Chapter 2
Two
August
My relationship with my brother has always been solid.
Where my friends were bickering with their siblings, picking fights, and driving their parents up a wall, I only ever looked up to Bram.
As a kid, I was forever following him around, trying to insert myself into whatever he was doing, and while it must have been obnoxious to him at times, my brother was good about including me.
He never complained when our parents told him to bring me along to the movies with his friends, and always permitted me to tag along when he rode his bike to the comic book store in town.
At three years older than me, he was good at baseball and always seemed to have a pretty girlfriend hanging around. I thought he was the definition of cool.
Then, we grew up.
Bram got his college girlfriend pregnant, and, while I was in medical school, my brother was in the weeds of parenthood. We talked, of course, and got together for holidays, but we were caught up in very different stages in our lives, and it didn’t make for an especially close relationship.
Over the last few years, as my total absence of a personal life began to dawn on me and I buried myself in a mountain of work to avoid it, the distance between us grew to an estrangement.
The worst part, the part I’m most ashamed of, is that I didn’t even realize. Not until about a month ago.
The moment is burned into my memory, a permanent, shameful scar that throbs when I think about it too much.
On that day, I got in my car after a particularly grueling double shift and—too exhausted by the prospect of driving home just yet—I turned on my personal phone for something to do other than fall asleep with my head on the steering wheel.
There was only one message, and it was from my mother.
Mom: Call me when you get a chance, the baby was born this morning! Very cute! 6 pounds, 2 ounces. They’re calling her Clara Noel.
The text was followed by a photograph of my brother perched at the edge of a hospital bed beside a pretty, auburn-haired woman in a hospital gown, both of them beaming down at a pink bundle in Bram’s arms.
It felt like all the air had been sucked from the car as I sat there, dizzy with shock. I’d known Bram had gotten married, of course. He’d eloped a while back with his much younger girlfriend, much to our parents’ chagrin, but had I known they were having a baby?
I had to have known, right? Something that big isn’t something that gets forgotten. Surely, Bram had told me I would have a new niece or nephew.
Exhaustion gone, I drove home, wracking my memory.
As I did, though, disbelief gave way to a hollow, gut-wrenching shame, because no.
I didn’t know Bram and his wife were expecting.
How could I have, when I couldn’t remember the last time I spoke to my brother.
All those times I’d seen a missed call from him…
I was getting off work late.
I was going into surgery.
I took an extra shift.
I was going into a meeting.
Excuse after excuse, all of which seemed important at the time, but painfully feeble as a whole. By the time I pulled into my driveway, a terrible new truth was settling upon me: it had been almost a year since I bothered to answer one of Bram’s calls.
It wasn’t just the unreturned voicemails, either.
I’d missed Christmas for three years in a row.
I’d skipped weddings, family reunions, birthday parties, and vacations.
The reasons I had to refuse these invitations felt justified, but as I sat in my car outside the big, fancy house I purchased just for myself, trying to think of a single instance when I’d done the opposite—put work after family—the regret I felt was crushing.
Until the day I die, I’ll be grateful I realized before it was too late. I’m a physician, I know firsthand how quickly lives can change for the worse, how easy it would be to lose someone and never get the chance to repair your relationship.
So, before I even opened the door to go inside, I texted my brother, congratulating him on the baby and asking if I could come to meet her over Christmas.
When I’d last visited my hometown, about a year and a half ago, it was for our parents’ fiftieth anniversary. All in all, it was an eventful weekend, but the most memorable part had nothing to do with the party or my family at all.
It was the bed and breakfast. Or, more specifically, the woman who ran it.
Lacey.
She was younger than me, and so pretty I couldn’t help but notice, with curly blonde hair, freckles dotting her nose, and wide brown eyes that creased at the corners when she smiled.
At the time, I’d suspected she might be a little interested and had made a point to stop by the front desk unnecessarily on more than one occasion over the course of my stay, searching for reasons to talk to her.
Then, late on the night before I flew home, something fairly incredible occurred: I managed to get her into my bed.
The sex was incredible, but it was more than that. I liked her. Quite a bit, actually.
It’s entirely possible she moved on and is no longer working there, but when it came time to book my trip home for the holidays, I found myself paying for a room at The Chestnut Bed and Breakfast anyway.
As I’ve seen far too often in my professional life, second chances aren’t all that easy to come by, and it seems nothing short of miraculous that I received two in the space of about twelve hours.
The first was when I arrived last night, only to find Lacey Lovette standing exactly in the place where I first saw her.
The second was when I entered Bram’s house not long ago and was met with a hug from the brother who had every right to be furious with me.
Returning here, to my hometown, with this new realization and self-awareness, feels different than it ever has before. It’s like I’ve turned on the lights after fumbling around in the dark and have no choice but to clearly see all the areas of my life that I’ve been neglecting.
It’s time to make a change, a big one, but I’m ready for it.
“She looks a lot like Leni,” I observe, staring down at the three-month-old in my arms, who does indeed look quite a bit like her much older half sister.
Clara glares up at me through narrowed, brownish-green eyes, obviously still highly suspicious of the stranger who appeared in her house this morning.
From the living room floor, my new sister-in-law, Sophie, mutters contemptuously under her breath as she uses her big toe to hold a ribbon in place on the gift she’s wrapping.
“Yeah,” my brother agrees, obviously trying not to laugh. “She never lets Soph forget it either.” Standing across the kitchen island from me, spatula in hand and a griddle of pancakes before him, Bram grins.
I have to say, for a man who has just become a new parent for the first time in twenty-four years, my brother looks surprisingly well rested.
The last time I stepped foot in this home, he was a single, successful architect.
The place was spotless and decorated with lots of elegant, minimalist furniture, selected so as not to distract from the careful design of the underlying structure.
Now, he has a young wife, a baby, and is about to go back to work after a full three months of paternity leave.
It’s throwing me off that even with the added household clutter, explosion of holiday decorations, and spit-up stain on his shoulder, my notoriously uptight brother seems to be happier and more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.
My mind drifts, yet again, to the manager of The Chestnut Bed and Breakfast.
“She offered to go with us to the store the other day, and I thought she was just being nice, you know? Helpful?” Sophie recounts, glaring up at me. “Do you know what she did?”
“Eh…” I glance at Bram, then back to his wife. “No?”
My sister-in-law scoffs, apparently not at all perturbed by my reticence.
“When we got there, she wanted to hold the baby. Okay, fine. Whatever. Hold away. But then, every little old lady we passed commented on how cute Clara was, and how much she looks like Leni, and she just smiled and thanked them! That hoe-bag just wants all the glory, with none of the poopy diapers.”
If Bram is at all bothered by his wife calling his second daughter a “hoe-bag,” he doesn’t let on. Still smiling, he adds a second pancake to the plate beside him and pushes it over the countertop toward me.
I feel a pinch of regret at the reminder of Lacey back at the inn. She was nowhere to be seen when I came downstairs this morning, preparing to head over here. If I were to guess, based on the mouthwatering scent filling the lobby, she was busy preparing a breakfast I wouldn’t be there to eat.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of getting romantically involved with someone who has to be over a decade younger than me. Apart from one notable exception, whom I never expected to see again.
She was still there, though.
I came back, armed with a very different mindset than I had when we met, and Lacey was still there.
Age gap and aggressively different zip codes aside, would it be so crazy to ask her out?
My brother and his wife seem to be genuinely happy.
For god’s sake, even my nieces married men closer to their father’s age than their own, and no one seems to have a problem with it.
My work location would be an issue, sure, but maybe if things went well—
In my arms, the baby lets out a shrill little cry, her face scrunched up and indignant as she reaches the end of her patience with me.
Sophie gets to her feet at once. “I’m going to put her down for her morning nap,” she announces, and her expression goes soft and warm as I carefully return her daughter to her arms. Bram and I both watch as she heads upstairs.
“I’ve got to say,” my brother says conversationally as he portions out another set of pancakes onto the griddle. “I was surprised you wanted to come for the holidays. Family time hasn’t seemed like much of a priority to you.”
It’s difficult to stop myself from wincing. “I’m sorry I haven’t been… present,” I tell him, turning my fork between my fingers, still not taking a bite. “This is me trying to do better.”
“Why the sudden change?” His voice isn’t accusing, exactly, but there is a dubious tone to it that makes it clear Bram doesn’t expect this change of attitude to be permanent.
My throat is thick with guilt as I cut into the pancakes on my plate. “I hadn’t realized Sophie was pregnant. Mom texted me when Clara was born, and I just…” I shake my head. “I got absorbed in the work. It was easier, I think, than asking myself why I was alone.”
It’s the first time I’ve said that out loud, but somehow, Bram seems to understand. “I get it,” he assures me simply, returning his attention to the griddle. “Before Soph came along, I was pulling eighty-hour weeks.”
I remember, but even then, he was still better about keeping up on the family stuff than I was. “There’s no excuse for my checking out like that. I’m sorry, Bram. Really fucking sorry. It isn’t going to happen again.”
My brother smiles grimly. He doesn’t say it, but I know what he’s thinking; We’ll see.
“Did you meet someone?” asks Bram unexpectedly.
My first thought is of Lacey.
Christ.
I let out an uncomfortable laugh. “No. No one new. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious what prompted this big life change.” He leans back against the cabinets, peering over at me appraisingly. “Someone old, then? What was the name of that guy you were seeing before you moved away?” He snaps his fingers, screwing up his face as he tries to remember.
“Wells,” I tell him automatically, my chest suddenly hollow at the thought of yet another sacrifice to my career ambition. “Wells Davis.”
“Yes! I see him around a lot. I think he owns the bookstore down the street from E&V.”
I swallow, shoving aside memories of the shop in question. “That’s him. And no, I’m not back in town for Wells. We didn’t end it on good terms.”
Bram seems to sense this isn’t something I’m interested in discussing, because he moves on. “The girls are both traveling, so you won’t get to meet Edie, unfortunately.”
“Shit, I forgot.” I force a chuckle, “Congratulations, grandpa.”
My brother gives me a dark look. “Glass houses, August. If I’m a grandpa, you’re a great-uncle.”
This is easy enough to wave off. “I look good for my age. You’ve got some gray, there.” I grin, pointing to the silver beginning to peek through the temples of his brown hair. “You know, they make dye for that.”
Setting the mixing bowl in the sink, Bram turns on the water, rinsing his hands. “Sophie likes it.”
Well, fuck. I can’t argue with that. In fact, if I’m honest with myself, I can admit I’m pretty fucking jealous.