He turns away from me and grabs another towel from the rack. I watch as he runs it roughly over his damp hair. His movements are tight and aggressive, not only due to the tremors that still have a hold on him. He’s retreating from something more than just me. I can practically see the talons of his past sinking into him.
“You said your father came down with early onset Parkinson’s, too. Was that how he—”
“Died?” Jared finishes for me when I break off. There’s something cold in his eyes when he swivels a glance at me. “No, it wasn’t the Parkinson’s that killed him. It was the shotgun he put under his chin the day the bank sent their foreclosure letter on our horse farm.”
“Oh, my God. Jared . . . I’m so sorry.”
“Shit happens, right?” On a heavy exhalation, he tosses down the towel he used to dry his hair. “I only wish I’d been able to keep my mother from running in behind me after we heard the blast from inside the house.”
I close my eyes, trying not to imagine the horror of that moment. “Why would he do something like that to both of you? He had to know the pain it would cause.”
“He had his own pain. First the disease that was slowly devouring him, then the shame of losing everything he and my mother had worked for.”
“But that wasn’t his fault,” I point out, recalling that Jared relayed some of the story to me at his studio. “He was cheated in a Ponzi scheme.”
“Yes, he was. Although I imagine that was cold comfort to him during the months when the creditors were clawing at the door and all my parents’ rich society friends turned their backs to avoid being tainted by the scandal.” Jared shakes his head. “My dad ran the farm his whole adult life. His investments were supposed to carry us once he became too weak to work. The really fucked up thing about a Ponzi scheme is that it takes years to perfect. Years of deliberate, calculated deception. It starts with a lie to build trust, and then the one running the game keeps those lies coming, building on one another. The bastard who got to Dad knew he was sick, so he preyed on my father’s fears of leaving his family behind to fend without him.”
My heart aches to consider it. It aches for Jared, too, because he’s lived with this pain and loss for so long.
“I was twelve,” he says, “old enough to recall the day my father brought Denton Sweeney to our house. He wore a nice suit and polished shoes, and his brand-new Bentley had New York license plates. Mom didn’t appear to like him much, but my dad seemed to hang on every slick word that came out of his mouth. After Sweeney left, he called the house at least once a month. Seemed like Dad was always going to the bank for one thing or another. In the beginning, he was cashing in proceeds from Sweeney’s investments every other week. They were big checks, so Dad kept investing more and more. Apparently, he trusted Sweeney so much, he finally staked the farm, too. The scheme went on for more than two years before some other men in nice suits and cars with New York license plates showed up at the farm to talk to my father. These men also had FBI badges.”
“Sweeney was found out?”
Jared scoffs under his breath. “Not until after he was dead. He had a stroke on the toilet in his 5th Avenue apartment. It took a couple of weeks before the overdrafts started piling up and his clients started to wonder what was going on. By the time the authorities started sniffing around, Sweeney’s wife had fled the country with their young son and all the money Denton had stolen from more than two dozen investors. The pair were never located, not for lack of trying.”
I close my eyes, appalled by the brazenness—the sheer cruelty—of the crime. “And all the people Denton Sweeney cheated, people like your father, who just wanted to take care of their families—they had no way to get their money back?”
Jared shakes his head. “It was all gone. Unfortunately, for us, that also included the farm and all our horses.”
“Jared, I’m so sorry.” I go to him. Whether or not he wants my comfort, I need to be near him. I need to touch him and let him know that I’m here, that I care about him—so profoundly, it’s an ache filling my chest. He doesn’t flinch away from the hand I lay tenderly on his shoulder. “How did you and your mom get through all of that?”
“Not easily,” he admits, his deep voice low and raspy. “Mom sank into an immediate tailspin. The awful way he died, the financial worries, our eviction from the farm . . . it all weighed on her, more than she could bear.”
“At the hospital, you told me she drank and smoked.”
He nods. “That didn’t start until after we lost everything. It was a blood clot that stopped her heart, but I think she went downhill so fast because her heart was broken. She just . . . gave up.”
“What about you? You were so young. It couldn’t have been easy for you, either.”
He shrugs, as if his pain was inconsequential. “I couldn’t give up. I had my mom to look after.”
“Didn’t she or your father have any family who could help you?”
“Mom had a sister, but my aunt wanted nothing to do with her after the farm was lost. Dad was an only child from the other side of the tracks. All they had was each other.”
“And you.”
“I wasn’t enough reason to make my mother live,” he states flatly. “She used to draw and paint from time to time,
