Falling for the Brother

Okay, that was one example. But the situation had been untenable.

“My brother’s had very little to do with me since then,” Mason reminded her. “We talked on rare occasions. I saw him, briefly, a time or two. That’s it. I kept up with him through Gram. And sometimes O’Brien and I would talk.”

“You’re telling me Gram doesn’t see this side of him.”

“Not that she’s admitting.”

“Did she ever?”

Another shrug. “I thought so. It seemed like we all knew. But I can’t give you, or even myself, any concrete evidence that she did. I don’t remember it ever coming up with her there, although I’m sure it must have. She was around all the time.”

She had to be honest with him.

“I was with him for over two years, Mason, and I never saw it.”

“Bruce was always on his best behavior when Gram was with us. He adored her and wanted her to think he was perfect. Maybe it was the same with you.”

Apparently Mason had an answer for everything. What remained to be seen, however, was which one of them was seeing the real Bruce.

The man wasn’t perfect. Clearly. She’d left him after only a year of marriage. But…

“The undercover work he does—he’s gifted at it—but that takes its toll, too,” she said. “Maybe you need to figure that into your opinions.” He’d asked her for the truth. Could be it was up to her to clear Bruce so Mason could focus on finding out who had really hurt Miriam.

If it wasn’t Bruce.

That last thought trickling in bothered her. Surely she wasn’t going to let what Mason said play with her mind.

Like he’d accused Bruce of doing.

“He enacts different personas and his life depends on his ability to believe them enough to act them out. Sometimes he gets so involved in the person he’s playing, he forgets to drop the guise when he’s not at work. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing.”

It was the reason her marriage had broken up—because she couldn’t trust Bruce to be faithful to her when he left for work every day.

“According to Grace, your leaving, Bruce losing someone he loved and needed, seemed to make him more adamant than ever about controlling Gram. He couldn’t lose her, too. Gram was getting older and, one by one, she dropped activities from her schedule, saying that Bruce needed her.”

“It makes sense, if you think about it,” she said, gaining strength in her mission now to give Mason her side of the story so that he could see it all clearly. He needed her piece of the puzzle. “She’d been living alone, having family dinner once or twice a week, but otherwise free to spend all the time she wanted with Grace. Then, suddenly, Bruce moves in with her and she has family to care for again. As you said, caring for family has always come first with Miriam. It’s what she lives for. Bruce gave her the purpose she’d lost. But still, she wouldn’t have the energy to keep up a full schedule and still cook and clean for him every day. Maybe Grace was jealous or put out because she lost her time with Miriam. Maybe she resented Bruce.”

That made complete sense to her. It didn’t explain why Grace had said Harper had pandered to Bruce—but you saw what you looked for. And bits of the truth strengthened perceptions, too. In her case, there’d been some truth in the fact that she’d tended to be more compassionate, often letting Bruce have his own way because she’d felt guilty about ripping his heart out. Felt guilty about the person with whom she’d been unfaithful.

I’d had nothing to be faithful to that night. The words came to her unbidden. Before she could follow the reasoning, Mason spoke again.

“It wasn’t just her time with Grace. Gram still called her, they still saw each other most days, until about a year ago. Grace said that Bruce was gradually sucking the life out of Gram by stopping her from doing chores she was perfectly capable of doing. Like carrying the laundry downstairs, for instance. She said it started out with little things like that, and Gram would gush about how great it was to have a chivalrous and caring man in the house again. But then it became less helpful and more controlling. I guess one day he got home from work and saw her on a ladder changing a lightbulb and lit into her. Grace was on the phone with her at the time and heard the whole thing, but Bruce didn’t know that. Gram had been talking on the Bluetooth Bruce had bought her, so she could answer the phone anytime he called, and could always call for help if she fell or got into trouble. Grace’s theory is that after you left, Bruce fixated on Gram and was petrified of losing her, too. Over time, he continued to curtail activities until she started to feel like she wasn’t capable of doing very much anymore. Grace invited her to a retired cops’ par three golf outing, and Miriam said that she’d never make it around the course. Didn’t want to tire herself, or risk putting a strain on her heart.”