Chapter 1 - THE CHILDREN IN APRONS
The first thing Thomas Mercer saw when he walked into his father’s sixty-eighth birthday party was his ten-year-old daughter carrying dirty plates.
Rebecca had a white apron tied around her waist.
It was too large for her. The strings wrapped twice around her small body, and a brown streak of barbecue sauce ran down the front.
She was balancing six ceramic plates against her chest.
Behind her, eight-year-old Samuel was dragging a trash bag toward the side gate.
Six-year-old Jacob stood beside the drink table with both hands around an empty pitcher, his lower lip trembling.
Thomas stopped beneath the white canopy.
Forty relatives and family friends were eating ribs, potato salad, and birthday cake in his parents’ backyard in Lakewood, Colorado.
His sister Caroline’s two teenagers were sitting beside the pool scrolling through their phones.
His cousins were drinking beer.
His uncle was laughing beside the grill.
Only Thomas’s children were working.
“Rebecca.”
She looked up.
The relief on her face made him sick.
“Dad.”
Thomas crossed the yard.
“Why are you carrying those?”
Grandmother Helen answered before Rebecca could.
“They’re helping.”
Thomas looked at his daughter.
“Did you volunteer?”
Rebecca’s eyes dropped.
Samuel stopped beside them.
“Grandpa said we weren’t allowed to eat until the tables were cleared.”
Helen gave an irritated sigh.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Thomas. They’ve eaten.”
Jacob ran to his father and grabbed his shirt.
“I want to go home.”
Thomas looked toward the head table.
His father, Robert Mercer, was seated beneath a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner with a bourbon in his hand.
Thomas had paid for that banner.
He had paid for the canopy tents.
He had transferred his mother $5,600 for the caterer because she said she wanted Robert to have “one good birthday after such a hard year.”
Two weeks earlier, Helen had assured him the caterer included four servers.
Thomas reached down and untied Samuel’s dirty apron.
“What are you doing?” Helen demanded.
“Taking my children home.”
Robert stood.
“They’re not leaving.”
Thomas pulled the apron over Samuel’s head.
Robert came around the table.
“Dad, don’t.”
Robert grabbed the front of Thomas’s charcoal T-shirt.
Thomas’s children recoiled.
Then Robert shoved him backward.
Thomas struck the serving table hard enough to make several glasses jump.
“Your bastard little family can serve the respectable people for once.”
The backyard changed.
Not because anyone intervened.
Because people suddenly found other places to look.
Thomas caught himself against the table.
For years, he had tolerated his father’s comments about Leah.
About Rebecca and Samuel not being “born Mercers.”
About Thomas adopting children who already had another man’s last name on their original birth certificates.
Thomas had swallowed it because Leah asked him not to turn every holiday into a war.
Because his mother always cried afterward.
Because Robert always claimed he had been joking.
Not this time.
Thomas twisted free and moved between his father and the children.
Rebecca set the plates down.
Helen snatched Samuel’s apron from Thomas’s hand and threw it against his chest.
“They should be grateful we’re teaching them their place.”
Thomas stared at his mother.
Something inside him became cold.
Robert grabbed his forearm when Thomas reached for Jacob’s apron.
Thomas broke the grip and knocked Robert’s arm away.
Then he ripped the apron from Jacob, crossed to the head table, and slammed all three filthy aprons beside Robert’s birthday cake.
Glasses rattled.
“You humiliated my kids at a party I paid for.”
Robert laughed.
“You sent money. That doesn’t make it yours.”
Thomas noticed several papers beside the cake.
Catering paperwork.
He recognized the company name.
Front Range Table & Tent.
But the total printed at the bottom was not $5,600.
It was $2,145.
Thomas picked it up.
Robert immediately stepped toward him.
“Put that down.”
Thomas looked at the invoice.
DROP-OFF FOOD SERVICE ONLY.
NO EVENT STAFF.
Signed three days earlier by Helen Mercer.
Thomas reached for his phone.
Robert grabbed his shoulder.
Thomas knocked his hand away.
“Everything here belongs to this family,” Robert snapped. “Not you.”
Thomas held the contract beside his phone.
“Then explain why your house, this party, and your—”
Robert lunged across the table.
He tore at the paperwork while Helen shot to her feet and reached for Thomas’s phone.
May you like
That was the moment Thomas understood the missing catering money was not what frightened them.
It was whatever else he might finally start adding up.
