Page 5 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"You brought up her mother on purpose."

Mom doesn't even have the decency to look sheepish. "I stated a fact about a phone call that didn't happen."

"You embarrassed her."

"I made a point." She finally looks at me, and there's nothing apologetic in it. "That girl has spent her whole life being the one who stays, Grant, and not one person in it has ever bothered staying for her. Not even her own mother. I wanted you to see that plainly, on day one, before you get any ideas about how easy she is to walk away from."

She turns back to her show like she hasn't just handed me something I'm going to be turning over in my head for the nextseveral hours. "Guest room needs dusting. Lawn needs mowing. And there's a porch railing that's been loose since last winter."

"I'll take care of it."

"I know you will." She finds her show again. "It's good to have you home, son."

I head upstairs.

My old room is exactly what you'd expect — neutral walls, quilted bedspread, window looking out over the backyard where the fence leans and the grass is overdue. I unpack methodically. Clothes in the dresser. Toiletries in the bathroom. Laptop on the desk. Passport in the top drawer under a stack of t-shirts, force of habit from too many countries where you don't leave documents lying around.

When everything's squared away, I stand in the middle of the room and face the thing I've been not-facing since I booked the ticket.

I'm back in Copper Falls. The town I swore I'd never return to. The woman who just drove away in a rattling Honda, who apparently laminates other people's medical schedules and gets abandoned by her own mother in the same February she's driving somebody else's mother to chemo six times.

I'm not ready for this. But here I am anyway.

I head back downstairs.

I have three months of approved leave. Three months. That's the plan. Then I'm gone.

That has to be the plan.

Because this time, Sophie Guilligan is here. And apparently no one has ever made staying look easy for her — which means if I'm not careful, if I'm not exactly as clean and exactly as honest as I know how to be, I'm going to end up being one more person who didn't.

I already know I'm going to have to work very hard at the plan.

I already suspect I'm going to lose.

2

Sophie

Idrive home on autopilot.

Straight through the four-way stop where the hardware store used to be. My Honda rattles over the railroad tracks on Jefferson and I don't flinch. That rattle is just part of the car now, like the crack in the windshield and the way the AC only works on the highest setting, which I choose to interpret as character rather than neglect.

My hands grip the steering wheel tighter than they need to.

Grant Guilligan is back in Copper Falls.

I spend the next eight minutes in traffic successfully not thinking about him, which I celebrate by thinking about him exclusively. Six-foot-three, silver in his dark hair, those hazel-green eyes that look at you like he sees your soul.

We sat on opposite ends of Patty's couch eating chicken salad sandwiches and pretending the air between us wasn't doingsomething I don't have a clinical term for. He walked me to my car. Offered to coordinate Patty's care.

I pull into my apartment complex and park next to the dumpster, which is where I've been assigned and also possibly where I belong right now.

The stairs feel steeper than usual. I'm already exhausted, and my shift doesn't start for another five hours. I should sleep. I need to sleep. Twelve-hour night shifts are brutal on a good day, let alone a day where your ex-husband's older brother shows up looking like that.

Inside, I drop my purse by the door and kick off my shoes.

I should go directly to bed. I am going to go directly to bed.