That Summer Night

Part Two

2008

That night, as they lay in darkness in their own bed, Brian cleared his throat – a sign, Honey had noted over the years, that he wanted to discuss something uncomfortable. She braced herself for a difficult conversation.

“I find myself in something of a dilemma,” he admitted, apparently addressing the ceiling. “I’ve had four conversations with family members and the things they want are contradictory.”

“Who did you talk to?”

He sighed. “First, I spoke to Dad. He agreed wholeheartedly that I should give as much information as I can. He gave me full permission to tell Sally’s son about his own medical conditions and he gave me some details about his father’s generation that I didn’t already know.”

“Well, that’s a good start. Who next?”

“Mart. He’s also agreeable, but he had a lot more concerns.” His thumb traced gentle circles where it rested on the back of her hand. “He wants everything de-identified, which I think is a reasonable request and is what I was already intending to do.”

“Oh. Well, yes, that would be a good idea.”

“And then I spoke to Uncle Andrew. He basically said it was nothing to do with him and he wanted no part in it and that I was not to tell anything about his health that I knew.”

In the dark, Honey frowned. “That sounds rather… harsh, I guess. Was he angry?”

“Not angry.” Again, he sighed. “He worded it a lot more gently, but that was the gist.”

“I sometimes wonder if he knows, or if he just suspects, and if it’s a suspicion, if it’s the same suspicion that I sometimes have, which I don’t want to have.”

He turned his face so that he could nuzzle up against her neck. “You know, that sounds suspiciously like the way you talked when we first met.”

“I’m tired. And you should know what I mean, by now.”

His breath puffed against her neck. “Oh, I know what you mean – or, rather, who you mean. And I’ve wondered the same thing. It’s entirely possible that he knows something.”

“But it’s also possible that it’s just a suspicion,” Honey added. “So, what happened in your fourth conversation?”

“Ah.” He hesitated for a long moment. “I suppose you’ve guessed that I spoke to Cap?”

“It was him, or Hallie, and I was thinking you’d try Cap first.”

“I should probably speak to her, too. And Trixie.”

“Never mind that now. What did Cap say?”

“He didn’t word it this way, but he wants me to lie.”

“He wants what?”

“I’m convinced that he knows,” Brian told her. “He knows why Sally’s son wants the information and he either knows or suspects who his father is. And he wants me to feed him false information to get him off the scent.”

Honey processed this in silence for a minute or two, then asked, “Do you think Sally’s son approached them first? Was he just pretending he didn’t know he’s not yours?”

“I don’t know,” Brian answered. “But now I’m wondering if the position I’ve taken all these years is the right one. I didn’t want to know the truth, in case it was an uncomfortable truth.”

“I know. Neither did I.” She frowned, thinking. “Talk to Hallie and Trixie tomorrow. See what they say. And we can talk about it again when we have some more information.”

“That’s a good thought,” he answered. “Maybe Hallie will have some insights that can help us decide what course to take.”

1975

The next morning, Trixie led the way down the stairs through the quiet house. None of the four had slept well, interrupted as they were by sudden noises. Honey yawned behind her hand as she trailed along after her best friend.

“Maybe we’ll feel better after some breakfast,” Di commented, hopefully. “Oh. There are people sleeping everywhere.”

“Ugh! What a mess!” Trixie added, in a low voice. “Moms is going to be furious.”

Everywhere you looked, something was out of place or dirty or crumpled. Knut’s friends seemed to have just chosen any unoccupied piece of floor to sleep upon, often with sofa cushions or items of clothing or even the tablecloth tucked under their heads. Honey also had a niggling feeling that something was missing, but in the chaos around her, she could not pick what it was.

They stepped into the kitchen, which smelled deliciously of coffee and fried bacon. Trixie’s parents, Hallie’s parents and her Uncle Andrew all sat at the kitchen table, partaking of an early meal.

“You can serve yourselves, girls,” Helen Belden told them. “It’s all keeping warm in the oven.”

“Thanks, Moms.” Trixie picked up a flower-patterned pot-holder and pulled out a well-loaded tray. “Mmm! This is just what we need.”

Honey, Diana and Hallie echoed her thanks. Soon, they sat down at the table and began to eat. The two couples continued some conversation they had been having, but Andrew turned to the girls.

“You’re up early. Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“Not really,” Trixie answered, wrinkling her nose. “I’m not used to so much noise.”

“Neither am I,” he answered with a smile. “I’m grateful for your parents’ hospitality, but if every night was like that one, I’d be running for home for some peace and quiet.”

“We’d probably come with you,” Hallie told him. “It wasn’t our kind of party.”

“Nor mine.” He glanced at his two brothers and their wives, but they were engrossed in their own topic. “I only stayed to see the cake cut and then crept upstairs while no one was looking. I don’t think anyone missed me.”

Hallie grinned. “I asked my mother to have that done early, so that we could leave.”

“Then I have you to thank for my early night.” He shook his head ruefully as he chewed. “It’s hard to stay up late when you’re used to being up early. Even now, I feel like I should be out on the farm working somewhere instead of lazing around inside.”

“We haven’t got any work for you to do, but if you’d like to ride, my father keeps horses,” Honey offered. “Hallie and I were going to my house after breakfast. I could introduce you to Regan, our groom, if you’d like.”

Andrew gazed out the window. “It’s a lovely day and that’s a very generous offer. I might just take you up on it.”

Once they had all finished eating, Honey ran upstairs to get the orange dress, then the three set off to walk up to Manor House together. They had not even left the yard before something on the ground caught Honey’s eye. Andrew kicked it aside without seeming to notice, but not before Honey recognised the item as a pair of yellow-flowered panties.

2008

“What are you doing, Honey?”

She looked up from the slice of toast she had been lazily drizzling with honey. “Thinking, mostly.” She glanced around to make sure that neither of their offspring was in earshot. “Do you think my father paid her off?”

Brian sat down across from her with a thump. “Paid who off?”

“Sally.” She picked up a knife and spread the honey evenly. “She disappeared so suddenly and so completely and so shortly before Jim got married.”

“She wasn’t bothering him,” Brian pointed out.

She cast him a look. “She was bothering his wife’s brother.” She looked down and made a great deal of cutting the toast into triangles. “I know that things were strained between us back then and I don’t suppose he was thinking of you and me together – though, maybe he was, because he often did take a long view of things – but don’t you think it’s possible that he might have decided to get rid of the problem?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I only ever discussed the matter with him once and that was before she had the baby.”

“While I wasn’t speaking to you?”

“Honey, you didn’t speak to me from the day she first accused me until the day that Trixie told you that if you didn’t make some kind of peace with me, you couldn’t be in her wedding party.” He winced at the memory of those five years. “Of course it was while you weren’t speaking to me.”

She took a bite of the toast and found it to be stone cold. “What did he say?”

“Very little.” He looked away, seeming deep in thought. “Mostly, he listened to my side of the story – that I’d stayed sober; that I’d tried to keep watch over the drunk people, but that there were too many of them; that I didn’t know who Sally had been with, but that it wasn’t me.”

“He believed you.”

“I think so.”

She shook her head. “No. He did believe you. He told me so; it must have been right after you had that conversation. He believed you and I didn’t.”

“I don’t blame you for that.”

“I do.” She chewed her cold, sticky toast for a moment. “I know it doesn’t help and that I can’t change the past, but I could, at least, have given you the benefit of the doubt.”

“We were so young,” he commented. “I was barely older than our daughter is now.”

“You seemed so grown up to me, at the time.”

He smiled and shook his head. “It just shows how bad teenagers’ judgement is.”

“And not just mine. How did you ever think that you could take care of dozens of drunken idiots who were all older than you?”

“I’m not sure I thought I could, but I knew that I needed to try.” He sighed. “And it wasn’t just me. Mart and Jim and Dan were there, too.”

“I don’t think I saw any of you, the whole night.” She dusted her fingertips and considered whether to have another triangle of toast. “I’m sure a lot more must have gone on that night than I ever knew about.”

He nodded. “At the time, the four of us were so relieved that you girls hadn’t seen any of it. Later, of course, I changed my mind. If you’d known…”

“I’d have found it easier to believe your story?” She pushed the cold toast away. “Probably. But I don’t regret not knowing. Looking back, I think I would have been horrified. In fact, if I saw it now I’d probably be horrified.”

“I don’t think you need to go that far. It wasn’t quite that depraved.”

“Maybe not.” She looked away. “But none of this answers my question.”

“Did your father intervene?” he remembered, after a short moment’s thought.

“I never asked him.” She swiped at her sudden tears. “And now I can’t.”

1975

Several weeks had passed since Knut’s birthday party and Sleepyside had returned to normal. Spirits were running high among the Bob-White girls that Friday afternoon, as this would be the first weekend where Jim and Brian visited home from college. The Sleepyside-based Bob-Whites had plenty of things planned – probably more than could comfortably fit in the time available.

“I can’t wait for tonight’s cook-out,” Diana commented, as they rode the bus home from school that day. “I’m almost sorry it’s too chilly to have it at the lake, like we do in summer, but the terrace at Crabapple Farm is nearly as fun.”

“And it’s better because we can just go inside when it gets cold, instead of having to go home,” Honey added. “Though, I almost wish we weren’t having it there, but at my house instead. We could have had a house party and all slept over and that would have made it easier to exercise all the horses in the morning.”

“That would have made it harder, you mean,” Dan teased. “After you girls kept us all awake all night with your giggling.”

Trixie shook her head. “We’re not that loud. And the walls in Honey’s house aren’t that thin.”

“They’re not,” Honey agreed. “And I’m only almost sorry, but not actually sorry, because Mrs. Belden will have the most delicious feast for us and I wouldn’t miss that, even for the chance to get an early start tomorrow morning, which we’re going to have to try to do anyway, otherwise I don’t know when we’ll fit in time to ride.”

“Speaking for myself,” Mart put in, “I intend to go straight to the stables to make best use of the available time this afternoon. I would appreciate it if you could inform our esteemed maternal forebear of my whereabouts – though, perhaps, I should be chastising you for not following my most exemplary example.”

His sister shook her head. “I don’t need to follow your example – Honey and I rode this morning, which you would know, if you’d woken more than a minute before the bus arrived. And anyway, we can’t, because all three of us promised Moms that we’d help her get everything ready. But I can tell her where you are.”

“Appreciated, I’m sure,” he replied, ignoring everything else she had said.

“But, anyway, maybe we can do the house party next time,” Honey continued. “Because that sounds like such a fun idea and we can’t make Mrs. Belden feed us all the time, even though I know she enjoys it and we enjoy it and it’s always so good.”

Their discussion of the potential house-party carried them through the rest of the ride, past the point where they parted ways with Dan and Mart, and almost all the way up the drive. As they neared the house, however, a figure stood up from the front step – right where they had sat those weeks before while escaping the party.

“Sally!” Honey cried. “What are you doing here?”

The older girl walked slowly towards them, her face paler than usual against her honey-brown hair. She stopped an arm’s length away and Honey noticed that she was breathing quickly.

“Where’s Brian?” Sally asked, at last.

“At college,” Trixie answered, “but you’re in luck. He’ll be home for the weekend in a couple of hours.”

Sally shook her head. “Where is he? I need to speak to him.”

“Right now?” Trixie asked. “I don’t know. But come inside and you can wait for him. Would you like a snack? We were just going to get one.”

“I don’t want anything, except to speak to Brian,” she snapped.

“Are you all right, Sally?” Diana asked. “You look pale.”

The other girl laughed, just a little hysterically. “No, I’m not all right.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Honey offered.

Sally turned and looked straight at Honey, lip curling and eyes narrowing. Now that they were closer, Honey saw the other girl’s eyes were red-rimmed. She saw pain in their hazel depths, but layered over that, she saw contempt.

“It’s a bit late for that,” Sally told her. “You could have helped me, but you didn’t.”

“I – I don’t understand,” Honey stuttered.

The contempt shaded into pity. “No. You’re much too pure and innocent to understand exactly what you’ve done. You wouldn’t have even thought of taking care of your boyfriend the way he needed caring for.”

“I don’t think you should be speaking to Honey that way,” Trixie told her, stepping forward.

Sally ignored the interruption. “But it’s all too late now. He won’t be your boyfriend after this. Not when you know what he’s done.”

“Don’t listen to her, Honey!” Di urged, from one side of her.

“I think you’d better go,” Trixie ordered, from the other.

“What has he done?” Honey whispered, in spite of both of them.

The older girl closed her eyes a moment, then glared at Honey full-force.

“I’m pregnant. And the baby is his.”

All around Honey, the world seemed to go black.

2008

“You look serious,” Honey commented, as she wandered past Brian that evening while both their children were out.

He looked up from his laptop and immediately pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I think I’m onto something,” he told her.

“You had those two conversations?”

He nodded. “Trixie was no particular help, but she’s going to do some poking around – my interpretation of her words, not an actual quote.”

She smiled. “Yes, I got that. But Hallie?”

“She knows.”

Honey sat down at the table, across from him. “Did she tell you?”

He shook his head. “At the beginning of the conversation, she reiterated her statement that she had no relevant knowledge.”

“Then you told her what happened here yesterday?”

“I did.” He looked away, frowning. “Something changed when I told her he was after specific medical information. My impression was that she had a sudden realisation of who the father must be.”

“But she wouldn’t tell you why.” She considered for a moment. “Is she keeping a confidence, do you think?”

“That’s my theory.” He looked back at his screen. “And I’m beginning to form a theory on what the medical information is that he’s looking for, but I’m not ready to share it, yet.”

She smiled acceptance, then another thought struck her. “Do you think your Uncle Andrew knows? Is that why he was opposed to sharing information?”

Brian hesitated a long moment. “I don’t know. It might be. But I think I’m inclined to stay with my previous assessment of his motives – that he thinks the father was Uncle Harold and doesn’t want that knowledge confirmed.”

Honey shuddered. “Ever since I first heard the suggestion that it might have been someone in your father’s generation, I haven’t wanted to know, just in case it was right.”

Their eyes met and she saw his agreement with her sentiment.

“I’m certain, in my own mind, that it wasn’t Dad,” he told her, at last. “But I’m not so certain about anyone else. There’s no doubt that someone in the family was responsible and that he lied about it.”

“If he remembered that he’d done it,” Honey corrected. “Because Knut, Cap and your Uncle Harold were all drinking heavily that night.”

“But probably not that heavily,” he answered.

“If you say so.” She shrugged. “I was safe in Trixie’s room while all that was happening. It sounded like people were just about drowning in drink, but I don’t know if they actually were.”

Brian shook his head. “One or two of Knut’s friends passed out from drinking too much, but we know it couldn’t have been them anyway. No; all of the suspects should have remembered in the morning whether they’d slept with anyone.”

“Suspects,” she repeated. “I’ve never known which suspect to suspect the most, but just lately I’ve started tending towards suspecting Cap – which is a little odd, because he’s never been at the top of my suspect list before.”

“Because he asked me to lie?”

She nodded. “It’s certainly suspicious. I’m not fully convinced that it was him, but out of our four suspects, I think he’s at least in the top two, now.”

“Four suspects?” He shook his head. “I thought you were better than that at counting. There are five.”

Honey frowned and began to count them on her fingers. “Cap, Knut, your Uncle Harold, your Uncle Andrew. No, that’s definitely only four.”

He shook his head again. “You’re forgetting Mart.”

1975

Honey didn’t faint, but neither did she respond to Sally’s words. Slowly, dreamily, she walked into the house. Behind her, she could hear both Trixie and Di arguing with Sally, but she didn’t want to get involved in that right now. Mrs. Belden called a question to her, but she didn’t answer that, either. She just kept walking: up the stairs, along the corridor, into Trixie’s bedroom.

She stopped walking only because there was nowhere further to go. Her fingers clutched at the edges of her sleeves, so that she almost hugged herself. Her eyes screwed up and she began to sob.

An hour, or maybe a few minutes later, she heard rapid footsteps approaching but nothing would stop her tears now. Someone entered the room and pulled her into an embrace, but she did not know who. She let the unknown person hold her, murmur soothing words, rub her back.

Her frenzied sobbing slowed. She hiccuped a little and found that Mrs. Belden was the one comforting her. In the distant background, she could hear Trixie yelling. A little while later, she became aware that Diana stood close by, hovering uncertainly.

She pulled out of the embrace and wiped her face with both hands.

“I’m okay, now.” She looked around for her book bag, but couldn’t see it anywhere. “I think I’ll just go home, now. I’m sorry to be a bother.”

“Aren’t you going to wait and hear his side of the story?” Di asked, rather timidly. “Sally might not be telling the truth.”

But Honey felt a deep certainty that she was. Everything was ruined and nothing would be the same and part of it was Honey’s own fault.

Not that she really agreed with Sally’s accusation. Brian would never expect her to take care of him, as Sally had hinted. She was only sixteen, after all, and she was a nice girl. Honey only had a vague notion of what that would actually involve and not the slightest idea of how to go about it. But if Brian hadn’t chosen to wait to date her, he could have been with someone his own age. And maybe he was when he was away from Sleepyside.

Diana’s question still hung in the air and Honey still did not have an answer for it. She wanted to say that she had no intention of hearing anything that Brian Belden said, ever, ever again. She wanted to leave this house – the scene of the crime, so to speak – and never come back. She wanted to just walk away from everything here that she held so dear, because right now, it just hurt so much that she could hardly bear it. But she couldn’t possibly say any of those things.

Thunderous footsteps heralded Trixie’s arrival before she had come up with anything to say that was both polite and truthful.

“That horrible girl!” Trixie ranted, not seeming to take notice of anything that was happening in her own room. “I can’t believe she’d come here and say those sorts of things! How dare she say that about Brian, or suggest that to Honey? She’s nothing but a lying, cheating, scheming, nasty–”

She broke off suddenly, seeming to realise that her audience included her own mother, who possibly wouldn’t approve of the derogatory term Honey could almost see forming on her best friend’s lips.

“That’s quite enough, Trixie,” Mrs. Belden told her, in spite of the unspoken nature of the final part of the sentence. “We don’t speak about our guests that way.”

“She wasn’t even invited,” Trixie argued. “Not to the party and not today. And you didn’t hear what she said. I never knew she was that kind of girl, but she must be, if that’s what she thinks.”

“It was horrible,” Di added. “And it wasn’t true, either. Because I don’t think that Brian did that, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be your fault.”

“Of course it wouldn’t,” Mrs. Belden agreed, her face registering a new horror. “People say terrible things when they’re hurt and afraid and in trouble. I feel very sorry for Sally, but you shouldn’t take that sort of thing to heart, Honey, because it simply isn’t true.”

“Maybe she did get pregnant at Knut’s horrible party,” Trixie admitted, “but I’m sure that it wasn’t Brian who did it.”

Honey said nothing. In her mind, she kept seeing the scene through the window: Sally laughing and talking with a group of young men. Over and over again, it played in her mind. Sally, laying her hand on Brian’s chest and looking challengingly into his eyes. And he didn’t push her away.

2008

“Mart!” Honey cried. “Oh, no. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Brian shook his head. “Whether you like it or not, he is a possibility.”

“But his hair is too fair,” she argued. “You saw him. Sally’s son’s hair is darker than hers. Not as dark as yours was, but definitely more medium-brown than honey-brown.”

“And like I told him, the way that genes are expressed is extremely complicated – far more complicated than popular science would have you believe.” At her look of disbelief, he added, “I concede that it’s less likely that he’s the father, but it’s not impossible.”

She waved that point away. “But that’s only my first objection and the other one is a lot bigger. I can understand it being one of your uncles, or Knut – with any of them, it’s understandable that we never heard them admit it, or even heard of them admitting it. Even Cap I could understand – considering that you talk to him about once a year and always say you should catch up sometime, but you never do.”

“Well, we should catch up. And I’m sure we will, one day.”

“I’m not sure of that at all. But stop distracting me.” She took a breath while she regained her train of thought. “But Mart? Your own brother, who you’ve always been close to, who we see often and are on really good terms with? Do you really think it’s credible that he might be that young man’s father and know the trouble his uncertain parentage had caused, and for him to still not admit it? Because I don’t. Not even remotely.”

“It’s a stretch, I’ll admit–”

“It’s more than a stretch,” she interrupted. “It’s completely impossible. If it had been Mart, we would have known it by now.”

He sighed and looked away. “And the fact that we don’t know keeps leading me to the conclusion that it really was Uncle Harold. Because the dead don’t admit anything.”

A soft sigh passed between her lips. “If he hadn’t died so suddenly, maybe he would have explained.”

Brian nodded and looked away. In February of 1976, still months before Sally’s son was born, Harold Belden suffered a massive stroke and died at the age of forty-seven. Hallie, at the time, had been not-quite sixteen.

“Or, maybe he had nothing to explain and we’ve all been suspecting him for all these years with no basis whatsoever,” Brian added, dryly. “But maybe when I’ve investigated this a bit further, we might be able to move on.”

Honey stared at the laptop, whose screen faced away from her, and fervently hoped so. “Maybe the not knowing is worse than the knowledge would be.”

Her husband nodded, just a little absently. His mind had probably strayed back to the problem he’d been working on and she knew that she would have to leave him to it soon.

“Maybe knowing will allow us to set right something that’s long been wrong,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Maybe,” she answered, nearly as softly. “And maybe it’s time that that happened.”

1975

“Please, Honey. Listen to me!”

She sighed and kept looking out the window of Trixie’s room. Brian’s voice sounded muffled, coming as it was through the closed door, but she could still hear every word. He had spent the last fifteen minutes talking to her this way and she had not responded with one single word. She didn’t know what to say and the last thing she wanted was to actually look at him. She felt like she’d melt into a puddle and never be able to pull herself together again.

“I’m telling the truth,” Brian told her. “I never touched her. I didn’t even know she was still here later in the evening. I saw her outside right after the cake was cut, but then she disappeared somewhere and I didn’t see her again until today. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I don’t have to believe anything.” She whispered the words so quietly that he could not possibly hear them. “Or anyone.”

“And if you don’t believe me, believe Dan and Jim and Mart. They were there. They knew what I was doing the whole time. Please.” She heard a soft, breathy sound and a gentle bump on the door. “Please.”

He did not speak again.

Time passed.

“Can I come in?” Trixie’s voice asked. “It’s just me. He’s gone.”

“Okay,” Honey croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Come in.”

The door creaked a little as it swung open, but she did not turn to look. A moment later, she heard it thud shut again. Beside her, Trixie set a tray down on the bed. On it sat one of the sturdy, brown bowls which the Beldens used daily.

“Moms heated you some chicken soup,” Trixie explained. “She said she knew you said you weren’t hungry, but that you need to have something.”

Honey turned away from the window, a slight smile playing on her face. She picked up the bowl and let it warm her hands. Then, not being able to think of an easy way to eat it standing up, she sat down on the floor with her back against the bed, just as she had on the night of the party. A few moments’ adjustment found a workable arrangement for eating without spilling it all over herself. She dipped in the spoon and took a mouthful.

“It reminds me of hugs, and warm blankets, and winter nights by the fire,” Trixie admitted, sinking down opposite her. “I nearly asked if I could have a bowl, too, except I’d already eaten.”

“I shouldn’t have stayed,” Honey murmured, while fishing for a chunk of carrot with her spoon. “I should have just gone home and not been a bother. I should have left everyone else to have the party without me and not spoiled it.”

“You didn’t spoil anything,” Trixie answered. “The only one who spoiled anything was Sally. The minute she turned up, there wasn’t going to be a party. And you’re not a bother. Moms always has soup in the freezer. You know how many chickens we eat – and every few times, Moms makes more soup.”

“It’s delicious.” She chewed thoughtfully on a chunk of chicken. “But I still feel guilty for being here.”

“Well, don’t!” She picked at the hem of her T-shirt. “I wish we’d never had that party. Uncle Harold could have afforded to rent somewhere. Moms and Dad should have just told him no.”

“Would it have made any difference?” Honey asked.

Trixie let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. But maybe Sally might not have remembered where we live, so she might not have been able to come here and ruin everything.”

“She would have found us sooner or later.”

“She might have found some other guy sooner.” Trixie scowled. “She’s lying. I just know that she is. She’s only picking on Brian because she actually knows his name.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Trixie.”

A troubled expression settled on Trixie’s face and their eyes met.

“Is this going to come between us?” Trixie asked, tentatively. “Because I believe Brian and I don’t believe Sally. But I’ll never say another word about either of them if it’s a choice between that and our friendship.”

Honey set the bowl down with a thump, only missing spilling it because she had eaten just enough. “I don’t want to talk about them – either of them. I don’t want to see either of them, or think about either of them, or have anything to do with either of them. And I know it’s going to be hard, considering he’s your very own brother, but if I’m talking to you, I don’t want it to be about him.”

Trixie nodded. “Okay. Then that can be our rule. From now on, I only have two brothers who can be mentioned.

Continue to Part three.