Page 49 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"She told me you're working construction here now. Living here. Living with Sophie." A pause, and I can hear him breathing on the other end, slow and deliberate, the sound of a man working hard to keep his voice level. "My ex-wife. You're livingwith my ex-wife, Grant, and I heard about it from Aunt Carol like it's just — town news. Like it's not my actual life you're talking about."

"I was going to call you."

"When?" It comes out sharp. "You've had five months, Grant. How long was the plan, exactly? Wait until Mom asks me to the wedding?"

"It's not like that."

"Then tell me what it's like. Because from where I'm standing it's exactly like that. My brother came home, decided he wanted the life I walked away from, and just — helped himself to the wife too. All of it. The whole set."

The words land somewhere old and specific, a place I thought I'd sealed off a long time ago. "That's not fair."

"Fair." He laughs, short and humorless. "You want to talk to me about fair. You know what wasn't fair, Grant? Growing up the kid brother who could never catch up to you at anything, who Dad compared to you every single time I brought home a B instead of an A, who you basically raised because you decided you were better at parenting than our own parents were. I spent my whole childhood being the thing you had to manage. And now I find out you've gone and managed my marriage too, except this time you kept the prize."

"I didn't plan this." My voice is tighter than I want it to be, defensive in a way that isn't going to help either of us. "It happened. I came home for Mom. Sophie was already here, taking care of her, and something—"

"Something what? Something just happened? You expect me to believe a man who's spent his entire adult life planning every single move down to the logistics just accidentally fell into bed with my ex-wife?"

"I fell in love with her," I say, and the words come out steadier than I feel saying them, because it's the first time I've said themto anyone besides Sophie, and hearing myself say them to Chris feels like handing him a weapon and asking him not to use it. "That's what happened. I didn't plan it. I didn't ask for it. But it's real, Chris, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't just because the timing is complicated."

Silence on the line. Long enough that I check to see if the call dropped.

"Complicated," he finally says, quiet now, which is somehow worse than the anger. "That's one word for it."

"I should've called you myself. That part's on me. I'm sorry you heard it from Carol."

"You're sorry about the delivery method. That's not the same as sorry."

"I'm not sorry about Sophie. I won't pretend to be, and I don't think you actually want me to lie to you about that." I close my eyes, press two fingers against the bridge of my nose. "But I am sorry it hurt you. I know it does. I know exactly what it looks like from where you're standing, and I know I don't get to tell you it shouldn't hurt."

"Does Mom know? That you're — that this is a whole thing? Living together?"

"She knows everything. Has since almost the beginning."

"Of course she does." Something bitter creeps back into his voice. "She never tells me anything real either. I'm the son who calls twice a month and gets updates on her blood counts. You're the son who's apparently rebuilding the whole family from scratch while I'm not looking."

"That's not what this is."

"What?" His voice cracks slightly, just once, and underneath the anger I hear something I haven't heard from my little brother since he was small enough for me to carry on my shoulders — something scared, something that sounds a lot likebeing left out of his own life. "You get Mom. You get the job. You get Sophie. What exactly is left over here for me, Grant?"

I don't have an answer for that. Not one that would land the way I'd want it to, not over a phone line, not with him three states away and me standing outside a construction trailer with Deb watching me through the window with poorly concealed curiosity.

"Come home," I say finally. "Not for this. For Mom. Come see her, come see for yourself what's actually going on instead of building the whole thing out of what Aunt Carol tells you. You deserve better than secondhand information about your own family."

Another long silence.

"Maybe I will," Chris says. "Maybe I'll come see exactly what my brother's built himself out of my life."

"Chris—"

He hangs up.

I stand outside the trailer for a long minute, phone still in my hand, and watch a truck roll past on Route 9 hauling pipe sections toward the site. Camden opens the trailer door behind me.

"Everything okay?"

"Family thing." I put the phone away. "I'm good. Let's finish the trenching numbers."

I'm not good. But the numbers don't care, and neither does the pipe, and there's a particular relief in problems that have a correct answer if you just apply enough attention to them. I spend the rest of the afternoon applying attention to trenching depths instead of the fact that somewhere in Denver, my brother is deciding whether to get on a plane and confront the life I've built out of the one he left behind.