Page 7 of So Close

Brynn was looking at him again. “What about the idea of spending some time with the boys and me? At least while you’re here for Granddad?”

He hated the note of pleading in his sister’s voice. He hated when people wanted more of him than he could give. Like Karina, wanting a night out, a weekend away, an uninterrupted few hours of conversation by candlelight, a piece of him he couldn’t spare.

But this was different. It was Brynn, and she was asking him to be her family. To be a better brother and a better uncle. That, he could do. Plus, he had gotten good at parceling himself out in packets just large enough to satisfy the demand at hand.

“I have some time here and there while I’m getting things settled for Granddad,” he said reluctantly. “I can visit for a few hours. But once I finish his stuff, I can’t be back and forth all the time. I’ve got this deal I need to finalize.”

“Busy, busy, busy,” she said. Her voice was almost teasing. Then she got serious—he watched her face go smooth with it. “But Trey, what’s it allfor?”

“What?”

“Why do you do it? The work. Themoney.”

She sounded like the voice in his head, the one that had started whispering those insidious things after Karina had left.Why?If she’s gone, what’s the point?

“Because I love it,” he said.

Her gaze crawled over his face, made him want to squirm. But he held still. Three-quarters of power was keeping your body quiet. Making the other person speak first, move first, act first.

They stood on the sidewalk side by side and he became aware that their postures—crossed arms, set jaws—were perfect mirrors of each other. He dropped his arms to his side, and Brynn did, too.

He turned toward the car, then back toward Brynn. “I can look at the siding with you and the boys tomorrow late afternoon. I’ve got a conference call in the morning and I’m going to visit Granddad in the hospital in the early afternoon.”

Something softened in her face. “Hey.” She reached out again, and this time she did touch his arm. “I haven’t said, thank you for coming. Granddad really appreciates it. And so do I. I know it’s not easy for you to get away from San Fran.”

“I came to address the business and financial situation.”

“That’s why you’re here. To—” She quirked her fingers in air quotes. “‘Address the business and financial situation.’”

“Yeah.”

Her eyebrows went up, and her mouth tilted wryly. She shook her head.

“You just keep telling yourself that.”

3

Auburn stopped at the candy machine on her way to Carl’s hospital room to buy him a few more packets of peanut M&Ms. It wasn’t what the doctor ordered, but she knew her boss, and he’d be going nuts on hospital food. Peanut M&Ms were his favorite guilty pleasure.

As she reached his room, she saw Brynn—Carl’s granddaughter—coming out with both her boys. “Hey,” Auburn called out. “How’s he doing?”

“Much better,” Brynn said, relief painted all over her pretty face. “His cheeks are pink and he looks so much more like himself.”

“So good to hear.”

“He already has a few packs of those on his nightstand,” Brynn said, smiling at Auburn’s offering. “I think he’s living off them right now. And hey, thank you so much for the casserole. It fed us for two nights.”

“How areyoudoing?” Auburn had only really gotten to know Brynn in the last six months, because Brynn had grown up a couple of hours away from Tierney Bay and was ten years older than Auburn. In recent months, though, after Brynn’s marriage had ended, she’d moved to be closer to Carl, and Auburn thought they could grow to be friends. Most of Auburn’s high school and college friends had long since moved away, and she’d drifted apart from the rest while she was in New York with Patrick.

She couldn’t blame them, but she should do something about that, now that she was back and settled in.

“Not too bad, since he’s looking perkier,” Brynn said. “And my brother’s visiting from the SF area, which is—well, a mixed bag—.” She cast her gaze up at the ceiling as if pleading for help from above. “—but great for Granddad. He’s headed here a little later after some big, important conference call.”

“Your brother,” Auburn repeated, surprised. She knew Carl had a grandson, but because he was also older than she was—by six years—he’d graduated college shortly after she started working at Beachcrest and she’d never actually met him. He’d visited Carl only a few times, to her knowledge, and never when she’d been around. Carl didn’t talk much about him, either; the subject seemed to make him uncomfortable. Auburn vaguely knew that he lived in the San Francisco area and ran a super-successful real estate technology company that had made him extremely rich and very busy. And very distant.

“Yeah. If you stick around more than a few minutes, you might get to meet him. Don’t let him sell you anything. Orbuyyou anything.”

Auburn raised an eyebrow.

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