Three Of A Kind

Under the Same Roof, Not the Same Side

I didn't sleep.

I told myself it was the unfamiliar bed, the strange house, the low hum of central air I wasn't used to. It wasn't any of those things. My mind kept circling back to the study, to Emory's hand at my ear, to the particular, unbearable quiet of a house full of people who all had reasons not to trust me and didn't yet know the half of it. By four in the morning I'd convinced myself of a dozen different explanations for the unease sitting low in my chest, and settled on exactly none of them.

I got up before sunrise, showered until the water ran cold, and dressed like a woman who had complete control of her circumstances, because if I looked the part long enough, maybe some part of me would start to believe it too.

The kitchen was already occupied when I got there, and not by Barrett this time.

Roan stood at the counter in a t-shirt and dark trousers, sleeves not yet rolled for the day, a cup of coffee held like it was the only thing keeping him upright. He glanced up when I entered, something unreadable moving across his face before it settled back into careful neutrality, and for a second I let myself notice the shadows under his eyes, the particular stillness of a man who'd clearly been standing in that exact spot for longer than the coffee justified.

"You're up early," he said.

"So are you."

"I told you. I don't sleep well in this house." He nodded toward the pot on the counter. "There's more, if you want it."

I poured a cup mostly to have something to do with my hands, and the silence between us stretched, not uncomfortable exactly, but heavy with everything neither of us had said since the study last night. I was still deciding whether to say anything at all when Barrett swept in, entirely too awake for the hour, and Emory a step behind him, unreadable and unhurried as always, his eyes finding mine across the kitchen with an ease that made my pulse stumble before I could stop it.

"Well," Barrett said, dropping into a chair, grabbing an apple off the counter without asking. "Look at that. All four of us, in one room, and nobody's thrown a punch yet. Father would be so proud."

"Don't," Roan said, quiet, and something in his voice made even Barrett's easy grin falter.

"Don't what? Mention him? We're going to have to eventually, Roan, we're literally living inside his last will and testament for the next year." Barrett's tone had shifted, the humor gone brittle at the edges, his knuckles whitening slightly around the apple he wasn't eating anymore. "Or is that a conversation you'd rather keep having alone, in your study, at midnight, with someone who isn't either of us?"

I felt the accusation land somewhere in the middle of the room, aimed as much at me as at Roan.

"That's not what that was," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Wasn't it?" Emory's voice, mild, almost bored, though his eyes stayed sharp on mine the entire time, missing nothing. "Interesting. I saw something very different last night."

"Enough." Roan set his cup down harder than necessary, the sound sharp against the marble, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "This isn't about last night. It's about the fact that none of us asked for this, and instead of dealing with that like adults, you'd rather turn it into another excuse to relitigate everything that happened three years ago."

"Maybe I would," Barrett said, and for the first time since I'd met him, the warmth was entirely gone from his voice, replaced by something raw and old and clearly well-worn from use. He'd gone very still, the apple forgotten entirely on the counter in front of him. "Maybe some of us are still waiting for you to actually talk about it instead of just working yourself half to death every night like that fixes anything."

"Barrett." Emory's voice, low, a warning, though he didn't move to intervene beyond that.

"No, let him." Roan's jaw was tight, his knuckles white around the edge of the counter, and for the first time since I'd met him he looked less like the controlled man from the office and more like someone barely holding a much older wound together with willpower alone. "Say it. You've wanted to since the funeral."

The kitchen had gone completely silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and my own heartbeat, loud in my ears. I understood, watching them, that I was witnessing something old and unhealed, something that had nothing to do with the will or the company or me at all, and everything to do with three boys who'd lost the only father any of them had ever known, and had spent the year since blaming each other for it in three entirely different, entirely destructive ways.

"You weren't there," Barrett said, finally, quiet now, all the fight gone out of his voice and something far more painful left in its place. "I was. I'm the one who found him. I'm the one who called you eleven times and got nothing, and I don't think you understand what that does to a person, Roan, being that alone with something that big, watching someone slip away while your phone just rings and rings into nothing."

Roan's face went through something complicated, guilt and grief and old, exhausted anger all at once, before it closed off entirely, the shutters coming down the way I was already starting to recognize as his only defense against feeling anything too large to survive in front of an audience.

"I know," he said, so quietly I almost missed it. "I know what I wasn't there for. You don't have to remind me. I remind myself every single day."

Nobody spoke for a long moment. I became aware, distantly, that I was still holding a coffee cup I hadn't taken a single sip from, that my presence in this kitchen suddenly felt like an intrusion on something far more private than anything in the will I'd been sent here to enforce, something I had absolutely no right to witness and every intention of carrying with me anyway.

It was Emory who broke the silence, and not with warmth.

"As illuminating as this is," he said, straightening, tone perfectly composed again, like he hadn't just watched his brothers tear a wound back open in front of a stranger, "I believe Ms. Ashby is here in an official capacity. Perhaps she'd like to explain what today actually involves, now that we've all had our morning catharsis."

Every set of eyes turned to me. I set my cup down, grateful, for once, for the reflex of professionalism that had never once failed me before this house.

"Round One begins this week," I said, and watched all three of them go very still, the tension in the room shifting instantly from grief to something sharper. "Winslow will deliver the full details this afternoon. I'd suggest, whatever this was," I gestured, carefully, at the space between them, "that you find some way to set it aside long enough to actually compete for what your father left you. Because I promise you, all three of you, the terms of this will do not care how any of you feel about each other. Only what you do next."

I left before any of them could respond, because staying one more second would have meant admitting how much watching that kitchen unravel had cost me, how much of myself I recognized in three brothers who'd learned to survive loss by turning it into blame instead of grief.

I hadn't made it far down the hall before footsteps caught up to me, quick, familiar.

"Hey." Barrett, out of breath in a way that had nothing to do with distance, caught my arm gently, just enough to stop me. "That was a lot to walk into on your second morning. I'm sorry."

"You don't owe me an apology."

"No, but I'm giving you one anyway." He ran a hand through his hair, the easy charm from last night nowhere in sight, replaced by something rawer, more honest. "I don't usually say that stuff out loud. Any of it. I don't know what came over me."

"Grief has a way of picking its own moments," I said, softer than I intended.

He studied me for a long beat, something shifting behind his eyes, careful in a way I hadn't seen from him yet. "You looked at us like you understood. Back there. Not like someone watching a mess. Like someone who's stood exactly where we were standing."

My chest tightened, some old, careful door in me creaking dangerously close to open. "Everyone's lost someone, Barrett."

"That's not what I said." He stepped closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough that the space between us went taut, charged, the same unsettling awareness from the kitchen last night resettling low in my stomach. "I said you looked like you understood. That's different from having lost someone. That's having lost someone the way we did."

I didn't answer. I couldn't, not without giving him more truth than I could afford to hand over on day two.

He seemed to read the silence for exactly what it was, and didn't push, though something in his expression told me he wasn't done wondering.

"Round One," he said instead, softer, a small, careful smile returning at the edges. "Any chance you'll go easy on me?"

"Not a chance in the world," I said, and something in the way he laughed, low and real, settled a little of the unease still sitting in my chest.

He didn't let go of my arm right away. Neither of us mentioned that.