Noah kissed Harper’s cheek. ‘I mean… if you were jealous, that would be kinda cute.’
‘You’re impossible,’ Harper said fondly.
Briar made a face at them. ‘You two are disgusting.’
Noah kissed Harper’s cheek harder, smacking his lips loudly.
‘God, this summer is going to suck for you guys,’ Briar said, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. ‘What are you going to do without your third wheel?’
Instead of joining in on the bit, Noah furrowed his brows. Briar mentally steeled herself for his offer of help.
‘Hey,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Briar resisted the urge to shake it off. ‘If you need an—’
‘Nope!’ Briar cut him off. ‘None of that.’
Even before her mother had been admitted to the hospital a few weeks before, Noah had been by her side through the worst of the illness. But Briar couldn’t let him put his life on hold for her. She knew what that did to a person, and she didn’t want anyone else to go through it.
Harper frowned. ‘But Bri—’
‘Uh-uh.’ Briar shook her head. ‘I know you love me. But you also have jobs and lives and a wedding to plan, so please don’t feel like I’m your problem to deal with.’ They didn’t look convinced, so Briar pressed on. ‘Really, I’ll be fine this summer. We’ll talk on the phone and I’ll be back for the Fourth of July party, and just because my mom died doesn’t mean that I need you to drop everything. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
It was finally their turn, and as Briar looked down the buffet, she silently judged whoever had ordered fettuccine Alfredo to be served with crab cakes before realizing it had been her. She vaguely remembered a call with the funeral director where lunch had been discussed but she couldn’t recall any details, only that the talk of food had made her nauseous.
She ended up putting three dinner rolls and a scoop of strawberries on her plate before returning to her table.
Seeing that the twins’ plates were equally bare, Briar made a mental note to cook something nutritious for dinner. RJ, ever the odd man out in their family, was shoveling long strands of fettuccine into his mouth.
In any other family, a successful career on Wall Street would have made RJ the golden child, but instead, he was surrounded by eccentrics. The same shrewdness that made him so valuable at work, also isolated him from the family in ways that Briar hadn’t worried about until recently, when her texts about him finding a therapist had gone unanswered for several weeks. She resolved to try again tonight.
Then there was the matter of the twins. Susan had first gotten sick when they were still in high school, leaving Briar responsible for them in the formative years of starting college. At least they’d have each other, staying with their father through the summer to ease the transition from university to postgraduate life. She didn’t know what she’d do when they all left, how she’d cope.
‘Bri?’ Briar blinked, turning to her father. He’d taken the seat next to her without her noticing.
She cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, what?’
He leaned closer and Briar was struck by the deep-set wrinkles lining his mouth and greying hair at his temples. There was a time she had seen her father every day, and then after the divorce she’d seen him during the summers and at Christmases, but slowly the time between her visits had stretched. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him, and decided it must have been two years ago, for her twenty-fifth birthday party.
Something in losing one parent made noticing the signs of ageing in the other terrifying. An urge to reach out and take her father’s hand nearly overwhelmed Briar, but she didn’t, not wanting to alarm him.
‘I know this isn’t an ideal time to discuss your mother’s estate,’ he said, and the urge dissipated.
‘You’re right,’ Briar said coolly, grabbing one of the twins’ wine glasses and taking a sip. ‘It’snota good time.’
Her father pressed on. ‘It’s important you know all your options. I’ve a solicitor friend whose firm has a branch here in Washington. I could make some phone calls for you, help things get settled.’
Briar pinched the bridge of her nose. This part of death had truly blindsided her. In the movies, there were always dramatic scenes of wills being read while the petty siblings squabbled over inheritances. The movies never showed what happened after, when all of Susan Elwood’s worldly possessions, her house and the camp that was her livelihood, were left to Briar and Briar alone.
Briar shouldn’t have been surprised. It was how their family functioned: Susan as the one with the grand ideas, and Briar as the one pulling the strings, making sure everyone got what they needed. It made sense that Susan would continue the tradition in death. And Briar would do right by her siblings, even if she wanted to scream at the thought of making a single decision about her mother’s estate.
She took a deep breath, staring at her hands clasped on the table, and nodded. ‘Thank you, that would be helpful.’
Her father blinked, as if he hadn’t expected her to agree. ‘Oh, well, in that case, we really ought to get an appraiser out to the camp. A plot of that size would be a worthwhile investment for the right buyer.’ He put his hand over Briar’s, squeezing gently. It was maybe the most comforting he’d ever been. ‘It’s too much for you to take on by yourself.’
Briar nodded again, any fight seeping out of her. Her dad meant well, dealing with their mother’s death in the only way he knew how: by giving financial advice. Not for the first time, Briar wondered how her parents had ever made it to the altar, let alone stayed married long enough to have four children. Money, she supposed, was the end of them. And now, her father was trying to convince her of what he could never convince her mother to do: sell thebloodycamp.
‘I’m gonna get another drink,’ Briar said, only to get her father to stop looking at her.
