“More important, why are you here?” Jace asked.
Sheldon cleared his throat and took a step forward. Jace looked at the table where the remnants of his meal sat. His brother stopped near it and lifted a glass of water. Setting it back on the table, he opened and closed his fists like a man who was nervous. Jace wondered what he had to be nervous about.
“I came to apologize,” he said.
“Apologize,” Jace repeated, feeling a little of the tension leave his body. “Apologize for what?”
“For being the person I was.”
“Was? That indicates you’ve changed.”
“I’m different,” he said with a shake of his head. “I understand better now what I said and did to you, not what I should have done and not what you needed.”
Sheldon could have written that in a note. He wanted to know what the real reason was for his coming here. Jace looked at his clothes. They were old and seemed as if he’d worn them for days. His shoes were dusty and he’d lost a lot of weight. Yet he was deeply tanned and appeared to be strong with toned muscles.
“Apology accepted. You can leave now.” Jace turned to open the door, but was halted by a sound that was almost a wail.
“Wait!”
Jace turned back and looked at Sheldon. He wasn’t lord of the manor anymore. Even his presence in this room, under which he used to command, he looked out of place, lost even.
“Could we sit down and talk?” His voice held a pleading quality Jace had never heard.
“Like all those brotherly talks we had in the past?” Sarcasm dripped from his lips, but it tasted sour.
“I know we never had any real talks—arguments, yes, but never talks. Not even when father died.”
“Especially not then.”
The reading of the will took place the day after their father was buried and everything went to Sheldon. Jace was only briefly mentioned—as if his existence meant nothing to his father. And Sheldon was smug and snobbish about the outcome.
“I want to tell you about my life,” Sheldon said.
“Why would I be interested in that?”
“You might not, but I want to tell it to you anyway. I hope it will help you understand me and forgive me.”
“That would have to be some life story,” Jace spat.
Sheldon took a seat and crossed one leg over his knee. When Jace remained where he stood, his brother pushed a chair out and gestured for him to take it.
“Please,” Sheldon said.
That was a word Jace could never remember hearing him utter, not even to the staff who made his life comfortable. Maybe he said it to Laura, but Jace hadn’t stayed around long enough to find out.
Jace grabbed the chair and pulled it a little closer to the table. He set his water bottle in front of him and gave his attention to his half brother.
Sheldon again took a drink of water. He began with their father, telling Jace how he was raised, how the superior attitude he got had been drilled into him. He wanted to please the old man, so he did what he was told, spoke like he was expected to speak. When Jace came to live with them, their father was the only role model he had. He emulated him, did what he did, ridiculed and taunted because that’s what he thought was expected.
“It never occurred to you to do anything else?” Jace interrupted.
“No,” he answered. “You might have thought I should. I was a grown man and you were a child. But by then I’d been so conditioned to my own way of life that it felt right to do and say what I did. The fact that you were a terror in the county made it easier.”
Jace looked away, taking a drink of his own water, before looking back at Sheldon. “So what’s changed your mind?”
Sheldon pointed to the bedroom they were in. “This place.” He looked back at his brother. “I ruined it.”
Jace laughed. This was not the brother he knew. The self-righteous, never-wrong guy who tolerated no human frailties.
“It was my fault,” Sheldon said. “I mismanaged the place. I had no idea how to run it well after father died. Laura helped for a while.” He hung his head, was probably remembering his wife. “But alone, I was a poor excuse for looking after a farm this size or any size for that matter.”
Jace listened to his brother pouring out his soul. He steeled himself to be wary, to not take what Sheldon said as truth. The man he’d grown up with probably had a hidden agenda.
Sheldon went on, telling him how he’d lived after leaving the Kendall, moving from state to state, trying to get work on another farm and how people turned him down or fired him after a short stay. He told Jace he’d been homeless, that he’d sifted through garbage cans looking for food.