No rest for the wicked?” asked Callum. He stopped in front of Ash’s office door. “You look like shit, by the way.”

Ash glanced up. Sunday morning, the offices of Cray Reliable Electrics were dim and quiet. He needed that quiet this morning. His head was pounding after yesterday. His eyelids were sandpapery. The couch in his office was rumpled from him sleeping on it last night.

There was a legal pad full of scrawled notes in front of him, his own handwriting, but he could barely read it.

“What are you doing here?” Ash asked his brother.

“We’ve got those guys from Denver asking for a discount,” Callum said. “I keep saying no, but they won’t budge.”

“Hell, give them what they want. We can’t afford to lose any accounts right now.”

Callum sat on the side of his desk. “Evan told me about yesterday.”

“Jesus. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You nearly started a fight.”

“Nearly isn’t the same as actually. Why don’t you pour me a drink?”

His brother slid off the desk and walked over to the glass cart that held the liquor. “Yeah, that’s what you need right now. Maybe you can bust up a funeral next.”

But he dutifully poured two fingers of scotch and delivered it to Ash.

Ash held it up to the beam of morning sun coming from the window. “Do you remember when Dad would bring us up here when we were little? Everyone seemed so grown-up. Drinks, cigarettes—”

“I’ll remind you that Cray Reliable is a smoke-free facility.”

“It all seemed so classy when we were young. Everybody had all the answers.”

“Welcome to adulthood,” said Callum. “Nobody knows anything.”

“This doesn’t bother you? You don’t mind that Dad is selling the land out from under us?”

Callum looked down at the legal pad. “That’s why you’re here on a Sunday? Dude, I thought you were working.”

“Saving our property is work.”

“Saving our property means keeping Dad in jail.”

There wasn’t much Ash could say to that. He let the scotch burn his tongue before swallowing.

Let him rot.

“You still think it’s Phelps buying the land?” asked Callum.

Ash shook his head. Lucas had been convincing.

One thing about Lucas, he’s honest.

Sometimes too honest.

“No, not Lucas,” he answered. “I don’t know what to think. Dad knows who it is. Get him to tell you.”

“Hell no, I’m not getting involved in whatever fight you’re having with him.”

Ash pushed his chair away from the desk and stood. His head didn’t like that, and the room seemed to shimmer around him. He walked to the window and looked down.

“We’re the biggest employer in the county,” he said. “Forget about the stain on the family name. Forget pride. Dad’s mistakes could have caused hundreds of people to lose their jobs. And now he wants to take more, and more, and more. He doesn’t want to pay for his crimes. He wants to mortgage our future for his freedom. How does that not get under your skin?”

Callum joined him at the window. “He’s our dad, man. He built this. You’re talking about the staff, the employees, but where would they be, if Dad and Uncle Leonard hadn’t started the business? I’d say he has a right to defend himself. Leave it to the lawyers and the court. If they think he’s guilty, then fine. But you have to let the man have a chance to get free.”

“He already had his chance. He had a team of lawyers, a ruinously expensive trial that dragged us all through the mud. Now he wants to do it all over again.”

“This is your problem,” said Callum. “You can never let shit go. When Evan told me you were going to that wedding yesterday, I knew exactly what you were thinking.”

“Yes, that Lucas Phelps was trying to—”

“No. You were thinking it was time to settle the score. You know what I’m talking about.”

Memories flashed in his mind. The quarry. Lucas and his friends. The biggest fight any of them had ever been in. Bright sun and freezing cold water.

“That’s in the past,” said Ash. “We were kids.”

“You still hold a grudge. Admit it.”

You don’t understand anything, Callum. What I’m holding isn’t a grudge.

“I can admit it when I’m wrong,” he said. “Can you? Because you’re in the wrong here, Callum. Don’t you believe in defending what you have?”

“Every day, I’m out there selling Cray products. Building the business. The best defense is growth. Not standing there worrying about the past. Doesn’t it ever occur to you that this is why your life is so damn empty?”

He scowled and looked at Callum. “What do you mean, empty?”

“I mean what I said. What do you do, Ash? You work. You love the trouble the company has been in, because it gives you an excuse to stay here longer.”

“You’ve been putting in late hours too. I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“The difference is, you’re hiding.”

Ash groaned. “What are you even talking about?”

“Admit it! You’re stuck in the past, man. Reminiscing about old injuries, nursing old grudges. I wonder sometimes if you’re scared of just being here in the real world.”

“You’re out of your damned mind,” said Ash, finishing the last of the scotch. “Did you become a philosopher while I wasn’t looking? This is the real world. I’m in it every day.”

“When’s the last time you went out with anybody?”

“Yesterday, remember? Evan took me to—”

“I don’t mean going out with a fucking cousin, Ash. I mean, when’s the last time you were out with a man? Anything. Coffee. Dinner. Random crazy hook-up.”

He rubbed his thumb along the rim of the glass. “I’ve been very busy.”

My relationships don’t go very well. In fact, there’s one relationship in particular that has been on my mind lately, one I’ve had to keep secret for years. One that I can’t tell anyone about…least of all you.

“Even when Dad and Uncle Leonard were building the company, they still had lives. They got married, they had kids.”

“What about you, Callum? Where’s your wife or husband? Where are your kids? You’re at this office as much as I am.”

Callum’s smile was somehow grim and sympathetic at the same time. “You don’t even realize when I’m gone, do you? I see people, Ash. I broke up with this guy Frank a few weeks ago. But you didn’t realize that, did you? Because you assume everybody else is as empty as you are.”

“I don’t remember any Frank.”

“Look, let’s grab breakfast. Let’s get out of the office. It’s early spring, it’s Sunday morning, everything is quiet. We’ll take a walk.”

Ash indicated his legal pad. “I still have to—”

“Really? You have to what? Solve the great mystery of Dad’s property sale? Dude, wait a few weeks, you’ll find out who bought it. Can’t you drop all this? I’m telling you, you need a life.”

“Having breakfast with you is a life?” asked Ash.

“It’s better than getting drunk at nine in the morning, sitting at your fucking desk.”

Sometimes Ash realized that nobody understood where he was coming from. It was a lonely place to be in life, when even your own brother didn’t understand.

Dating? Dating? After the humiliation their father had put them through? It took guts for Ash just to show up at work every morning. How could he meet anyone, after that? Sure, he’d legally cleared his name, but the case had been an ugly one, and he still felt tainted by it.

The name Cray used to mean something in this town.

It used to mean power, and respect. Now it was a punchline.

It might be years before Ash had built the family back up to the point where the shame would go away.

Longer still, if he let himself give in to his anger like he had yesterday.

God damn that was embarrassing. Why had he gone to the wedding? Why had he confronted Lucas?

No matter what he did, he was a laughingstock, and he couldn’t stand it.

“Go on without me,” he said to Callum.

“Dude, no.”

“Go have your breakfast, go meet a boy or whatever. I don’t care. I have to save this company, and save our land, and save the family name.”

Callum stared at him for a while, watching him sink back into the chair at his desk, watching him tap his pen against the legal pad.

“You’re serious.”

Ash looked up. “It’s one thing you know about me, Callum. I’m always serious.”