Page 14 of Day Break

I’d never known anyone as kind or caring as the dog I’d befriended. Even though he was nowhere to be found, I knew it had been him who’d delivered the treat.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I dreamed of him. My Byron. My rescuer. My only friend.

CHAPTER THREE

“Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.”

- John Ruskin

Lane

There were a handful of people in this world who pissed me off. Every single one of my family members, and Rod Clarkson.

My childhood nemesis.

The guy had been a thorn in my life for as long as I could remember. Thankfully, I hadn’t had to deal with him in the past eight years or so.

Either way, when I agreed to meet my grandfather, George Robinson, for lunch, I hadn’t expected the day to go the way it had.

When I’d spent my summers on the island as a kid, I’d always loved the slower pace of the countryside. The Robinson family was easily one of the most influential and powerful families in all of Washington State.

My grandfather had been a senator, my dad a judge, my uncle a congressman, my aunt one of the top state attorneys, my other aunt the secretary of the state. Other various distant relatives also held prominent positions that warranted the respect of others. We were the freaking Kennedys of the Northwest.

But behind closed doors, every last one of them was a sniveling asshat. Which was why they were on my shit list.

This last move of my uncles and father had only solidified my feelings for the men I barely had a phone call with once a year.

It wasn’t that I was endeared towards my grandfather, George. During my life, I could count on both hands how many times the man had had a long conversation with me.

But then last year I’d noticed a change in my grandfather’s attitude. He’d contacted me out of the blue and hired me shortly after he moved back to the island home. At our first meeting, I’d suddenly realized just how frail the old man was. How long had he been like that? My whole life?

A year before, I’d heard through the family gossip chain that my dad and Uncle Bobby, or Robert outside of the family, had forced him to move back to Whidbey Island.

The man was eighty-ish. Wasn’t he? It was about time he slowed down.

But I couldn’t help but wonder why they had wanted him to move far away. It wasn’t as if my father and his brother had ever really taken an interest in their old man, even when my grandmother, Florence Clarkson, had been alive. For that matter, when she’d died from cancer when I was a teen, they hadn’t shown much emotion.

Sure, there had been arguments between the brothers and their sister and some other relatives over some of my grandmother’s trinkets. A gold locket with the family’s symbolic R on top. A painting. Various properties. A few stocks and bonds.

All of it should have gone to my grandfather, but somehow ended up being distributed among various family members instead.

This was my second visit to the island this week. I’d been here a handful of times since my grandfather had moved back. The fact that it had been less than a week since my last visit had raised a red flag with the rest of the members of my family.

Before the tires of my one-year-old BMW rolled off the ferry and hit the pavement of Whidbey Island, I’d received three calls and six text messages from various family members.

They believed I was, as they put it, brownnosing my grandfather. Vying for an advancement in the line of inheritance.

What I was doing was being pissed that my father and his brother would allow a man of my grandfather’s frail constitution to live in such a secluded and massive place all by himself.

I had grown up summering at Possession Point for as long as I could remember. During the school year, my family spent our time in our home in Seattle. The same one my parents still occupied.

The day that I’d been accepted to Harvard was one of the best days in my life, as it meant I could put a great distance between the family and myself.

I don’t remember exactly the moment I first thought I wanted to become a lawyer. I know that it had to do with my aunt Kate, my dad’s older sister, who was a state attorney. I can’t remember any of the details, but I think I was around six at the time.

I was a Robinson, which meant that my grades and schooling had taken priority over everything else in my youth.

It was a family tradition. We had a lot of those. For instance, when a Robinson boy turned sixteen, he received a gold ring with an R on top of it. I was the youngest of the boy cousins and had looked forward to receiving mine for years. Now, the thing sat in a box on my dresser, collecting dust.