Page 85 of Under Pressure

She shudders. “God, no. Those things freak me out.” She flips through the pages, the pictures seeming to go in chronological order starting with Brandon as a baby, then Dylan joining in. “I asked your mom if she had a family album because I wanted to look at Brandon’s baby pictures, but all she had was an old shoebox with a bunch of loose photos in them. So I made this for her.”

She settles on a page with us three boys at some water park, me at about ten years old, Brandon fifteen. He and Dylan have sunburned faces, their golden hair shining in the bright sun, my tan skin and dark hair in contrast next to them. All of us are squinting too much to see the identical blue of our eyes, though. “I found this one of you three. One of the very few with you in it. The only one with you smiling,” she laughs. “You’ve always been a grouch, haven’t you?”

I rub the back of my neck, embarrassed for some reason at her assessment of me, even if it’s the truth.

“Why are there so few pictures of you?” She looks curiously at me, the expression mirrored on Brandon’s face. Like he doesn’t know. Is he just pretending for her?

“I was… never really part of the family.”

“What?” Brandon laughs. When I don’t return his smile, he becomes more serious. “What are you talking about?”

I take the book off Rochelle’s lap and flip through, pictures of Brandon and Dylan dominating the pages, and towards the end, ones of Riley replacing them. I stop on another one I’m in, taken some Christmas morning. Dan must have shot it, because he’s not in the photo, and in it everyone is gathered on the floor around the tree, opening presents, laughing. Except for me. I’m in the background on the couch, a book in my lap, scowl on my face. If not for me, it would be some Nordic holiday tourism ad with everyone’s blond hair and happy faces.

“I never fit in with the rest of you.” I stroke Riley’s chubby toddler cheeks in the photo. She couldn’t have been more than two years old. “Because Dan hated me.”

“What?!” Brandon jumps up off the couch, like I revealed some big secret. But it’s been a fact of life for me for so long, it’s still hard to doubt it, despite what I eavesdropped on a few weeks ago. “Dad has never in a million years hated you. Why would you think that?”

I ignore the question, Mia’s words from the night of the party swirling in my head. “Remember the girl I brought to Mom’s party?”

“Yeah,” he says, brows knitting at my change of subject. “Mia, right?”

“We were talking on the way home. She made me… question some things. Between that and the conversation I overheard the other week between Mom and Dan…”

“What conversation?”

“He said—” I swallow, the words hard to get out. “He said Mom kept me apart when you and Dylan went to visit him.”

“Yeah,” he says easily, like he’s waiting for me to finish the thought.

“You knew?”

His brow furrows down. “You didn’t know?”

“No.”

He sits back down heavily on the couch. “So what, you just thought… you thought we didn’t want you around?”

I shrug, glancing away from him, and Rochelle squeezes my arm comfortingly. I can’t remember her ever touching me before tonight. Maybe I just never put myself close enough?

“Mom did this to you,” he growls, nostrils flaring. His wife puts her other hand on his leg, stopping him from whatever else he was about to say.

“I know you’ve had your issues with her in the past, but we’re moving on from that,” she says to him quietly.

I stare at the two of them as Brandon slowly relaxes. “You had issues with Mom?”

“She broke up the family,” he grits out.

“No, I did that.”

They both turn to me, Rochelle with confusion on her face, Brandon with dismay. “Tyler, you were a baby. How could you be responsible for Mom’s actions?”

“I—” I glance between them, suddenly feeling foolish to say it out loud. “The way Dan always looked at me. Like he blamed me. I was the reason they got divorced.”

“They divorced because he found out Mom cheated on him and kept it a secret that you weren’t his biological son.”

“Well, yeah, but…” I don’t really know where I’m going with the thought. When he states everything like that so baldly, the perspective seems different.

“I bet you all those times you were home with Mom while Dylan and I were at Dad’s, she was turning you against him.”

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