And I knew because I had helped him choose the contractor that he’d put a new roof on it in 2022.
“You kept me away,” I said, “because I was the one who’d have compared the stories.”
His jaw went tight.
“You handled Dad’s accounts. You checked everything. You’ve always checked everything.”
“So that’s what this was?”
“It started that way.”
The Part About Joshua
Dad’s voice came back in.
“Money wasn’t the whole of it. Greg was afraid of being replaced.”
Aunt Sandy frowned.
“By who?”
“By Joshua.”
Every face in that driveway turned.
Joshua stayed exactly where he was in the doorway and did not say anything.
Dad explained it — that Greg had resented Joshua coming out to help with the porch and the water heater and the fence. That it got significantly worse after the furniture, because Dad had asked Greg first.
Greg had said no. Said he didn’t have time.
Then he watched somebody else say yes.
He pointed at my fiancé across that garage.
“I spent my entire life being the one he called.”
“He never stopped calling you,” Joshua said. Very evenly.
“Then you showed up with your jokes and your projects—”
“I didn’t take anything from you, Greg.”
“You wouldn’t understand. Neither of you would.”
Why I Turned Off the Television
I walked over and switched it off.
The silence after was worse than my father’s voice had been.
Greg turned toward me.
“You always made me feel like the irresponsible one.”
“I never made you anything.”
“You had the answers. Dad listened to you. Everybody trusts you. They call you first.”
“I was the person most likely to notice,” I said. “That’s all that is.”
His mouth went thin.
“So instead of changing what you were doing, you took me out of the room.”
“I was trying to keep this whole family from falling apart.”
“No. You were trying to stop people from putting their stories next to each other.”
“I panicked.”
“For five years?”
He looked at the floor of that garage.
What I Told Him With Everybody Listening
I looked past him at all those people out in the driveway. People I had loved from a distance for half a decade because I genuinely believed distance was what they wanted from me.
Then I looked at my brother.
The one who brought me coffee with two sugars four hours after we buried our father.
“You didn’t just keep me out of birthdays,” I said. “You made me believe I was hard to love.”
“Chlo—”
“Every time I almost called somebody, I remembered what you’d told me, and I decided I was being respectful. I sat in my own apartment protecting people from myself.”
“I’m sorry.”
