Page 2 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"He's here!" Sophie calls back, stepping away from me quickly.

Too quickly.

The feeling's mutual.

"Well don't leave him standing on the porch like a stranger. Get in here, both of you."

Sophie glances at me. Something moves through those blue-grey eyes — the specific exhaustion of a woman doing math on how much longer this day is going to ask of her. Then she goes inside and I follow.

The house smells like lemon Pledge and banana bread. The living room looks frozen in time: same floral couch, same wood-paneled walls, same collection of family photos on the mantle I'm carefully not looking at. Somewhere in that lineup is a photo from Chris's wedding, and I am not going to be the man who stares at it his first ten minutes home.

Mom sits in her recliner, feet up, blanket across her lap despite the late May warmth. She looks smaller than I remember. Margaret "Patty" Guilligan has always been five-foot-nothingof Irish stubbornness and casserole-bearing determination. Chemo has carved at least twenty pounds off her, and the purple wrap around her head makes her look fragile in a way I'm not ready for.

"There's my boy." She holds out her arms.

I cross the room and hug her carefully. Very carefully.

"Watch the port," she murmurs.

I loosen my grip immediately. The chemo port under her collarbone. I know more about it than I ever wanted to, thanks to late-night research spirals in my Kabul apartment, reading about infusion schedules and neutrophil counts at three in the morning because it was the only thing I could do for her from eight thousand miles away.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be careful." She pulls back and looks me over with the critical eye she deployed when I was seventeen and sneaking in the back door past curfew. "You look like hell."

"Thirty-six hours of travel."

"Mm." She pats my cheek, then looks past me to where Sophie's hovering near the front door. "Sophie, honey, stay for lunch. I made chicken salad this morning. I can make the sandwiches."

Sophie hesitates, then: "Okay. Just a quick one."

Mom shuffles toward the kitchen. I notice she's moving carefully, like each step requires planning, and I file that away too, another box, another thing I'm going to have to learn to carry now that I'm the one standing here instead of reading about it in a text message.

Sophie and I are left in the living room, not looking at each other.

"You don't have to stay," I say. "You've been pulling double duty with Mom. You should sleep."

"I'm fine."

"You have work tonight?"

"I said I'm fine." An edge under it. Defensive. She's been managing Patty's care for six months while I was gone, and she doesn't need me here for ten minutes deciding she looks tired.Fair."I've been managing Patty's care for half a year. I think I can handle one more lunch."

I sit on the couch. Sophie takes the chair across from me — Dad's chair, though I don't say that. She perches on the edge like she's already calculating her exit.

We don't talk.

The clock on the mantle ticks. The refrigerator hums in the kitchen. Mom hums along with it, off-key, the same three bars of some hymn she's been humming since before either of us could walk.

"How was Afghanistan?" Sophie asks.

"Iraq, mostly. East Africa the last two years."

"Right. Sorry. I just remember Patty mentioning—" She cuts herself off. "It doesn't matter."

"It was fine. The work was good."

"Infrastructure development. Roads and water systems?"