Jamie Garrett - Riley Reid 03 - Ends and Beginnings by Jamie Garrett

Kevin screwed the cap back on his bottle of brandy and put it back in the desk drawer. “Whenever Troy came by, which wasn’t often, I made him give me a ride.”
    “What was he like? I mean how do you remember him?” Honestly, I wasn’t too interested in Kevin’s fascination with my dad’s car. I wanted to know about the man it belonged to.
    Kevin took a sip of his brandy. “Like I said, I was young. The only things I really remember was that whenever he came home to visit, he and my parents would argue. He got into a lot of trouble with the police, on a regular basis. In fact, once they even showed up at our house. I think it was Thanksgiving or Christmas, I’m not sure which. We were eating dinner and they came knocking.”
    “What’d they want?”
    “Apparently, Troy had been dealing drugs. Someone tried to rob him and he stabbed the guy. Troy spent two years locked up for it. When he got out, he stopped coming around. He stopped calling and visiting us. I think he was angry at our parents. He thought they betrayed him by telling the cops that he was there.
    “I never saw or heard from him again after the night he got arrested. Time went by, I got older and I stopped thinking about it. And I know this sounds awful, but I tried to forget about him.
    “Then my parents passed away when I was twenty-three,” said Kevin in a solemn voice.
    “I’m sorry.” I didn’t have to ask how my grandparents died. I already knew. Not long before my parents abandoned me, I found my dad crying in the bathroom. He went there to get away from me and my mom. It was the only time I’d ever seen him sad. I’d seen him angry and happy, but never sad.
    When I asked my dad what was wrong, he told me my grandparents had died. There was a bad car accident. A drunk teen slammed into them, killing them. Of course, the teen only got a few scratches but I think he’s still in jail.
    “Thank you, but I’m the one who should be sorry.”
    “For what?”
    Kevin took another sip of his brandy. “For not being around. For not reaching out. For not finding you. You see, I knew about you. I never met you, Troy never brought you over to my parents’ house, but I knew about you.”
    “By my math, you were only what … seven when I was born. And you were twenty-three when my folks left. What could you have done? Adopt me? You probably weren’t even out of medical school, right?” I meant every word that I said.
    “Yeah, I was still in school. How’d you figure that out?”
    The books on his shelves and the big house clued me in that he was in a medical profession. Also the way he carried himself, the way he talked clued me in. “I’m a PI, remember?”
    Kevin smiled and finished his brandy. “That’s right. Being in medical school still isn’t a good excuse though. Anyway, life went on. Two years after my parents died, I got a call from a detective in Stone Harbor. He told me his name was Richard Greyson. Troy was missing, along with his wife. Then he told me that you were left behind. And he wanted to know if I was interested in taking custody of you.
    “You were my niece, but I’d never even met you. You were a stranger. So when he asked me about him adopting you, I felt like I had dodged a bullet. I wasn’t ready for that type of responsibility. I wasn’t even done with school yet.
    “The years went by without hearing anything about Troy. After five years, I figured he was either dead or never coming back. I met Angelica and we got married. Then we had Belle. Then Russell. My life was so busy, so full. I never found the time to reach out to you. For that, again, I’m deeply sorry. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.”
    It’s never nice to hear that you were a low priority. It bothered me a little bit. But I didn’t want to the ruin the night by asking too many questions. Despite all of my private investigator instincts, I just went with it.
    “Again, there is nothing for you to be sorry for. I