Page 11 of My Brother’s Best Friend

“And your mom?”

Still drifting around the island somewhere, making life hard for herself and everyone she comes into contact with, I thought grimly.

Avoiding my mother was another reason I rarely came home. Growing up with her as a parent had been hard enough. She’d never officially moved out, just stopped coming home one day. Addiction, and guilt over what had happened with my sister Taylor, made life hard for her. I knew that. But she hadn’t exactly made it easy on us, either.

“She’s okay,” I said, my smile slipping a little. “She’s…you know.”

“I do.” Mr. Leonard dropped his voice even further, but I got the feeling he was relishing this. “And your sister?”

Still dead, I thought, but I didn’t say that out loud either.

“We still miss her,” I said instead, forcing my smile back into place. If he was looking for some big show of grief, he wasn’t going to get it. Some things were for family only, no matter how fucked up your family was.

“Terrible what happened to her,” Mr. Leonard said. “Taylor was such a bright light. And awful for you too, I know, being the one who found her.”

He put his hand down on top of mine on the counter, and I resisted the urge to pull away. I knew he meant well, but did he have to go grubbing around in my past just to satisfy his own weird need to provide comfort?

“I’d love to talk more, Mr. Leonard, really I would,” I said, “but, well, things are so busy here with the festival and all. Maybe we can catch up another time?”

I nodded to the line of customers that had grown behind him. He looked over his shoulder, his eyes widening like he’d forgotten he was bringing up my family’s dirty laundry in public. Knowing him, he probably had.

“Oh, sure! No problem at all.” He had the grace to look embarrassed, at least. He smiled as I handed him his coffee a minute later. “I just want you to know how good it is to see you again, Jordan. I always knew you’d end up back here.”

“I’m not really back, though.”

“Of course, of course. I’m sure you’ve had lots of success up there in New York.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I protested. “I really am just visiting.”

“Whatever you say.” Mr. Leonard winked and walked out of the shop.

I could have screamed.

“I’m. Just. Visiting,” I said, punctuating each word with a hammer strike a few hours later.

The flow of customers had finally slowed down enough to let me address the other task Levi had left for me today—hanging up art in the coffee shop. Not just any art, though. My art.

It was mostly student work, pieces I’d completed in art school or even earlier. I wasn’t embarrassed by it, exactly. It was raw, but you could see the beginnings of a point of view developing. But still, I wouldn’t have hung it up, if I could have avoided it without triggering a lecture from Levi about how I should be proud of myself.

I just wished hanging it up didn’t remind me of how I’d failed. It was like having twenty different Mr. Leonards smiling down at me from the walls, shouting about the big dreams I’d had when I left, and what little they’d amounted to in the end.

With a final tap of the hammer, I secured the hardware to the wall and hoisted the last painting into place. At this hour of the day, it was relatively shadowed, and the splashes of green on the canvas evoked deep, forested pools. Come late afternoon, though, sunlight would slant through the window across the shop and light it up with gold.

“Well, isn’t that lovely?” said a voice behind me.

I turned to see a short, older woman staring at my painting. She had a cotton-candy tuft of pure white hair sticking out of a purple scrunchie, which matched her jogging suit. She was carrying a straw purse with ducks on it, but she set it down on a nearby table so she could walk up and inspect the painting from four inches away.

She looked over at me, a wide, guileless smile on her face. “You wouldn’t happen to know the artist who painted all of these, would you?”

She gestured around the coffee shop. I smiled in spite of myself. Not at the compliment so much as at her air of wonder and delight.

“I did, actually. I painted them.”

“You did?” Her eyes went wide with astonishment. “Oh, my stars, this must be my lucky day. You’re very talented, young man.”

It was strange. If Levi had told me that, it would have put my back up. But it was impossible to be anything but charmed by this woman.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s really kind of you to say.”