Country clubs.
No mud on boots. No blood on sleeves. No uncertain nights.
“Laura,” Brandon said quietly, “could you not turn this into a war?”
I almost laughed.
“I’ve spent enough time around actual wars to know this isn’t one.”
His eyes dropped.
The comment landed more heavily than I intended.
I sighed.
“What does Dad think is in the folder?”
“I don’t know.”
“You came down this hallway because you don’t know?”
“He thinks Grandpa changed something.”
“The will?”
“Maybe.”
“Hale says it isn’t money.”
Brandon glanced at the general.
Something passed across his expression.
Not disappointment.
Relief.
That caught my attention.
“Brandon?”
He looked back toward the ballroom.
“Grandpa and Dad weren’t getting along.”
“That describes most of the last forty years.”
“No. I mean recently.”
General Hale excused himself with a quiet nod.
“I’ll let the two of you talk. Laura, I’ll be in Washington through tomorrow.”
He gave me a card.
Then he returned to the reception.
My brother and I stood alone.
For ten years, Brandon had existed mostly as photographs I accidentally saw online.
Brandon at charity dinners.
Brandon opening a Whitmore Foundation clinic.
Brandon beside Dad at Christmas.
Brandon marrying a woman named Camille in a vineyard wedding I learned about three months afterward.
Now, standing three feet away, he suddenly looked older than those pictures.
Not old.
Just tired.
“What happened between Dad and Grandpa?” I asked.
Brandon rubbed his thumb along the seam of his trousers.
“Grandpa started reviewing old foundation records.”
“Why?”
“He said he had unfinished business.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because nobody told me anything.”
