Page 3 of Brother in Law with Benefits

I look at her.

She looks back, then away. "She talks about you." Sophie twists her hands in her lap. "Not a lot, but sometimes. She's proud of you."

Proud. The word sounds wrong. What's there to be proud of? I left. I stayed gone. I wasn't here when Dad died. I wasn't here for the diagnosis. I'm here now because I finally ran out of excuses.

"I'm just building things," I say.

"Important things. Things that help people."

"Should've been here helping my own people."

Sophie goes quiet. Then: "You're here now."

Mom calls us in.

We eat lunch at the kitchen table — the same table, the same chipped spot on the edge where Chris used to bang his spoon as a toddler, a piece of this family's history I've never once had to explain to Sophie because she's clearly already lived a year of Sunday dinners around it. Mom supervises from her chair, looking pleased with herself in a way I recognize and don't entirely trust.

Sophie explains the medication schedule, the appointment calendar, the foods that help versus the ones that set off the nausea. She's got a whole system. Color-coded. Laminated.

"You made her a laminated schedule?" I ask. She’s more type-A than my field manager.

"Laminate survives a spilled coffee. Paper doesn't." She says it like it's obvious, like of course you laminate the thing that keeps your ex-mother-in-law alive on schedule, and I believe that I have never met anyone as competent as this woman in my entire adult life, and I've worked with combat engineers.

"She's too good to me," Mom says, not looking up from her plate. "Always has been. More than my own flesh and blood, some days." A beat. "You know I called Karen — Sophie's mother — back in the winter, when we thought the first scan might come back bad. Just to let her know, in case she wanted to be here for it."

Sophie's fork goes still for half a second. Then it doesn't.

"Patty."

"I'm just saying it happened." Mom picks at her sandwich. "She said she had a work thing. In Arizona. A work thing, Grant, in February, when her only daughter's family was staring down a cancer diagnosis."

"She's fine, Patty." Sophie's voice has gone smooth and even, the same tone I imagine she uses on scared parents in an exam room. "It's fine. She's got her own life."

"It's not fine. I just think it's a shame is all." Mom sets her fork down with more force than the sandwich requires. "You drove me to six appointments that month. Six. Your own mother couldn't manage one phone call."

"Patty." Sharper now, like closing a door. "Can we talk about something else?"

It's really not a question.

Mom lets it go, the way she lets very few things go, and turns her attention to her tea. But I'm still sitting with it — the way Sophie shut that conversation down in under four seconds flat, practiced, like she's had a lot of reps closing that particular door before anyone gets a good look at what's behind it.

A mother who couldn't manage one phone call. Sophie Guilligan driving another woman's family to chemo because, apparently, showing up for people is just something she does, with or without anyone showing up for her first.

I don't say anything. It fills the same place I filed the sagging porch and the weeds where Dad's flowerbeds used to be — a thing I've noticed and am not equipped, yet, to do anything about.

I follow along and ask the right questions about pill schedules and tell myself I'm not watching the way her ponytail swings when she turns her head.

When lunch is done, Sophie stands. "I really do need to go."

"Of course, honey." Mom sets down her plate. "Thank you for staying."

"Anytime." Sophie leans down and kisses Mom's cheek with the careful tenderness of someone who's been doing this for months. "Text me if you need anything."

"I've got Grant now. I'll be fine."

Sophie picks up her purse. Glances at me. "It was good to see you, Grant."

"You too."