Falling for the Brother

Mason had heard a couple of versions of the story. Including the proven fact that Bruce had saved thirty elderly citizens from financial ruin and eventual homelessness when they no longer had the money to pay rent. As, one by one, they had to move into government housing, the brother and sister who owned the building would’ve rented the vacated apartments to other fixed income social security recipients. They would’ve slowly drained their bank accounts, too, with hidden costs and fees, with suddenly broken plumbing, or electrical issues for which their rental agreements held them accountable.

Bruce had slept with the woman, just like he’d said. But…

“Bruce started sleeping with her on their second date.”

Harper shook her head. “He took her on a dinner cruise and was home before eleven.”

Home to Harper’s apartment? Officially his brother had been living with his father before they were married, while he waited for his and Harper’s house to close.

“He took her for a picnic on the beach and had sex with her.” Mason lowered his eyes to his plate as he said the words, using the last onion ring to wipe up what was left of the barbecue sauce.

He’d gone through various scenarios when he’d considered the pain he’d be causing Harper by telling her the truth. He’d weighed that against the need for her to see his brother as he really was. It might change how other things from the past looked to her. Or help her remember events she might not currently consider relevant.

The decisive factor for him had been the number of times she’d so adamantly told him that Bruce always “owned” his mistakes. Unless he was grossly mistaken, she was a woman who’d want the truth.

He glanced up to see a mixture of shock and confusion on her beautiful face. She didn’t smile enough.

The thought came unbidden and he instantly pushed it away. Harper Davidson’s smiles were none of his concern.

“After…that night—” more accurately, after seeing the look of horror on Harper’s face when she’d woken up in his bed the next morning “—I asked Clark if I could see the files from Bruce’s investigation, to confirm what I already knew, to confirm that he’d had sex on the second date. I was still FBI then and I had concerns about federal monies being misused by the landlord.”

That had been the official story.

He’d been checking up on his brother because he’d been hit like a ton of bricks by his brother’s fiancée.

“Bruce keeps meticulous records when he’s on a job,” Mason reminded her.

“So…that day he told me…the night before hadn’t been the first time he’d had sex with her. But at least he admitted it. He told me what he’d done before we got married, so I could call it off if…”

She was still seeing his brother for a better man than Bruce was. Mason was not proud of how much that irked him.

And yet, he admired her for it, too.

So much that if he weren’t on the job, if he didn’t have a vision of Gram’s face, her cast, so clearly in his mind, he might have left Harper to her version of truth.

“He’d had sex with a woman the night before, exactly as he told you. It just hadn’t been with that woman.” He tried to keep emotion out of his voice, and yet tempered the words, the tone, the way he would with any other victim deserving of compassion.

Her mouth fell open. She lifted her beer bottle, seemingly nonchalant, until he noticed her hand trembling.

She swallowed a gulp of beer, and then, with a nod toward him, asked, “Then who did he have sex with that night a week before we were married, if it wasn’t a perp?”

Certain that she didn’t want to know, Mason paused, wanting to be elsewhere. Her marriage had ended because Bruce had been unfaithful a second time. He’d blamed both times on cases. What harm did it do to have her continuing to think so? Except that he needed her to see how his brother re-framed truths.

“His partner.”

“Gwen? He had sex with Gwen? But…she was at our house all the time the year we were married. She was like a sister to me. And treated Bruce like a brother. There was no way there’d been anything physical between them. I’d have noticed something. A look. Tension. Something…”