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“You’re still staying at your friend’s house?” Leo asked.
“No, I moved out, back into my old condo. She returned from her business trip earlier than expected,” Penny said.
“Did you rent yours out while you were staying at her place? Sorry if I’m intrusive. I work in real estate. I’ve got a bad habit of questioning people about their homes.”
“I don’t mind,” Penny said. “I tried to when I first moved, but I only wanted to do Airbnb. I didn’t want anyone long-term. The problem with it is that it’s not in a pretty area, so I had zero bites.”
Leo frowned. “If you ever need help with that, let me know, okay? My people are very good at placing short-term tenants, especially if the place is furnished.”
“Thanks, Leo, that’s really nice of you.”
I wasn’t surprised he’d offered. Leo was a great guy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Colton. He looked stunned. Out of all of us, he and Jake always had the most distant relationship with our half brothers. I still wasn’t sure where Colton stood on this, but I was determined to let bygones be bygones.
I didn’t blame my brothers. Colton and Jake were older, and they’d had a front row seat to the family’s implosion—much more so than the rest of us. Jake had the bad luck of discovering the clues that led him to find out about Dad’s infidelity. And after it all broke out, Colton had a huge fight with our father. Still, ever since moving back to Boston, Jake had grown closer with our half brothers, and I was sure that Colton would start seeing them as part of the family if he spent more time with them.
We went to the bar, leaning against the counter. I put a hand on Penny’s back and brought my mouth to her ear. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I like the guys and Meredith and Natalie. They’re all so welcoming. They don’t seem to mind that I was house-sitting.”
“Why would they?”
“I don’t know, you and your family come from this,” she said, pointing around. “You guys grew up in a totally different way compared to me.”
“Penny,” I said, tilting her head and making eye contact with her. I didn’t want everyone to hear me, so I brought my mouth to her ear again. “No one cares. We all like you foryou. Me especially. I like you more than everyone else. Way more.”
“Well, I should hope you do,” she said.
Leo cleared his throat. “You guys behave. You’re in public, in case you forgot.”
Straightening up, I turned to him. He couldn’t have heard anything, but our body language was probably pretty telling. “Why? Jealous that you’re here on your own?”
“Huh?” Leo exclaimed. “Don’t you dare ever repeat that in front of Gran, or she’s going to draw the wrong conclusions.”
Next to him, Nick whistled. “Hear, hear.”
“By the way,” Maddox said, appearing on Penny’s other side, “congrats on buying The Digital Owl. I’ve been reading their articles for some time. Smart of you to snap it up.”
“Thanks. I like them too. I’m glad to be able to hand them something as important as our biography section.”
Maddox narrowed his eyes slightly before nodding. “That’s the one your mother wrote, right?” His voice was nonchalant on the surface, but I detected an edge in it.
“How do you know that?” I asked him. Penny reached for my hand, interlacing our fingers.
“I’ve read some of those articles she wrote when I found out, well, you know... She was a very good writer.”
“Thank you,” I said.
My stomach clenched, and so did my throat. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever mentioned my mother. Probably never. I had no idea what to say. Penny squeezed my fingers. I squeezed them right back.
“Good for you,” Leo added, clearly having overheard. “It’s a great way to honor her memory.”
This conversation was way out of my comfort zone. I appreciated my half brothers praising her. But I simply didn’t know how to talk to them about my mother. It wasn’t rational, of course, but in the back of my mind, part of me would always blame Dad and his second family for Mom’s illness. The two things weren’t related, of course, and the doctors had reiterated that. The cancer had been in her body for a long time, and it just went undetected. But the idea had formed in my mind as a teenager that my dad was the cause of it, and I couldn’t forget it.
I actively tried, but sometimes, in moments like this, it resurfaced.
“All right, I’m moving to the other side. Gabe is flagging me,” Maddox said.
