Great—he helped himself to my coffee that Nora madefor me.
“Junie said you’ve been quiet lately,” he says. “That your texts are one-word answers and punctuation-free.”
I grunt. “They always are.”
“Exactly. How would I know what’s going on with my brother if you don’t talk to her.”
I finally rise, knees popping as I stretch to full height, giving away my age. The rag in my back pocket gets a quick pass over my hands, rough and stained. I look him over—clean boots, neat sleeves, smug expression. Like nothing in the world touches him. That was always the difference between us. I let the world break me. He sidesteps it.
“Is this why you dragged my niece here, to dig for information about me?”
“Whatever works,” he snorts. “You’ve been blowing off my calls. What else am I supposed to do?”
I send him a quick glare and return to the hinge since I’m not about to explain to him that I didn’t feel like talking to him because I don’t like how he talked about Nora. And because he reminds me of everything I haven’t told her yet.
“Jericho?” His tone issofter.Fuck that.
The wrench slams onto the bench with a clang, louder than necessary. “You here to be useful or just mouth off?”
“I can do both,” he says, sipping my coffee like he paid for it and still not making a move to help. Instead, he pokes his face outside the hole—I mean the missing window—and looksaround.
He can pretend to be a clown all he wants, but I recognize his need for control.
“Have you talked to our sister recently?” he asks, trying to peel off a piece of the window molding.
“No,” I grunt, feeling the weight of guilt settling heavy on my shoulders. I should call her more. I shouldaskher more. “You?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
Concerned, I glance at him. It’s unusual for them to go without calls for so long. They’ve always been closer than me, and I’ve always been jealous. But he had more time to build a relationship with her, and when I got an opportunity to do the same, I didn’t take it, leaving it to them.
“Is she all right?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounds a bit off. “Knee-deep in trauma cases.”
I pick up the hammer, turning it in my palm. “She still working nights?”
“Yeah. Barely sleeping. Still doesn’t complain.”
“She never has.”
“Mom trained that out of her.” His voice wavers at the end—a clear indication of his own guilt. I guess everyone in our family is fucked up in one way or another.
The sound of Mom’s name stops me. My grip tightens on the hammer. I don’t answer right away.
“Mom would like Nora,” Jethro probes carefully. “If you just introduced them, you know.”
I dig inside the toolbox, ignoring his words. Our relationship with Mom has been… strange, and it’s mostly my fault.
“She would say Nora’s got eyes that see too much,” he continues. “’Cause she can see her boy.”
I nod. Just once. She would. Both of us go into our own heads, and I enjoy the silence for a change. Until my brother, of course, opens his mouth.
“You still haven’t told her?”
A sharp shake of my head is my only answer—we both know he’s talking about Nora.
“How long do you think until she starts questioning where you spent the years you don’t talk about?”
