Page 43 of Brother in Law with Benefits

I don't look up from my plate. "I know."

"I'm not pushing."

"You're a littlepushing."

"I'm his mother. I'm allowed alittle pushing." She picks her fork back up. "I just don't want him finding out about all of this the way you'd find out about a stranger's business. From someone at the hardware store. That's not how you tell a brother something that matters."

"I'll call him. Once things are settled."

"Grant." She says my name the way she used to when I was seventeen and about to make a decision she could already see the end of. "In this town, things don't stay unsettled long enough for you to catch up to them. You know that better than anyone. You've been gone twenty years and this kitchen still knew you were coming home before your own truck did."

I don't have a good answer for that, so I eat my eggs.

13

Sophie

At 7:12 I am standing in my own kitchen holding a dish towel I don't need, because I already dried everything twice. The counter is clean. The sink is clean. The single coffee mug I used this morning has been washed, dried, and put away with a level of ceremony usually reserved for surgical instruments.

I am, in short, losing my mind quietly and in an organized fashion.

The succulent got watered forty minutes ago, which is aggressive even by my recently-reformed standards, and it's currently sitting on the table looking smug about it, like it knows exactly what kind of evening this is shaping up to be and has opinions about my coping mechanisms.

I changed three times. Started in scrubs because I told myself I wasn't going to make this A Thing, wasn't going to perform anything, and then caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror and thought, absolutely not, you look like you're about to drawsomeone's blood, and swapped into a sundress that felt like trying too hard in the other direction. Landed, finally, on jeans and the green sweater. Not a statement. Except that it is one, because it's the sweater Grant told me once — casually, like it cost him nothing, though I know better now — made my eyes look like something out of a paint chip catalog, which is the closest thing to poetry Grant Guilligan has ever produced in five years of knowing him.

I fold the dish towel. Unfold it. Fold it again into a smaller, more aggressive rectangle.

At 7:19 I pour a glass of wine and don't drink it, just hold it, because it gives my hands something to do besides refolding linens like a woman preparing for a hostage negotiation.

At 7:24 I text Bonnie: he's coming at 7:30. i think i might throw up.

She texts back within thirty seconds, because Bonnie has apparently been sitting with her phone in her hand waiting for exactly this: you're not going to throw up. you're going to tell him you love him and then you're going to have really good sex and then you're going to text me details i did not ask for. GO.

that's a lot of confidence for someone who isn't in the room.

i don't need to be in the room, sophie. i've watched this coming for five months.

I don't have a response to that, so I set the phone face-down on the counter and pick the wine glass back up.

At 7:28 there's a car door outside, and my stomach does something complicated and unhelpful.

At 7:30, exactly, there's a knock.

Of course there is. The man served nineteen years overseas building infrastructure on schedules that mattered — water systems, hospitals, roads that had to hold up under actual weight. He is not going to be five minutes late to what might be the single most consequential conversation of his adult life. Icould set a clock by Grant Guilligan and it would never once lose a second.

I open the door and there he is.

He's changed too — out of the Sullivan Construction gear he's worn every day this week, into a dark henley that fits him the way clothes only fit men who've spent decades doing physical work for a living, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets like he's not sure what else to do with them. His hair's damp at the edges, like he showered in a hurry. Silver catches the porch light at his temples, and for one unguarded second his face does something I've never seen it do before — something close to nervous — before he catches it and smooths it back into the careful, watchful stillness that's been his default since the day he got off that plane.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi."

We stand there a second too long, the door open between us, October air sliding past my ankles.

"You want to come in," I say, "or should we do this on the porch like we're rehearsing for the community theater production of Our Town? I feel like Diane would sell tickets."

That gets the corner of his mouth. Small win. I'll take every one I can get tonight.