Page 57 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"You don't owe me the why." He says it plainly, watching the road unspool through the windshield as I pull out of the lot. "You've never once owed me the why on this one."

That night, once the twins' gifts are wrapped and hidden in the back of my closet where no eight-year-old detective work will find them, I settle in at the kitchen table with my laptop open and the transfer form pulled up, the same one I fill out every month, except this is the holiday version, padded heavier than the rest the way it's been every year since the first Christmas after I got out, back when the amount felt like the only apology I knew how to make. I type in the new number, larger than last year's holiday total, and sit with my thumb over the button for longer than the decision actually requires.

Denise picks up on the second ring when I call to confirm it, brisk as ever even this late in the evening.

"Montgomery. You're pushing this through awfully close to the holiday."

"I know. I wanted it there before Christmas, not after."

"It's a significant jump from last year's figure. You want me to flag anything special on the transfer memo, or keep it the way you always have it?"

"No special flag. Same as always." There's no name attached, no note, no return address, just six years of the same careful anonymity that used to feel like the only kind thing I had left to offer. "Just make sure it lands before the twenty-fifth."

"It'll land." Something rustles on her end, papers or a folder, brief and businesslike. "You know, most people who set up funds like this eventually want to know how it's landing on the other end. You've never asked me once."

"I know how it's landing." I've read the acknowledgment letters every year, brief and formal, a woman I've never met thanking an anonymous donor for a kindness she doesn't know is guilt wearing a nicer name. "I just never wanted her to have to say thank you to somebody who never even had the decency to sign it."

"That's a generous way to look at not wanting to face something." Denise says it without malice, just an old woman who's processed this exact transfer enough times to have earned an opinion on it. "For what it's worth, Mr. Montgomery, six years is a long time to keep sending money to somebody you've never let say your name out loud."

I don't have a clean answer for that, so I thank her and end the call. The ache that follows is the same one I sit with every year, familiar enough by now that I could describe it with my eyes closed. Except this year it doesn't stay familiar. It sits differently, restless instead of settled, and underneath the usual guilt there's something new working loose, a want I haven't let myself feel in six years of doing this in silence.

I want her to know it's me.

Marisol Alvarez is Danny's older sister, carrying a married name he never lived long enough to hear her use, the only family he had left. She's spent six years thanking a routing number instead of a face. I've read her name on those acknowledgment letters so many times it stopped looking like a stranger's a while ago, and somewhere in the last few months, the wanting turned from a stray thought into something I can't put back down.

I get up and walk to the shelf by my window, where the photograph's sat face down since I moved into this loft, untouched, unlooked at, six years of avoiding a face that once came to mind without any effort at all. I don't turn it over tonight. I'm not there yet. But I stand there with my hand resting flat on the back of the frame longer than I have since I first set it there, and for the first time it doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels like getting ready.

Meeting her means finally saying it to a face instead of a form, finally standing in front of the one person on earth with every right to hate me for the call I made on that road, and letting her decide what she wants to do with that instead of deciding for her, year after year, that anonymous money was as close as I could safely get.

It's a decision that scares me more than six years of silent transfers ever did. Money's easy. Money doesn't ask you to look someone in the eye and explain why her brother isn't the one still breathing.

I pull up flights before I can talk myself back down from it, find one that gets me there and back inside a handful of days, and book it before the part of my brain that's spent so long avoiding this exact moment can finish building its case against it. The confirmation email lands in my inbox two minutes later, plain and ordinary, like it isn't the biggest thing I've done since I got out of the Army.

Twelve days is the number I keep circling back to once the confirmation lands, the stretch between tonight and the flight, between deciding and actually doing, and it feels impossibly short and entirely too long depending on which minute I check it. For twelve days I get to keep being the man everyone around here already knows, the guy who just bought out an art aisle for two kids who aren't his by blood, the boss Gunny still can't quite believe learned how to buy a Christmas present, whatever exactly I am to Jenna these days. Then, briefly, I'll also be the man who has to stand in front of Marisol Alvarez and explain himself.

I don't tell Gunny the real reason, not tonight. I don't tell Jenna at all yet, not until I know what I'm actually walking into and whether I'll have anything left to bring home once I've said it. For now this stays mine to carry alone, same as it's always been, one more thing I'm not ready to hand to anybody else just yet.

But the loop's closing. Six years of sending money into silence, letting her thank a name she's never heard me say, and I've finally booked the flight that ends it. Whatever's waiting on the other side of that door, I'm done hiding from it.

27

JENNA

The living room looks like a paper mill exploded in it, and I mean that as a compliment. Wrapping paper covers every visible surface in a snowdrift of red and gold and one suspicious patch of glitter that's going to be showing up in this carpet until the twins graduate high school, and somewhere under all of it Eli's already got his new metal detector running, sweeping it low across the floorboards with total concentration like the living room might be hiding buried treasure instead of three years of dropped Cheerios.

"I'm getting a signal," he announces, crouching to dig through a pile of ribbon. "Right here. Something metal."

"That's probably the coffee table leg, bud."

"It could also be treasure." He doesn't look up, entirely undeterred by logic. "You don't know what's under this house."

Josie's cross-legged by the tree with her new art supplies spread out in a fan around her, colored pencils and a case of paint and a sketchbook thick enough to double as a doorstop, and she's already got smears of red on both hands from a project she started approximately four minutes after unwrapping the box.

"This is the best thing that has ever happened," she says, with the flat, absolute certainty of an eight-year-old who has clearly forgotten every previous Christmas.

"Better than the bike?"

"The bike was good. This is better." She holds up a half-finished drawing of what I think is Biscuit, though the proportions suggest either a very small horse or a very confused hippo. "I'm going to draw everybody. You're next."