“No, Dad! That’s the problem. I don’t. Not by a long shot. And everything I believed, everything you told me, it wasn’t true.” His chest felt tight as bit by bit everything he thought he’d known about his mother was unraveling into a string of lies.

“Well, now you know as much about your mother as I do. Feel any better?”

The bastard. “And your son? What about my damned twin?” Jase asked, and realized he was gripping the railing, his knuckles white.

“I told you. Don’t know where he is, whether he’s alive or dead.” His father dropped his cigarette and crushed the butt with his boot heel. “Don’t care, neither. I did what I could for you and Prescott. Raised you best as I could. Yeah, it wasn’t perfect, not by any man’s measure, but I tried and I was there for you. Stood by you when you needed me. ’Til you were raised. ’Til you inherited.” Ed scowled, and in the disgusted twist of his lips, Jase could see his father’s old disappointment that he’d been skipped over, bitterness over the will that left his father’s money to Jase and Prescott.

“Ah, shit.” Ed stared down. “I can’t change the past, Jason, and I’m not sure I would if I could, but there it is. I don’t know about Jacob, never heard, and really never cared. You and Prescott, you were my sons. I don’t think I coulda handled another.”

“You don’t know anything about him?”

“Nothin’.” He kicked his cigarette butt off the deck under the railing, leaving a streak where the blackened tobacco had swept the concrete. “And that’s the way I’d like to keep it.”

“Not gonna happen, Dad. I’m gonna find him. Pres will want to know he has another brother, too.”

“Prescott?” Ed snorted his disbelief. “He’s got more’n he can handle with that wife of his. Lena bosses him around like a bitch mother dog and he’s the whipped puppy. Got him gettin’ rid of the farm, sellin’ insurance, and hopin’ to live near the preacher.” His graying eyebrows drew together. “Two kids and a third on the way. What’s he thinkin’?”

“What were you?” Jase demanded. “You had three.”

“Expectin’ only to raise two,” he corrected. “Didn’t know your mo—that she was havin’ twins until about fifteen minutes after you were born and out popped another. Biggest surprise of my damned life.”

“And not the best?”

“Hell, no,” Ed admitted. “The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.”

So angry he could spit nails, Jase leaned in close. Despite the old man’s recent shower, Jase could still smell the scent of old cigarette smoke and stale liquor seeping through his father’s pores. “This is where it ends, Dad. All of it. The lies. The secrets. No more.”