it? Maybe she thought she deserved it or that it would only get worse? If you were busy with school, maybe she didn’t want to worry you. She’s pretty strong.”
“I wish she’d said something. But yeah, Mom and Dad had a ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ philosophy. I guess it’s clear they went overboard.”
“That’s why she hasn’t gone home any more than necessary. She’s insulated herself from all that ‘tough love.’ Lots of people think introversion is a disorder that needs to be cured. I’ll agree that she needed to learn to defend herself from picking, teasing, and bullying, but from her own family and family friends?”