“What do you mean, Jack?” I’m holding a heavy photo box. I’m late to the family dinner I requested because I received a call from Colby’s old friend Jack O’Brien. He told me he needed to see me because of an emergency. Despite the fact I despise him, I assumed it was something to do with Colby. I agreed to meet him because I assumed my family would want to know.

What on earth is in this box that could constitute an emergency? The only crisis I can deal with is the one I’m about to face down at the farm. The one where I finally tell my family I have to have brain surgery.

Jack’s face contorts as he runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Jack?” I question warily.

“There are letters in there,” he bites out, pacing back and forth. I tilt my head to the side. Funny, I never noticed how many mannerisms he picked up from Colby over the years. Shaking my head from the stray thought, I tune back in to find Jack glaring at me—a typical look on his aristocratic features.

“From who?” I’m so confused. I place the box on the counter behind me and sit down on a barstool.

“Why should you be the one he chooses? Fucking bitch. Did you think I wouldn’t fight to protect my brother?” Jack thumps his hand over his heart, letting it linger. Brother? Colby always told me Jack was an only child. Then again, I refer to my brother and sisters as such and we’re not blood related.

Has Jack’s hatred toward me stemmed from something other than just me being me?

Like a bolt of lightning, the knowledge flashes through me. “Colby. The letters are from Colby.”

“Yes,” he sneers.

It’s a good thing I’m sitting because I probably would have fallen down. The sheer heft of that box indicates Colby had written to me for a long time. God only knows how long. No wonder why he kept trying to insinuate himself back into my life.

I jump to my feet with such force the stool I’m sitting on clatters to the ground. “How long, Jack? How long have you been hiding these?” I demand. I shove my finger into his shoulder.

Jack’s face sets in a stubborn line. “A while.”

Another man screwing me over. What a surprise. “It’s better if you tell me the truth, Jack.”

“You’ll know the minute you open the first envelope.” His sigh of disgust revolts me.

“Longer than a year?” He nods. “Five?” Another nod. “Ten?” I barely breathe out the word.

Jack turns his head to the side and smirks before whispering, “Maybe. Can you read well enough to find out?”

Crack!

I don’t even realize my hand is flying through the air to connect with his face until the sound echoes off the walls of my home. I’m in such shock, I stumble until my back hits the counter.

“Why?” Hot tears make tracks down my perfectly reapplied makeup. “Why would you do this to me? To him?”

“I didn’t do anything but protect him! Any brother would do it for someone they love!” he yells, cradling his cheek.

“What?” I barely whisper.

“God, it was bad enough a Hunt would stoop so low as to associate with someone like you. A low-bred ingrate whose ass was so big, it should have taken two of Colby to pick you up. Jesus, I heard about you becoming this slut after we graduated. I should have sent the guys who fucked you money as a prize. Colby was fucking fixated on you. I was afraid he would come running back to you if you ever responded to him!” he shouts.

There’s no air in the room when his rant is over. All that keeps spinning around and around in my oxygen-deprived head is that these letters have been here all this time.

All this time, Jack is the person who really hated me. Colby had been reaching out for years. Trying to repair something he knew was broke but had no manual on how to fix. Who knows what these letters would have done? Maybe if I read them, I would have found something in them to have forgiven him. All this time, wasted.

And there’s nothing worse than wasted time.

Not to someone who might be dying.

I swipe beneath my eyes at the tears that won’t stop coming. “Get out,” I whisper. “Now.”

“Corinna, you have to understand, you’re just not good enough for him,” he states matter-of- factly.

“I don’t have to understand anything other than you’re a liar and a thief.” Isn’t there some kind of law on mail fraud? I have to remember to ask Ali the statute of limitations on that.

“You were standing in the way of what is rightfully mine!” Jack shrieks.

“Colby?” There’s something I’m missing. I just can’t figure it out.

He nods. “I did what I thought was best.”

Of course he did. “For yourself, sure. Not for me. Not for him. You have no right to stand there and act so righteous when you’re the cause for so much of my resentment toward him. So much could have been healed…” I leave the thought unfinished. He doesn’t deserve to hear what I need to say to Colby. He deserves my fire. Without thought to any consequences, I keep going. “What else am I going to find out tonight, Jack? Do you doctors like to talk in the locker room or something? Did you know about my brain tumor too? Before I had a chance to tell my family?” I scream.

I’m yelling so loud, I never hear my front door open. Until Ali growls, “We sure as hell know now.”

I tear my eyes away from Jack and see my brother and sisters in varying degrees of shock, holding dishes.

“You were super late,” Cassidy says weakly, unable to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks.

“Must have been a problem with taking out the trash,” Phil remarks, right before he lands a fist to Jack’s gut. Jack retches. Phil follows this with a right hook to Jack’s jaw, which makes him stumble backward. Tripping on his own feet, his head knocks on the edge of the counter, dropping him in a slump on my kitchen floor .

Holly and Em cheer right before they each step over Jack to enter my kitchen.

Ali’s voice is cool as a cucumber, but I can tell how angry she is when she spits out through clenched teeth. “A brain tumor?”

I nod.

“Son of a bitch!” Ali yells. She turns left, then right, looking for something to vent her anger on.

Jack unfortunately chooses that moment to groan from the floor.

Ali growls before she turns on him like fresh meat. Cassidy catches her by the arm. “Stop, Ali. This won’t help.”

“It will make me feel better.”

Cassidy turns her tearful face toward me. “I don’t think much is going to do that right now.”

Ali slams her fist down on my counter. “Damn, Phil. If you don’t do something about that waste on the floor, I swear to God I will. And that will mean calling Keene.”

“Oh, fine.” Phil looks at his now-swollen hand. “I could just hit him again, you know?”

“And Ali would have to defend you to get you out of jail,” Em retorts. “Just pick him up and put him out in his car.”

“Would one of you be kind enough to get his keys?” Phil’s face is still etched with fury. “If I touch him for longer than I have to, I’m afraid of what I’ll do.”

I back away. “Not a chance.”

“Cori has an excuse. Someone else find his keys and follow me out while I haul him out of the house,” Phil growls.

All of us point at Em. “What? Why do I always get stuck with the shitty jobs when it comes to cleaning up Phil’s messes?” she demands.

“Because, darling, normally it’s your mouth spitting them at me,” Holly sputters as Phil begins to haul Jack to his feet. “Get his keys now while you can.”

Em curses under her breath but manages to find Jack’s key fob quickly. Soon, Jack is hoisted over Phil’s shoulder. He has Jack’s key fob in his hand, and Em is scrubbing her hands in my sink to an inch of her life.

Seeing Em at the sink reminds me of how a doctor scrubs up. My chin begins to wobble. The wine bottle trembles violently in my hand. I sink to my knees in my kitchen. The false front I’ve held up for so long has left me.

There’s nothing I can hide from the people who truly love me. They won’t let me.

“And that’s how I found out,” I conclude. I’m probably on my fourth glass of wine. I can’t tell for sure since I chugged a good part of the bottle earlier.

We’d tabled all talk until after Phil hefted Jack in a fireman’s hold and dumped him in the back of his car. “He can wake up and get the hell off our land. Otherwise, I’m calling in your men.” Phil glared at Cassidy and Ali. “Let them cart that piece of shit away.”

Em and Holly proceeded to shoo me out of my kitchen to heat up trays of stuffed mushrooms and baked ziti, after slapping down a platter of white bean dip with pita chips and bruschetta to munch on. I’d just finished telling the group at large about the night with Colby in detail. How Jack had taunted me on the way out the door. And how after I fell in front of the crowd, I found out about the tumor the next morning.

“How have you been able to be around Colby without braining him, Cori?” Ali demands. Then she winces. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

I snort into my glass. “Please. If you knew the number of times I thought about buying steel-toed boots and kicking him in the dick…”

Everyone laughs. Cassidy shifts next to me and takes my hand. “Honey, I hate this, but was Colby the catalyst for you telling us? Or is it something else?” Her perception is scarily accurate. Cassidy, for all intents and purposes, finished raising us. Now that she’s become an actual mother, her skills are so sharp her twins, Laura and Jonathan, had better watch out. They will never get anything past her.

I roll my glass around between my hands. I hear heels click on the floor. “Dinner in twenty,” Holly murmurs. She moves to sit next to me on the other side, while Em, who is right behind her, goes and sits next to Ali and Phil.

Here it is. The terrible moment of truth.

“Do you all remember me mentioning Bryan over the years?” I begin as I lean forward to put my wine on the coffee table.

Phil grins. “The guy I’ve been betting is your booty call in Baltimore? Hell, yes. Do we finally get to meet him?”

Everyone laughs except me. I bite my lip and look down.

“Shit. What did I say?” Phil panics.

“What is it, Cori?” Em asks softly.

I take a deep breath and go for broke. “Bryan exists, but not quite in the way you’ve been thinking.”

A mild rumble of disappointment goes through the room with Phil’s comment of “Damn. Who do I owe money to?”

Amidst the biggest confession I’m about to make to my family, I crack up. Of course they bet on my sex life, because that’s what we do. Ali won a ton off of us when she bet Cassidy and Caleb christened our office during the planning for our biggest wedding to date.

“Honestly, Phil, I have no idea. You can settle up later though.” I take a deep breath and let the words flow. “You’ll get to meet him, because he’s transferring from Johns Hopkins where he’s been monitoring my brain tumor to take over the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Greenwich Hospital.” Swallowing hard, I add, “Pretty much in time to perform an essential brain surgery on me.”

Silence, right before the tidal wave of pain washes over me.

“No.” Holly’s voice breaks into the void first. “No. This isn’t happening.”

“I agree,” Em jumps in next. “When Mugsy had that tumor, they used radiation first to shrink it…” Em’s elderly rescue dog has had about every medical issue known to the veterinary world and is still with us.

I cut her off. “They can’t, Em. They’d kill me almost instantly.” They collectively gasp. “My tumor appears to be sitting on top of two ICAs.” At the instantly confused look on their faces, I translate. “Internal cranial arteries. If radiation touches one and it bursts…” I don’t need to paint the image any further.

Ali slams her glass down. “I am so fucking pissed at you.”

This was the reaction I was ready for. “I know.”

“When I was so completely broken because I thought Keene had betrayed me, no one in this family had my back except for you. You were there making sure I knew I was loved, bringing me chocolate and being the shoulder I needed to lean on. No offense, Cass, but between you and your brother, I thought my heart was going to die.”

When Cassidy was pregnant, she’d turned into a hormonal bitch, doing serious damage to her relationship with Ali. She waves her glass to show no offense has been taken. “Continue.” She squeezes my hand hard in remembrance.

Ali continues her rampage. “Who was it who had my back? Who was it who kept me from losing myself in the process of all that damn pain? Who was it who sat on my floor and held me together when I thought I lost this family’s love and respect?”

“Me.” Cassidy squeezes my hand tighter.

“Then how on earth could you think we wouldn’t do the same for you? That I wouldn’t? Didn’t I make a promise to you, to always hold your hand in the dark of any night?” Ali’s voice cracks right before sobs rack her body. Em pulls her onto her shoulder to comfort her.

“I was trying to protect you,” I whisper, my voice choked with the release of the burden I’ve been carrying for so long.

“I think what Ali’s trying to say, Cori, is that we’re supposed to protect each other. Didn’t we learn that the hard way?” Cassidy’s voice next to me holds both wisdom and sadness. I turn and meet her ocean-blue eyes that look like waves because of the tears flooding them. “Didn’t we learn we’re stronger together than we are apart?”

I swallow. Hard.

I feel Holly’s arms wrap around me from behind. “We’ve got you now. We’re never letting you go.”

Ali kneels in front of me and lays her head in my lap. Immediately, my free hand goes to stroke her hair. “Never letting go.”

Em stands and comes around behind the couch. “I hope this doctor knows what he’s in for. When we decide to go to battle, anything can happen.” She isn’t wrong.

“I don’t know what y’all are talking about. I already started the fight tonight, and my hand hurts like a bitch because of it.” Phil stands from his position on the couch, taking all of us in. “I think I broke a finger punching that asshole’s jaw.”

“We’ll be sure to tell Jason so you get a prize.” Cassidy rolls her eyes.

He kneels next to Ali and looks at all of us. “You keep forgetting, little girl—I won the prize years ago when I found all of you.” His eyes meet mine. “And I’m not ready to let any of you go.”

Within seconds, hearts that beat because of strength and pride are tripped out of synchronization by tears of fear and anger that this could happen to one of us. It doesn’t change what happens tomorrow, but for this moment it helps alleviate the burden I’ve been carrying alone for so long.