Chapter 6 - BRANDON FINALLY TALKS
I found Brandon in the garage at two in the morning.
Sitting on Dad’s old workbench.
He looked exactly like our father from certain angles.
That hurt more than I expected.
“Thirty-one thousand.”
He nodded.
“You knew?”
“Not all of it.”
“Try again.”
He stared at the floor.
“I knew Vanessa used Mom’s card.”
“For what?”
“Groceries. Bills.”
“Her car lease?”
His silence was enough.
“Her credit cards?”
Nothing.
“The weekend in Nashville?”
He flinched.
I laughed in disbelief.
“You let your wife take Mom’s pension for a vacation?”
“She said Mom owed us.”
“Owed you what?”
“For living here.”
I stared at him.
“In the house I pay taxes and insurance on?”
“I know.”
“No. Apparently you don’t.”
He stood.
“You think this has been easy?”
That sentence almost made me lose my temper.
“For whom?”
“For me.”
I laughed.
He flushed.
“My business failed.”
“So you came here.”
“I lost everything.”
“So Mom gave you a room.”
“Vanessa looked at me like I was useless.”
“And your solution was to let her treat Mom like a servant?”
“I kept thinking things would improve.”
“How?”
“I’d get another job.”
“You have a job.”
“Not like before.”
There it was.
Shame.
Small, ordinary shame.
The kind that grows monstrous when people build enough excuses around it.
Brandon had once employed fourteen workers.
After the business collapsed, he took a warehouse supervisor job.
Honest work.
Steady pay.
But Vanessa treated it as humiliation.
So Brandon lied about the house.
Told her he would inherit it.
Then let her spend Mom’s money because saying no would require admitting he had less control than he claimed.
“You know what your problem is?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“You were so afraid Vanessa would think you were weak that you let her choose someone weaker to stand on.”
His eyes filled.
“I never thought she’d slap Mom.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You just watched everything before the slap.”
He had no answer.
Then I pointed toward the ceiling.
“She leaves tomorrow.”
Brandon went pale.
“Rachel.”
“She assaulted Mom.”
“She has nowhere to go.”
I stared.
“Neither did you.”
May you like
Mom opened her door.
“You were welcomed anyway.”
