“Money wasn’t the whole of it, Chloe. Underneath the money, Greg was afraid of being replaced.”
Aunt Sandy frowned. “Replaced by who?”
“By Joshua,” Dad said.
Every head in that driveway turned toward the doorway, toward Joshua, who stood exactly where he had been the whole time, not one foot over the threshold.
Dad explained it, plain and sad. How Greg had watched Joshua come in and fit so easily with Dad. How the two of them worked on projects together, laughed together, spoke the same quiet language of fixing things. How the furniture had made it worse than anything, because Dad had asked Greg first. Dad had wanted his son to help him build the crib. And Greg had said no, had waved it off as a waste of time, and then had to watch Joshua step in and do it instead.
Greg’s arm shot out, pointing at Joshua.
“I spent my entire life being the one Dad called,” he said, and his voice was cracking now, all the smoothness gone out of it. “You understand that? My whole life. I was the son he called.”
“He never stopped calling you, Greg,” Joshua said, and he said it gently, without any fight in it. “Not once.”
“Then you showed up. With your stupid jokes and your projects and your what-comes-next, and suddenly—”
“I never took anything from you,” Joshua said. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even know how.”
“You wouldn’t understand it,” Greg snapped. “Neither of you would. Not you, Joshua. Not you, Chloe.”
I walked to the television and I turned it off.
The silence that dropped down after Dad’s voice cut out was heavier than anything he had said.
Greg turned to face me, and now it was just us, brother and sister, the way it had always secretly been under everything.
“You always made me feel like the screwup,” he said. “My whole life. You, sitting there with all the answers.”
“I never made you a screwup, Greg.”
“You had every answer. Dad listened to you. Everyone trusted you. You walked into a room and people just, they just believed you.”
“I was the one most likely to notice things,” I said. “That’s all that ever was. I paid attention.”
His mouth twisted.
“So instead of changing what you were doing,” I said, and it was becoming clear to me even as I spoke, cold and clear, “you just took me out of the room. You couldn’t stand that I’d notice, so you got rid of the person who noticed.”
“I was trying to hold everything together.”
“No. You were trying to stop people from comparing your stories. Those aren’t the same thing.”
“I panicked, Chloe. Okay? I panicked.”
“For five years?” I said. “You panicked for five years straight?”
He looked down at the floor.
And I looked past him, out at the driveway. At Aunt Sandy with her hand still at her mouth. At Uncle Nolan, hard-faced. At Sadie, crying. At all these people I had loved from a careful, respectful distance for years, because I had genuinely believed that distance was the gift they wanted from me.
Then I looked back at my brother. The man who had brought me coffee with two sugars the day after our father died. The man who had put his arm around me and called himself the one who would take care of me now. The man who had, that whole time, been the architect of my loneliness.
“You didn’t just keep me away from birthdays and weddings,” I said. “That’s not even the worst of it. The worst of it is you made me believe I was hard to love. You made me think that the reason nobody called was something about me.”
“Chlo—”
“Every time I almost picked up the phone to call one of them, I heard your voice telling me to give them space, and I put the phone down. I thought I was being considerate. You had me apologizing, in my own head, for being too much, when I hadn’t done anything.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You taught them to doubt me,” I said, “while you told me you were the only one I could really count on. Do you understand what that is, Greg? That’s not a mistake. That’s a design.”
He looked out at the driveway, at all of them, and something in him finally broke open.
“I thought if everyone needed me,” he said, so quiet I almost missed it, “then Dad would keep choosing me. If I was the one holding it all together, the one everyone came to, then he’d have to see I was the important one.”
“Choosing you?” I said. “Greg, you were his golden boy. You were the strong son. He said it constantly.”
His face crumpled. “That’s what I told myself. But it wasn’t true, was it. Not the way I meant.”
Ms. Richards took a step forward, but I lifted my hand, and she stopped. I needed him to finish this. I needed to hear the whole shape of it.
“Dad gave you space because he trusted you,” Greg said, and now the tears were running down his face and he wasn’t wiping them. “He checked on me all the time because I kept messing up. And I got it backwards in my head. I took his worry and I turned it into proof that he loved me more. I decided that all his checking-in meant I was the favorite, when really it just meant he was scared for me.”
And that, of everything he had said, that was the thing that landed hardest. Because it was true, and because it was so sad, and because it explained everything without excusing one bit of it.
“So you rewrote the whole family,” I said. “You made yourself the center of it, and you pushed me out to the edge, all so you could feel chosen.”
He nodded, once. Just once.
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“I want you to tell every one of these people the truth. To their faces. I want you to pay back every dollar you borrowed. And I want you to correct every single lie you told, one by one, yourself. Not me. You.”
“I will,” he said. “I promise, Chloe, I will.”
“Don’t promise me,” I said. “You’ve promised things before. Put it in writing.”
Ms. Richards opened her folder then, and there was the smallest note of satisfaction in her voice.
“Byron already saw to the debts,” she said. “It’s in the will. Every documented debt Greg owes to family members will be paid directly out of Greg’s share of the estate, before the remaining balance is distributed to him.”
Greg’s head came up. “All of them?”
“All of them,” she said. “Your father was very thorough.”
His shoulders dropped, like something had been let out of him.
I looked at my brother one last time.
“Until you’ve fixed the damage you did,” I said, “don’t contact me. Unless it’s about the estate. I need space.” I heard the word come out of my mouth and I almost laughed, because it was his word, the word he had used to build the walls. “Real space this time. The kind I choose.”
“Chloe, please.”
“I need you to go now, Greg.”
And he went.
That evening, after everyone had finally gone home and the house was quiet, Joshua set the other tape down on top of the television. The one labeled FOR CHLOE — WITH EVERYONE PRESENT had been the public one. This one just had my name on it, and Dad’s handwriting was smaller, more private.
“I can stay,” Joshua said. “You don’t have to watch it by yourself.”
“I know,” I said. “I love you for it. But I need to hear this one alone.”
He kissed the top of my head and left me to it.
