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“I’d do things that made me really happy in the moment,” he said. “And then there would be consequences, and they would feel bad. And so I’d have to find even more intense highs to chase, but they’d have even worse consequences, which would make me feel sad, and I couldn’t handle that, so… it was a vicious cycle. Had to break it.”

It really sounded like Vincent had grown up. I took a drink of my beer. “So, this new Vincent doesn’t juggle four girls at once, then?”

He cringed. “Oh, man, that’s what you think of me?” He sighed. “I guess telling you that I was making time with my brother’s wife doesn’t help. It was ages ago. When she found out she was pregnant—”

“Oh, my God, the baby wasn’t—”

“No,” said Vincent.

“Did you guys get, like, a test or—”

“Yes, actually,” he muttered.

I let out a laugh and I took another drink of beer.

“Oh, you’re just judging me so hard over there. But while this was going on, you were fucking him.”

I set down my beer on the breakfast bar and gave him a withering look. “Not even the same thing.”

“Anyway, at that point, Damian decided he was going to devote himself to her. Do the right thing. Take responsibility. All of that. And, I don’t know, he can be charming. Opal bought it. She stopped texting me, which was fine. Except Damian decided that I was dead to him and needed to stay the fuck away, and things have not been the same between us since then. Made every family gathering awkward, I guess, having that history.”

“Yeah, no shit,” I said. “Awkward is an understatement.”

Vincent was sheepish. “You know this was a really long time ago, right?”

“So, if you’re dead to Damian, why were you at Opal’s deathbed getting her instructions to tell me to be here for the funeral?”

“I mean, I had to come to see her,” said Vincent. “She’s dying, I’m going to be there.”

I straightened up, looking him over. “Were you in love with Opal?” It struck me as a perfect sort of Greek-tragedy finish to this clusterfuck of a situation we were in.

“I mean, no,” said Vincent, shoulders slumping. “No, not really. I don’t know if anyone loved her like that. Maybe you.”

I remembered what her manuscript said, and I felt a sour feeling rising in me. “Okay, I’m not going to feel sorry for her. Don’t try to make me feel sorry for her.”

“She was pitiful at the end,” he said, spreading his hands. “I mean, maybe she was pitiful all along. She fucked things right up though and it never got unfucked.”

I nodded, picking at the label on my beer.

“You know, Leo, I always thought you were going to find someone else. My brother was never good enough for you. You didn’t see it when we were kids. You thought the sun rose and set in him. But I could see it. He was going to screw it up one way or the other. He was always going to screw it up.”

I shook my head. “That is not what you said back then.”

“Sure, it is,” he said.

“No, you were always talking about how young we were and how we didn’t have any time to explore anything beyond each other,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”

“But you meant that for him,” I said.

“I did,” he said. “I wanted all that off him. I wanted him to have a chance to figure his shit out before he was supposed to take care of an entire pack and be a partner to a woman and everything else. He never had a chance to figure himself out or make any mistakes. He went from thirteen years old to twenty-seven, you know? And right after our parents died. I wanted him to get to be a kid. Maybe he could have grown into a man who would have been worthy of you, but he didn’t get the chance. It’s not his fault, but…”

I took a drink of my beer. “You did, too, didn’t you? Have to grow up really fast after your parents died?”

He took a long swig of his beer, shrugging.

After their parents died, Vincent and Damian went to live with their aunt and uncle who had three small children. There hadn’t been a lot of room in the house, so their aunt and uncle had repurposed a shed on the property for them to stay in. They’d had it insulated and it was comfortable enough, but it was like being guests in your own home. They didn’t have a bathroom out there or a shower. Even so, they spent all their time out there, when they weren’t out on the river on their boat. I don’t think they ever really felt like they were part of that family, and they both worked part-time jobs all through high school to have money, because their aunt and uncle were obviously stretched thin with seven total mouths to feed in the family.