Brave by Tammara Webber
“All right, all right—it was just for bragging rights, you know? ‘I work for a billionaire’ would be a cool claim.”
I assumed lots of people worked for billionaires, technically speaking, but I wanted to escape the awkward topic. “So Jackson Hole—that’s in Wyoming, or Utah?”
• • • • • • • • • •
Isaac pulled his office door open as I passed it. “Please get me those updated numbers before you leave tomorrow. End of month is Friday.” He either had incredible timing or he’d seen me return from his window.
The wispy hairs at my nape bristled at the thought of him tracking my return from lunch with Joshua. “You aren’t working over Thanksgiving, are you?”
He’d begun to shut the door but stopped at my question. “I’m not leaving town. Just picking my cousin up from the airport Thursday morning and driving us to my aunt’s place in Arlington. I can get a lot done Wednesday and Friday and hold on to the vacation days.”
“I guess it will be kinda dead up here those days. Less interruptions.” His shirt today was a deep orange, a shade that would look hideous on ninety-five percent of men. On him, it was gorgeous. “You look like a tribute to the return of pumpkin spice.”
He glanced down and touched fingers to his tie—angled stripes in silver, forest green and shades of orange. One brow hitched up and his mouth quirked to the side as he looked down at me.
“That’s not an insult, I swear! I really like pumpkin spice.”
“So it’s no celery, I guess.”
His comment, an allusion to the night at his apartment, snuck beneath my breastbone and pinched my heart. I couldn’t reply. I just shook my head slowly.
“All right, then—”
“I’m not seeing him.”
He straightened but didn’t look convinced or appeased. If anything, his body seemed to shrink from mine even though he hadn’t stepped away. I was losing my mind.
“Or any part of him.”
“Not really my business, is it, Ms. McIntyre?”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.” I dug my nails from one hand into the palm of the other, an always handy method I had discovered in childhood to keep the pain focused somewhere other than my trampled pride or my unguarded heart. By some miracle, I even managed a smile. “I’ll have your numbers to you tomorrow, Mr. Maat.”
• • • • • • • • • •
My seat was next to Leo on the flight to Boulder, with our parents in front of us. Our middle brothers had always staged a best-of-five rock-paper-scissors match to decide which of them had to sit next to Leo inflight, but Foster the workaholic was flying in Thursday morning and back out on Friday, and Pax and his fiancée, whom we’d never met, were en route from Albuquerque and would meet us at the cabin.
My eldest brother wasn’t a conversationalist, and our first-class seats were roomy enough that he couldn’t manspread into my space without making a malicious effort. His laziness won out. He spent the flight dozing, drinking, and playing games on his phone. I popped in my earbuds, started an audiobook, and stared out the window at the field of white clouds below, bare landscape peeking through here and there.
It was Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, and Isaac would be at the office along with one or two other people. I wondered if he’d wear his usual shirt and tie or if he would dress down. Knowing Isaac, he would cut the difference. Jeans and maybe a soft sweater—dark jewel toned, fine merino wool, worn over a T-shirt.
I had to rewind my book a number of times; I kept losing the thread of the story. After the fourth or fifth time, I gave up and switched to music, accepting the fact that I wanted to daydream about Isaac. I wanted to dress him up or down like a Ken doll in my mind. I cycled through the outfits I’d seen him wear and invented others.
Lumberjack Isaac, an ax balanced on his shoulder and a gallant I just chopped down a tree to keep you warm this winter look on his face. Swim trunks Isaac, walking out of the ocean like a glistening aquatic god. Tuxedo Isaac, hand outstretched to request a dance… or my future.
I breathed a sigh that became a soft chuckle. Jesus take the wheel, because I am about to drive off the mountain.
Once upon a time, my boyfriend of two years had proposed to me. As I’d stared down at that solitaire, there had been no vacillation in my mind, only shock followed by self-contempt that I’d been so cavalier with someone else’s heart. I hadn’t premeditated the end of us. I hadn’t planned my exit. I had let myself be a carefree girl enjoying her life. I had allowed the finale of Chaz and me to play out, with devastating results.
And here I was, fiercely aware of the different answer I would give a man I’d known a matter of months. A man I hardly knew at all. A man who would not cross trip-wired battle lines for me. A man who viewed me as something he might desire but would never allow inside his heart. Despite all of that, I sensed the jigsaw fit of us to my bones.
I pulled up the appropriated photograph on my phone, the screen angled away from my brother. I knew that smile, as rare as it was in the man that little boy had become. This was my penance for being careless with Chaz, then. To find I was capable of falling in love after all—with a man who would never love me.
chapter
Twenty-three
Virginia Foster Welch ruled the family like the matriarch she was. At eighteen, she’d married my grandfather, a wealthy, ambitious man ten years her senior. A judicious and respectable ten months later, she’d given birth to my mother, a cherished only child she had trained up in her image. They’d always behaved more like sisters than mother and daughter, and where I resembled my mother physically, they were similar all the way through.
Neither of them circumvented the will of their husbands; their power was influence, not mandates, but that influence was considerable. Mom told me once, after one too many glasses of wine, that if not for Nana, my brothers and I would not exist.
This is the sort of statement that gets your attention when you’re a tween who thinks you’ve just about got everything figured out. At that age, your philosophy of existence is simple and Cartesian: I think, therefore I am. I was the daughter my mother wanted so much she’d kept “trying for a girl” after three sons. I had never considered the ways in which I might not have existed. Her startling disclosure knocked the ladder right out from under me.
“When I brought your father home to meet my folks, Daddy didn’t believe he was quite up to snuff,” she’d said. “Your father’s people believed in hard work, climbing the mountain to success, yada yada. Mine believed in owning the mountain. I saw Jeff’s potential, but Daddy forbade me to marry him—until Mama persuaded him that all he needed was a little boost.”
That little boost had resulted in the company my parents owned and a new generation of McIntyres—my brothers and me.
Mom squinted at my face then, realizing belatedly that advising a twelve-year-old how close she’d come to nonexistence might be insensitive. “And here you are!” she said, as though exclaiming Ta-da! And then she offered me a sip of her wine.
Controlling an assortment of children was a whole other animal, especially once they became adults. A certain amount of leash was allowed before the collar tightened. I just didn’t know that yet.
I found myself sharing a bedroom in my grandparents’ house for the first time—with Bailey, Pax’s fiancée, with whom he shared an apartment. No reason was given. We were simply shown to the same room and expected to share it despite the fact that we’d just met.
“Nana, Bailey and I live together,” Pax said.
“You don’t live in my house, Paxton,” Nana answered, no give in her words.
Bailey ran her hand along his back, calming him and forestalling further argument. When it was time for bed, they kissed and whispered in the hall like teenagers on a front porch. My hands tightened on the book in my hands until I closed my eyes and reminded myself that was my brother heavy petting just outside the bedroom door. “ Eww,” my brain said.
I laughed, my estimation of her rising. “How do you know I’m not?”
Her brows rose and she smirked, nodding. “Pax said you were the cool one.” She sat on her twin bed and examined me. Her chin-length bob was darker than it was in Pax’s profile pic and lacked the fuchsia ombré at the ends, and her makeup was less dramatic. She had toned down to meet his family. I would bet a lung Pax hadn’t liked that. “He also said that magnificent red hair was natural. I was predisposed to hate you a little for it.”
“Good thing I’m cool and maybe bi then.”
She laughed. “Yeah, good thing.” She looked around the room after removing a small bag from her suitcase. “This place is insane. When Pax said cabin, I expected rustic. I asked if we should bring our sleeping bags, and he laughed at me.” She pointed at the dual-sided fireplace, visible from both the bedroom and the bathroom. “This is not rustic.”
“Don’t tell Nana that. She believes the stone and timber architecture plus acreage absolutely equals rustic. That is literally one of the principal words she uses to describe the place.”
“Yeah, no. I have no intention of crossing her. Or your parents.” She arched one dark brow. “Leo, on the other hand…”
Bailey was bright. She and Pax had arrived just after dinner, and she’d already figured us all out. While brushing her teeth, she appeared in the bathroom doorway wearing pink-and-black-plaid flannel pajamas and a tiny black tee. Her navel was pierced. “So, Pax’s room is the second doorway to the left?”
“Yep.”
• • • • • • • • • •
The indication that everything was about to go south occurred not long after the traditional long-winded blessing of the meal from our grandfather, during which Pax made a face at me from across the table as he’d been doing for nearly twenty years in an effort to make me laugh, after which—when it worked—he’d close his eyes and feign utter piety. This year Bailey poked him in the ribs, eliciting an “Oww!” and earning him a dirty look from Mom.
Business as usual, Grandpa carving the turkey while side dishes made the rounds and Nana’s culinary skills were praised. To pass the time while waiting for the main course to circulate, we each voiced a thing we were thankful for—another tradition that often degenerated into humble-brags of achievements that thanked one’s own hard work or coincidence more than anything else. Pax surprised me by being thankful for Bailey’s yes two months ago, and she made us laugh by being thankful that her hair had accepted a found-in-nature shade to meet his family after years of being all sorts of unnatural hues.
The turkey platter had gone full circle when Grandpa, forking a pile of white meat onto his plate, said, “Well, I’m thankful none of that protesting bullshit is taking place around here. It’s like people don’t know how to be grateful for what they’ve got.”
Pax put his fork down. Bailey’s hand tightened on her own as she stared at her plate. “Like the Rice family, you mean?” Pax said. “They should be grateful that the twelve-year-old who should be making off with the turkey leg won’t be at their table ever again? That what you mean, Gramps?”
“PAX,” Mom said. “This is not the place—”
“Oh, I’m sorry Mom, what is the place? Am I not allowed a dissenting opinion? I’ve been listening to this shit for twenty-six years—”
“Not at this table,” she said at the same time Daddy barked, “No cursing!”
“They’ve got a president in the damn White House,” my grandfather began, his bushy white eyebrows lowered over his eyes like heavy swag curtains. No one barked a no cursing edict at him. “That shooting was a damn shame all right. Damn shame that kid’s parents let him have a toy that looked like a real firearm and let him out of the house with it.”
I gasped and heard Foster’s murmured, “Shit,” next to me. My face flushed hot. I wanted to get up and leave the table but my legs and arms felt numb.
Pax was undeterred. “I’ve got teammates who are routinely stopped for DWBs. Know what that is? Driving While Black. It happens so often they don’t even fucking mention it.”
“PAX!” Mom tried again. “That is enough.”
“I was with a teammate a week ago when it happened. This dude is two hundred pounds of lean muscle. Prime shape. He’s law-abiding, tax-paying. No reason to be scared of anybody. We got pulled over, and he was terrified. ‘Hands where they can see ’em, man,’ he told me. He put both windows down and gripped the steering wheel, ten and two, like he might get sucked out of the car if he didn’t hold on tight enough. I asked him, ‘Should I get your insurance card out of the glove compartment?’ and he nearly came unglued. ‘NO, man, just keep your hands on your legs!’”
No one said a word. My ears were buzzing, and in that silent beat of time all I could think of was Isaac. Was that true for him? It had to be.
“I told him okay and did what he asked. Officers came up to both windows with their fucking hands on their fucking halfway-drawn guns. They shined flashlights into the car, all over the console, our laps, the floor. One asked for license and registration, and I’ve never seen anyone move so deliberately, commentating the whole time. ‘I’m getting my wallet,’ he told them. ‘I’m getting the insurance card.’ His hand was right in front of me, shaking.”
Bailey put her silverware down, leaned into Pax’s shoulder, and took his hand under the table. She knew this story. He swallowed. “They ran his license and registration, conferred behind the car, then let us go with a ‘Watch yourselves out there.’ Like what does that even fucking mean? He punched the window buttons and I said, ‘They didn’t say why they stopped you’ because I’d just realized it. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘They’d just say the car fit the description of one they were looking for.’
“‘But they’re supposed to say why they stopped you, right?’ I was getting all pissed off. ‘Yeah, man. Sure,’ he said. We went on to another teammate’s place for poker night. Neither of us mentioned it to the others. We both lost every game. We couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t think of anything but how powerless we had been. How powerless we were. I was a shit-for-brains teenager with a lead foot and a low respect for authority. Everyone at this table knows it. I’ve probably been stopped a dozen times, for good reason. I was a semipolite smartass every time. I never once worried that I might get shot for going fifty in a thirty-five or doing donuts in the church parking lot or having a taillight out.” He stared at our mother, laser-focused. “And neither did you.”
• • • • • • • • • •
Minutes later, Nana and Mom began chatting blithely about the food and the weather, and one of them tried to blame the tension on the fact that the Cowboys had been thrashed 33-10 just before we sat down to eat. Everyone—with the exception of Foster, who didn’t care about football enough to get emotional about it—came to the table like growly bears, but no one believed the loss was the cause of anything that came after. The general reticence lasted throughout the meal. My easygoing youngest brother, never so heated about anything in his life, had made his point, and no one had a rebuttal, though I could see one trying to form on at least three faces.
When people began to push away from the table, Mom eyeballed my brothers and began clearing plates. “All you boys go get changed to hang lights outside! We’ll have cider, cocoa, and dessert after we’ve all worked off some of that delicious turkey and stuffing.” Her wide eyes took aim at me, flicking to Pax and back as she piled serving bowls in a haphazard stack. “Erin, you and Bailey can help Nana and me decorate the tree!” Her voice was all holiday cheer. Her face was do-not-defy-me maternal directive.
The fragrant thirteen-foot white fir had been procured from a Longmont Christmas tree farm that morning and hauled home, placed in a stand, and now claimed its prime spot in a windowed corner of the two-story great room. Boxes of decorations, assembled into organized pile
I had looked forward to trimming the tree at my grandparents’ house every year of my life. Stringing multicolored lights all across the room before twirling them around the branches. Removing passed-down ornaments from their felt-lined wooden boxes and dispersing them among newer baubles. Arranging the antique porcelain nativity scene so that every person and animal gazed at the cherubic infant in the manger and no one could see that the donkey was missing his tail and one sheep had lost half a leg.
Obedient Erin stood and began clearing dishes, but I couldn’t incite joyful Erin to appear.
Pax leaned to Bailey. “You don’t have to. We can say you aren’t feeling well. Erin will cover for you.” He looked at me.
“Absolutely.” I didn’t want to be left alone with Mom and Nana and their identical masks of merriment, but I wouldn’t beg Pax’s fiancée to participate in the farce to save me.
She shook her head. “I can fake it as well as they can. I pretended to be Goth the entirety of seventh grade just to piss off my mother. I knew it wasn’t for me about a week in, but I’d made a stand and I wasn’t gonna back down no matter how much I missed pink.”
He chuckled and kissed her, then whispered, “I love you. I’m going to go change to help put up the fucking lights, but I’m moving our flights to tomorrow morning. We’ll go home and decorate our place. Real tree and all, like you wanted.”
When I got out of the shower Friday morning, Bailey had just finished packing her bag. She and Pax planned to head to the airport with Foster. Foster knew; no one else did yet. None of us believed our parents and grandparents would continue the strained silence they’d managed to maintain through dessert last night.