“I wasn’t offended,” I told him, his hands dropped and his eyes cut to me.

“Well, babe, that’s good but I am.”

“Brock –”

“That it?”

“Uh…”

“Tess,” he growled.

“He knows what happened to me,” I whispered.

Brock scowled at me in a very scary way then he snarled, “Fucking, f**king, f**king, ” he stood, swiping his father’s beer bottle off the table and sidearm throwing it across the room so it exploded against the wall, beer splattering everywhere and he finished, “Hell! ”

At these actions, I crawled back into the corner of the sofa and curled my legs tight against my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I watched him standing there, shaking his head and tearing his fingers through his hair all the way to the back of his neck where he left them curved around still shaking his head.

Then he dropped his hand and turned to me. “Which one?” he demanded to know.

“Which one what?” I asked quietly.

“Which sister? Jill or Laura?”

“Brock, I don’t really mind,” I told him cautiously.

“Bullshit,” he fired back and I had to admit he was right. It was. “That man has no business knowin’ that happened to you.”

“Your family knows,” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” he clipped, “and that man isn’t family.”

“Brock,” I whispered, “he’s your Dad.”

“He is?” he asked sarcastically and I decided that was a good time to quit talking.

Even furious, Brock didn’t miss much; he saw me close down, decided to aim at a new target and thus yanked his phone out of back pocket, opened it up, hit some buttons and put it to his ear.

Then he started pacing.

Then he said, “Yeah, Jill it’s me and, head’s up, I’m f**kin’ pissed.”

Oh man.

He guessed.

He kept going. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because Tess didn’t tell her f**kin’ best friend she’d been raped, not for six f**kin’ years. Martha found out a month ago. Her own goddamned mother and sister don’t know but you know who does? Dad. ”

He paused maybe to listen but not for long before he continued.

“Do not pretend you know by association what that shit feels like. Laura knows. That’s why Laura didn’t f**kin’ share. You had no f**kin’ business spewing that shit to Dad. I left the house to take my boys home, left her with Dad and he f**kin’ talked to her about it. She’s alone here with a man she barely f**kin’ knows and, bein’ Dad, he thinks it’s his place to have a conversation with my f**kin’ woman about her bein’ violated. ”

Another pause that didn’t last long.

Then, “Is she okay? What do you f**kin’ think? She’s curled in a ball in the corner of the goddamned sofa Mom bought because I was so f**kin’ pissed my sister is f**kin’ screwy, the instant I learned, I threw a goddamned beer bottle across the room. And the reason I’m so f**kin’ pissed, Jill, is because she is supposed to feel safe with me. And my own goddamned sister orchestrated a f**kin’ scenario where, my back’s turned for a half a goddamned hour, she was sittin’ on my own f**kin’ couch and she was not. ”

Okay, weirdly, what Brock just said made me feel less freaked out at his wild, angry, unrestrained behavior.

There was another short pause.

Then, “Jill, you had a different Dad than me. You and Laura, you had a different Dad than Levi and me. And now, for years, I’ve been takin’ your back with this shit, even before he got sick. But you gotta get your head outta your ass, woman. No man, even Dad, deserves to die alone thinking his son has abandoned him. But that’s as far as it goes and you need to get that and you need to show me while I have your back, you have mine and I’ll make this official right f**kin’ now. You have my back, you have Tess’s and you can read what you want into that and my guess is, what you read will be right. Are we clear?”

Oh my God.

Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“Jesus,” Brock clipped. “Uh… yeah. Wake up, Jill, she’s met my f**kin’ boys. In seven years has one woman I’ve been with met my boys, or, for that matter, you? ”

Oh God.

He meant what I thought he meant.

I was feeling warm and gushy again.

“No,” he declared firmly. “Tess will tell you it’s okay because Tess is sweet and she won’t want you to feel bad so, no. You aren’t talkin’ about this with her. You’re listenin’ to me tell you that shit you did wasn’t right. And you know,” his voice dropped, “you know, Jill, from watchin’ Austin, I gotta have this covered for a lifetime. That ghost shadows her, just like Laura, and I gotta have this and I gotta know my family has it too. So this is the last we’ll speak of it but before we’re done, I gotta know. Do you have this?”

A lifetime?

“Right,” he said quietly. Then, “I’m sorry too. It’s done. We’re movin’ on. Tell your daughters their uncle hasn’t dropped off the face of the earth. They both got cars; they can drive them to my place. Tess will have a cupcake waitin’ for them.” Pause then, “Right.”

Another pause then, quietly, “Jill, we’re cool, aren’t we always cool?”

A moment passed before I watched him tip his head back to look at the ceiling.

Then I knew why he did this when he dropped his head to look at his boots and said gently, “Babe, quit cryin’.”

Oh man.

I pressed my lips together.

Then Brock said, “You f**ked up, I called you on it, you listened, it’s done and we’re cool, darlin’, quit f**kin’ cryin’.”

I was thinking for the first time in my life that I was glad I didn’t have a brother at the same time contradictorily sadder than normal that I didn’t.

And I was also thinking it was high time I Skyped my sister.

Then Brock said, “Right. Me too.” Pause then, “Fuck, right. I’ll tell her.” Another pause then, “Me too, darlin’. Later.”

Then he snapped his phone shut and looked at me.

Then he announced, “Seein’ as I now have a woman I have assignments for Thanksgiving dinner, something, as a guy, I avoided for seven years and something, because my mother and sisters hated my wife, they never gave her the honor. But apparently you’re in charge of dessert and when I say that I mean enough dessert that’ll feed sixteen.”