chapter three
CooperEarly afternoon sunlight streaks in through the tall windows in my office, a ray landing directly on the shelf against the wall where my father kept his most coveted prizes. Nine Academy Award statues, a picture of my mother smiling on the beach in Barbados, and a framed photo of me, Dad and Miles on a fishing trip in Alaska.
My father beams proudly, standing between Miles and me, both of us holding up king salmon. I was probably eleven or twelve, Miles six or seven. It was the summer after our father divorced Miles’s mother.
My mother, Rose, had been the love of Jack Montgomery’s life. But a tragic car accident tore her from us not long after I was born. Her untimely death left my father reeling … and raising a six-month-old son on his own.
Although my father never
