Trey

The house on Nantucket is exactly like I remember it. Windswept beach, white picket fence. The wide low porch and sage-green shutters. It sprawls from side to side, with the main door facing the sea, stubborn and proud.

While everyone gets unpacked, I walk around alone. It’s almost too much all at once. I haven’t been here in fifteen years or so. But everything is still the same. Sometimes our friends might use the estate, and we have a staff here to keep it up. But it looks the same as the last day we left it.

That day must’ve been Independence Day. Cousins were here and we played on the beach, waiting for fireworks to start. We had a barbecue—of course it was a gourmet barbecue with seven chefs—and we ate and talked and laughed and swam until it was dark.

My mother used to call Brock and me her “golden boys.” It was a sweet nickname, but based mostly on the fact that we look like her. She had long, thick blonde hair. Green eyes. A kind smile. My father was a handsome, dark-haired man and my other brothers favored him. But since Brock and I got the blond hair, which was practically white when we were young, that’s what she called us.

There is a painting of her over the fireplace that I can’t take my eyes away from. I’d like to move. I’d like to leave this room so I can stop staring at her and missing her and being completely helpless in the face of her loss. But somehow I can’t.

It’s like all the years between then and now just collapsed into a single blink. I blinked, and here I am.

Though we’re all adults, it still feels like we lost our parents too young. I wouldn’t mind being able to ask Dad for advice. I probably wouldn’t even mind him overseeing our activities the way Royce does. I might even dislike it less.

But, unfortunately, the small plane that they had hired to take them across the Maldives had a functional problem. They crashed in the ocean. No survivors.

That was thirteen years ago. A very long time, and yet, apparently just one blink away.

“She always liked you best,” I hear Sully say behind me. “Or Brock. Maybe Brock. It was sort of hard to tell you apart for a while there.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I sigh, knowing that he expected me to deny it. Even if it’s not true, I always sort of wished it were.

He chucks me on the arm, hard. It’s not his fault, he’s just a really big guy. If Sully chucks you on the arm, he’s going to leave you with a bruise.

“Everybody is all set up. The place looks pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“Looks like we just left,” I admit, choking back a wave of emotion when I actually say it out loud.

He slips his arm behind me, folding me into a big, uncomfortable bearhug. That’s another thing: Sully hugs you like he’s trying to kill you. But who’s going to complain to the guy?

“I hear you, brother,” he sighs.

Carefully I extricate myself, not wanting to seem like a wimp but also not wanting to spend a week at the chiropractor. I walk over to the windows and look out past the grasses toward the ocean. To my surprise, I can see Bunny and Sophia, stomping toward the surf. Bunny cradles her protectively, holding the ties of her sun hat under her chin though it is probably unnecessary. Sophia reaches out her chubby arms toward the waves. Though I can’t see her, I could see her wide-open laughter. She just learned how to do that. To laugh like that. It’s the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

“What are we doing here, Sully?”

Sully shrugs and trudges over to the leather sofa, dropping into it and scrubbing his face with the palm of his giant hand. He stares up at Mom for a long time, blinking.

“Bunny said we had to come. She demanded an extra phase of the interviews, I guess.”

“And so… you agreed? You negotiated with her?”

He shrugs. “Spencer negotiated.”

“Well, that is strangely softhearted of him,” I observe. “Almost like he didn’t really agree with your job offer, don’t you think?”

Sully leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He mashes his palms together like he’s trying to crush something between them.

“I think that is safe to say,” he admits. “But I mean, he did draw up the papers the way I asked him to.”

“So she just refused?”

He closes his eyes. “She said she wanted to continue interviewing for the job as described. Not what I had offered her… which was only a part.”

“Ha!” I bark out, making Sully startle and glare at me menacingly. “That must be an unusual feeling for you, isn’t it? Not accustomed to having people renegotiate, I’ll bet.”

“Quit it.”

“I will not quit it,” I smirk, dropping into an armchair and crossing my legs to get a really good view of him. “I’d like to have this scene memorialized in a painting. Do you think we could get an artist out here to get started right away?”

“Seriously, shut it, Trey.”

“We could call it… Sully’s Sullen Scene. Do you like that? Or... No. Sully and the Battle of Bunny.”

“You’re a laugh riot,” he sneers.

“What are you, sixty? Nobody says that. Laugh riot. Come on, man.”

“I feel sixty,” he sighs.

That kind of takes me aback. It’s weird that Sully would admit to being tired. It’s weird if Sully admits being hungry, even. He always says, “I could eat.” Like he is also saying, “I am not dependent on food for survival.” He likes to keep up this image of being carved out of stone. Impenetrable.

“Are you okay?” I venture to ask.

He breathes for a long time, periodically shaking his head as though holding a conversation with himself.

“I’m fine,” he finally says.

But now that I have seen a chink in his armor, I’m really curious. I can’t just let it go.

“You don’t seem fine, Sully. What’s on your mind? You want to see Sophia? She’s out there heading for the ocean. First time! Why don’t we go down there and see what she’s up to. That’ll help you feel better.”

“Nope,” he says with an air of finality.

“What? Are you serious? Why not?”

“I’ll see her later, okay? We’re going to be here all weekend. I’ll get to hang out with her.”

“Just take a look, man. I mean…” I get up and walk back to the window to make sure they’re still both out there. “Oh, hey, Bunny has her in the shade of the old gazebo! Remember that? Grandpa used to always want to play dominoes. I wonder if Bunny knows how to play dominoes?”

“Okay, quit it!” he snarls, standing up. He’s so large, he practically pushes the air out of the room.

“Quit what? Dominoes? What is your problem, man?”

He begins to pace back and forth, making little figurines jump on the mantelpiece. Tiny shells that we collected bang together.

“It’s just… don’t try to throw us together, okay? Don’t try to engineer more alone time. Don’t try to manage my feelings. Can you do that for me, Trey?”

“Your feelings? What are you talking about, Sully?”

He paces back and forth a few more times, then turns to me with his hands out.

“It’s not going to work, okay? I know she seems different. But she’s not different. No woman could do what we need a woman to do. And it’s sort of cruel to ask, don’t you think? It’s cruel to ask it of her, and it’s cruel to ask it of us.”

He resumes pacing while I stand here, dumbfounded. I wish I had something perfect to say to him. He seems to be the farthest one away, but maybe, out of all of us, he’s the one closest to falling for her.

“She asked us to give her a chance.”

“I don’t want to give her a chance,” he growls.

“Well, I do,” I answer, surprising myself. But, actually, I really do. “I know it sounds crazy, and I know we have a lot to risk, there’s just… I want to. I think it’s worth the chance.”

He shakes his head stubbornly, closing his eyes.

“Come over here and look out the window, Sully,” I tell him in a soft voice. “Come on. Look.”

It takes forever, but he finally shuffles over to the window. I watch his profile as his eyes scan the water line, then find Bunny and Sophia in the gazebo. He takes a deep, shuddering breath that echoes in his chest.

“Don’t be afraid to be happy with what you want,” I suggest.

“Fuck you, Trey,” he groans.

But I can see him mellow. I see him soften. Maybe that’s the problem: being soft is very hard when you’re made out of rock.