not working this evening, I’d love it if you and he could come by.”
“I don’t think that’s something that––”
“It’s been so long since your brothers saw you.”
He grunted.
“Dallas?”
“Mother, I don’t have brothers. I have a sister. Just because you got remarried doesn’t make the cover models any relation to me.”
I flipped his omelet, and then again, and put it on a plate. “I’m loving this pan,” I told him.
He groaned.
“I bought that,” Jackie chimed in. “Whenever I find something wonderful, I grab one for all my kids.”
“That’s really nice,” I told her. “One of the guys I work with, Locryn, his mom is like that. She sends odd things to the office because she doesn’t want them dropped off in the middle of the day at his place.”
She was smiling at me.
“Last month he got the world’s greatest ice cream scoop, apparently, and it’s always fun to hear him on the phone with her.”
“And your mother, Croy?” she asked as I put hash browns on Dallas’s plate and then passed it to him. I got him utensils and a napkin, and since Cate hadn’t eaten all her toast, she moved it over between them. “Where is she?”
“Mom,” Dallas whined, squinting at her, “could you not?”
“I think she and my father live abroad at the moment, but I don’t know for certain. We don’t speak, haven’t since I graduated from high school.”
“Oh,” she said, like that news physically hurt her. “I’m so sorry.”
Reaching across the counter for her, I was not surprised when she grabbed my hand tight. “It was a million years ago.”
“Yes,” she whispered, her voice gone for a moment. “I just—I meddle in the lives of my children. I’m a bit of a steamroller, and I…own that. But I could no more be parted from any of them than I could be parted from my own heart.”
I squeezed her hand a second and then eased out of her hold so I could pour Dallas some orange juice.
“So listen to the name Croy came up with for my business,” Cate told Dallas. “He’s so clever, I’m just amazed.”
“I was amazed from the start,” Dallas told her, sighing as he ate his omelet.
Nine
As Dallas and his sister cleaned the kitchen, though there wasn’t much to do since I’d loaded the dishwasher as I cooked, I called the number on the card that Locryn had texted me. So much had happened since he’d told me about the visit by the lawyer, but I finally had time to find out what that was about.
“Good afternoon,” the receptionist said, running through her script. “You’ve reached the law offices of Dupont and Burge; how may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak to Rendon Lowell, please.”
“If you would remain on the line, I’ll connect you to his office.”
The hold music was “Clair de Lune,” which I had learned to play on the piano when I was eight, and had hated ever since. Thankfully, I didn’t have to listen long, as Mr. Lowell’s assistant answered a few seconds later. She sounded nice, and as soon as I said my name, she put me right through to the man.
“Hello, is this Mr. Esca?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, Mr. Esca, it’s good to finally get a chance to speak to you. I’ve been trying to track you down for the last six months. You’re a difficult man to find.”
“And may I ask what this is about?”
“Of course. This concerns your brother, Whitlock.”
I would love to have said that there was a stab of concern, of worry, of anything resembling brotherly interest, but the fact of the matter was our paths didn’t cross, growing up. Our lives had been so scheduled, so regimented, so separate from one another, our parents only vaguely involved with those pursuits that supposedly instilled good breeding, that we were strangers to each other. We never played together; I couldn’t remember a friendly game of anything. I saw them at mealtimes, but there was no talking at the dinner table, as our nanny and the cook hovered close. All of that combined meant that when he said Whitlock’s name, I registered no emotion at all.
“Mr. Esca?”
“Yes, sorry. What about him?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know if you were aware, but he’s running for Congress during the next election here in Connecticut, where the family now resides.”
“I was not aware,” I told him, and wondered vaguely when they had all settled there.
There was a pause.
“You changed your last name from Graves to your maternal grandmother’s