Chapter Four
OWEN
Since the beginning of the year when I sold my half of the company I co-founded, I’ve slept in until eight most mornings. So, I don’t appreciate waking up to my brother jumping on me at five a.m.
“You’re fourteen,” I croak. “Way too old for this.”
I groan and try to shift him off my lungs. He may be young, but he’s already six feet tall. That’s a lot of weight making it impossible for me to breathe.
He slides off my body and onto his knees. He pokes me in the side.
“Mom said you have to get up. We leave for the airport at six-thirty.”
Our flight doesn’t leave until nine, but it’s no use arguing with Mom’s logic. If she needs to be there two hours early to wait at our gate, then so be it.
Still, five a.m. ?
“That’s in an hour-and-a-half.”
I’m thirty-two, which means I’m too old to be woken up by my mother, especially not in my own house. Sometimes she forgets that I have successfully lived on my own for fourteen years.
Brady grabs the cup of water on my bedside table and throws the remaining half- inch in my face.
I wipe it away with my hand. “Really?”
“Mom said I can’t leave your room until you’re up.”
“I’m up.”
I don’t move to get out of bed, but my words must be enough because he finally leaves. I flip my pillow to the dry side, and I snuggle deeper in my blanket. I can sleep for at least another hour and still be ready by six-thirty.
Except Brady doesn’t leave my room quietly. He flips on the light and plays Mariah Carey at full blast. I jump out of bed to grab his phone, but he isn’t stupid, and runs down the hallway. When he disappears into the kitchen, I let him go and return to my room.
“Owen,” Mom calls from the kitchen before I’m able to shut the door. “Your omelet is ready. If you go back to bed, it will be cold and chewy. Get it while it’s hot.”
I debate. Get more sleep? Or have a hot breakfast? May as well enjoy a non-chewy omelet.
Brady’s cheesy omelet and a large glass of milk are half gone by the time I sit across from him, his attention on a thick fantasy book open on the table.
He takes after mom, with a lighter complexion and leaner build. He hasn’t cut his light brown hair in years, and it hangs in waves past his shoulders. There’s a bit of scruff on his upper lip and chin. It might be time to teach him how to shave.
I’m jealous of Brady’s height. He’ll probably grow a few more inches before graduating high school. I’m five nine, broader, and more compact like dad. Dad wanted me to play football like he did since I have the build for it, but once I hit middle school, I didn’t have time for sports. Instead, I worked hard to earn an associate’s degree before I graduated high school and got my bachelor’s degree at twenty. All so I could be like Mom’s dad: a lawyer. Decisions I regret now.
Mom places a plate in front of me and ruffles my hair. Again, not a kid. When she visits me in Salt Lake, she acts like this is her house and I’m sixteen. I rarely mind, but I’m not usually out of bed at five a.m. either.
“I’m hopping in the shower now,” she says. “Who’s next?”
“I don’t need one,” Brady says. He doesn’t look up from his book.
We stayed up late last night so he could tell me about it. I tried to follow, but had a hard time because I kept thinking about Layla. I hope she’s okay after the way she acted when she received that text. I wish she had given me her number so I could check and make sure.
Mom raises her eyebrows and stares at the top of Brady’s greasy mop of hair. He must feel her attention because he glances up at her.
“You need a shower,” she says. “You smell like a wadded-up swimming suit left in a towel, forgotten in the back of a closet for a month. You’ll have to survive without your book for twenty minutes.”
“It’s the exciting part,” he whines .
She puts her hands on her hips. “It’s always the exciting part when I ask you to do something. Shower, got it?”
He nods reluctantly, then goes back to the book.
“Be ready by the time I get out of the bathroom,” Mom warns before she moves down the hallway.
The moment the bathroom door shuts, Brady looks up and focuses on me. “Why are we going to Maine? Mom won’t tell me anything except Grandmother invited us. It sucks because I’m missing my Dungeons and Dragons session.”
As upsetting as that is for Brady, I’d bet he’s more nervous about meeting his grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins he’s barely heard about. Mom was ostracized by her family when she married Dad. I spent summers in Maine when I was a teenager but, besides our cousin Tori, I haven’t spoken to the rest of the family in eight years.
Even if Mom doesn’t want Brady to meet her family with any preconceived notions, he should understand what we’re walking into this Christmas.
“What do you know about mom’s parents?” I ask.
“Just that they didn’t like Dad. Mom hasn’t seen them since before I was born. After Grandfather died, Grandmother started talking to her occasionally. Mom goes into her room and cries after every call. It’s weird.”
Mom’s family is weird, and I blame it all on Grandfather.
“Do you know why Mom’s family didn’t like Dad?” I ask.
“Because he didn’t have money?”
“Yep, and he wasn’t planning on making any either. Math teachers aren’t exactly wealthy, and money means everything to the Ecclestons. When Dad proposed, Grandfather warned Mom she’d be disowned if she married him. ”
“She married him anyway.” There’s pride in Brady’s tone.
“From that day until I turned ten, her parents, brother, and sister ignored her existence. Grandfather decided a male grandchild was worth breaking his silence for, and he reached out to Mom about having me live with them.”
He tilts his head. “To live with them forever?”
“Yeah. They were raising our cousin who’s a few years older than me, and Grandfather wanted us both to grow up to be like him. Mom said no way. Grandfather offered her money. She refused. He said he’d pay my college tuition when I was old enough to go to college. She compromised and said I could stay with them for two months over the summer, but only if I wanted to.”
Brady leans back in his chair. “How did you get Mom to tell you all of this? She never talks to me about her family.”
Mom’s family is a taboo topic. I think it hurts too much for her to talk about them.
“It was Dad who told me.”
His confusion over how I know so much clears. He thinks for a minute. “They have a lot of money then?”
I laugh at how understated that sounds. “Yes, they have a lot of money. Grandfather thought that gave him the right to dictate everyone’s lives.”
“They would’ve liked Dad if they had known him.”
Brady was six when Dad died. He never got the chance to know him like I did, but everyone loved Dad. At his funeral, former students, college friends, and people from all over the city packed the place. Our grandparents missed out by dismissing him because of his profession and lack of family connections.
“I think so too,” I say .
He twirls his fork along the top of the table. “Grandfather called the summer I turned ten and asked if I wanted to visit. I didn’t want to.”
Mom never told me, but it makes sense. I’d already distanced myself from Grandfather. Maybe he thought I’d failed, but he still had a chance to mold my brother into his image.
I’m glad Brady didn’t go; he would have been miserable. Grandfather wouldn’t have let him read all summer, at least not fantasy. Nonfiction and law were more his style, and because he liked those types of books, everyone else should too.
“Why didn’t you go visit?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I didn’t want to spend a month with strangers. Besides, I knew you didn’t like them, so why would I?”
“I didn’t always feel the way I do now,” I say. “We have cousins my age, and the three of us hung out every summer. Grandfather had expectations about how we had to behave and what things we needed to study, but it wasn’t all work. He took us to museums, baseball games, and New York City. I never would have experienced those things if I had stayed home.”
Brady, whose greatest passion is books and who finds fictional friends better company than real ones, isn’t impressed.
“If you had so much fun with him,” he asks, “Then why do you hate him?”
My answer to that question shows what an unappreciative jerk I was to our parents when I was Brady’s age, and I hesitate.
The water in the shower shuts off, but we still have at least twenty minutes before Mom will be out of the bathroom. It’s a family joke how long she takes to get ready in the mornings. It’s why she can’t understand how it only takes me thirty minutes from the moment I get out of bed to when I’m out the door.
“Are you going to tell me?” Brady prods.
“Our cousins are wealthy and sophisticated and lead completely different lives than I do, especially when we were kids. They’d been to Europe multiple times when I met them, and I’d been on a plane once because Grandfather bought my ticket. They had the newest phones, laptops, and expensive clothes. I was an average kid from a podunk town who wore jeans and t-shirts and didn’t know any better. Instead of being angry at Grandfather for disowning his daughter, I was mad at Dad for having such a lame job.”
Anger flashes in Brady’s eyes. “He didn’t have a lame job.”
“I know that now, but I wasn’t as smart as you are. I wanted to impress Grandfather and prove that I was like him and not our parents. From my very first summer, I decided I’d earn a law degree and work at his firm.”
“But you changed your mind. You graduated with a business degree.”
“My bachelor’s degree was in business, but then I went to Harvard and earned a law degree.”
He laughs. “You’re kidding.”
I give him a rueful smile. “Nope. You were only five, so you don’t remember, but Mom and Dad threw me a huge party when I passed the bar. They supported me in everything. ”
Even when I didn’t deserve it.
Brady looks at me like I’m a stranger. “Then why aren’t you a lawyer?”
“I worked at Grandfather’s corporate law firm for a year, but then I quit.”
“Did he treat you like an intern and make you get the coffee for the whole office and then, when you got his order wrong, did he make you remove staples from boxes of documents for hours and hours?”
I laugh. “That’s oddly specific.”
“I saw it on a TV show.”
“The reality of law was much less dramatic and a lot more boring. I wanted to love it like Grandfather did, but I didn’t. I don’t know if you remember, but when dad first went into a coma, I was working in New York. After Mom called, I flew into a panic and booked a flight home. I rushed to pack while Grandfather was cool as a cucumber. He said, ‘We’re in the middle of a merger, and you’ve committed to see it through. Ecclestons never leave a job half-finished.’”
This was his response to my dad being hospitalized.
In an instant, a man I strived to emulate became the man I no longer respected.
To him, my dad’s hospitalization was a mere inconvenience. Work responsibilities came first, no matter what happened in our personal lives. He had shared his work philosophy many times, but that day I learned what he meant.
“I left on my flight and never saw him again.”
Brady studies me. “Are you still mad at him?”
“Looking back, I would’ve been surprised if he had acted any other way. What I most resent is how he warned Mom’s family not to attend Dad’s funeral. He held all the purse strings, and no one wanted to go against him. Mom could’ve used their support. It was Grandfather’s last dig at the man he felt stole his daughter away from him. I wouldn’t go this Christmas if Grandfather were still alive, no matter what Mom said.”
“What about grandmother? Are you still angry at her?”
I shake my head. “Grandmother never stuck up for Mom or Dad, but she said nothing bad about them either.” I shrug. “I’m okay seeing her, but I’d rather not go at all.”
Brady gives me a long look. “I’m giving up Dungeons and Dragons to go, so it better be a good trip. Are you going to be miserable and ruin Christmas?”
“No.”
He tilts his head to the side and crosses his arms. He doesn’t believe me.
“I’ll do my best to have fun,” I amend. It won’t be easy. I have a chip on my shoulder as large as a city block.
He keeps staring. It reminds me a lot of Dad.
I put my hand over my heart. “This will be the best Christmas we’ve ever had.”
“If you fail, you’ll regret it.”
I don’t doubt it.
The bathroom door opens. “Brady? Your turn.”