I examine his face across the table. He’s asking it straight, no angle, just the question. Marcus doesn’t play games with the people he cares about.
Other people get Corporate Marcus.
I get the version that asks emotionally devastating questions over eighteen-dollar cocktails.
“Yeah,” I admit after a pause. “I do.”
The silence settles comfortably between us after that. Marcus and I learned early there wasn’t always anything to say, whichmakes sense when you grow up in a house where people are either completely present or completely absent with not much in between.
Our father, Richard, is the absent version. He’s not unkind, just constitutionally unavailable. Some men build their whole personality around work and then act surprised when nobody knows how to talk to them outside office hours. He’s one of them.
Marcus has been walking the same path for years. I’ve never said it to his face, partly because it’s not my business and partly because he probably already knows it. He must have feelings about it too. He just handles them privately, which is how he handles most things.
Our mother is different.
Eleanor Bradford walks into a room and the room adjusts itself. It’s not because she asks it to. Because it learns fast.
She’s the founding partner of Bradford-Caldwell Group, one of the most powerful political strategy firms in the Pacific Northwest. They’ve been behind three gubernatorial campaigns and more senate races than I can count off the top of my head.
My mother doesn’t make the news. She makes the people who make the news.
She knows every name that matters on the West Coast and a few that don’t yet realize they do. And the ones she hasn’t met yet are usually already halfway through an introduction someone else is making on her behalf.
I know she loves us, fiercely. The problem is she loves us with the same energy she applies to everything else, which means there’s always a plan attached to it. It’s not malicious—never that. It’s just inevitable.
“Mom still has that photo of you in the front hall,” Marcus says eventually. “The one from the state academic decathlon. She was so proud you won that she had it framed.”
“Ugh. I didn’t want it on the wall.”
“She had three copies made.” The corner of his mouth almost moves. “One for the office, one for Grandma Elaine, and one for the hall. She showed it to Senator Vanderhart at a fundraiser dinner four months ago.”
I stare at him. “You’re fucking joking.”
“I’m really not.” He picks up his Scotch. “She told him her younger son could have argued any case in the Treaty Room and won.”
I laugh despite myself.
The Treaty Room is what we called the formal sitting room growing up. Marcus named it at fourteen after he noticed no argument in that house ever made it past the door. Something about the room forced people to stay civil. Probably our mother’s doing and the way she angled every chair so you had to look the other person in the eye.
Marcus and I used to sit on the stairs and listen through the gap in the door when we were supposed to be in bed, me still in pajamas and him old enough to know better, both of us trying to read the voices on the other side.
There’s something deeply ridiculous about the two of us sitting here now in a restaurant where the lighting probably costs more than my monthly utilities, and this somehow being the most relaxed I’ve seen him in years.
“How’s George’s shop?” Marcus asks, once the food arrives. “You mentioned he’s working through something.”
“It’s complicated. He’s got a buyout situation with his business partner and the timing on the financing options is difficult.” I keep it vague. “He’ll figure it out.”
Marcus nods, eyes on the glass. “You’re already involved.”
“I’ll help if he lets me. Or possibly even if he doesn’t.”
He doesn’t say anything to that right away. He cuts into his steak before looking up at me again. “George seems…comfortable in your apartment.”
I point my fork at him immediately. “Where are you going with this, Brother?”
“I’m making an observation.” Completely calm. “He has a key.”
“He does.” I take a bite I don’t taste. “I insisted he keep it.”
