Eight Hundred Grapes

He took the beer back. “We talked before she went. We decided I would stay here for a minute with Mom and Dad. We decided to take a minute apart to see if that would help us remember how much we used to love being together. That’s the plan at least.”

He was holding the beer or I’d have handed it back to him, just so he could have something to do besides sitting there, telling me his family was falling apart before him.

“I made a mess of things,” he said.

“I don’t think you should be blaming yourself.”

He laughed, a little angry. “What should I be doing?”

I shrugged. “Drinking?”

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He smiled, took another sip. “She’s not wrong. I stopped paying attention to her. I stopped doing the things that someone does for the person he loves. Because I was tired. Because other things always seemed to matter a little bit more.”

He paused.

“That doesn’t happen overnight, you know. It happens slowly. You should be careful of that. You should be careful not to take the person you love for granted. Not only because they’ll notice. But you’ll notice too. You’ll think it means something it doesn’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like that’s how much you care.”

He looked like he had lost everything. If Margaret saw that, would it be enough? Bobby loved his wife in a way she couldn’t feel, but he loved her all the same. Shouldn’t that count for something? Shouldn’t the effort, no matter how misinformed, be enough to keep people together—especially at the moment they might otherwise decide it was easier to be apart?

He took a swig. “I’m mad at her. It doesn’t help, but I am mad at her and him.”

“Me too.”

“That really doesn’t help.”

I moved closer to him. “What are you going to do?”

“Make it up to her if I can. Forgive her if I can. Help her forgive me.” He shook his head. “Something like that.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

“What choice do I have?”

He put down the beer, rubbed his hands together.

“You don’t give up on a family. Not without trying to put it back together.”

That stopped me. My brother, who always said the wrong thing, had said the most important thing of all.

His words vibrated in the place that had gone vacant the minute I’d seen Ben on the street in my wedding dress. With Maddie. With Michelle.

I hugged him. “Thank you.”

He looked confused. “For what?”

“I wasn’t sure what to do about Ben, and you just made it feel very clear. Thank you for that.”

“You should marry him. You’d be an idiot not to.”

And then there was that. I laughed, even though he wasn’t kidding. And leaned forward, squeezing into my brother.

“Hey, guys. What’s going on?”