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He turns back towards me as he reaches the front door. “You coming?”

“I’ll be right there.”

My brother’s been home twice in the last fifteen years
.

Two years after Claire and I started dating, we received an unusual piece of mail. It was a postcard from Tim, again from Australia, with an address and an invitation—albeit cryptic—to write to him.

Drop me a line
were the words he used, if memory serves.

It was, actually, my mother who got the postcard, and she’s the one who responded. In fact, I’m pretty sure she sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out several pieces of her personal stationery minutes after the postcard came shooting through the mail slot.

Tim was open to communication and she was ready to communicate.

Boy was she ever.

Writing to Tim became a nearly daily occupation for her, narrating the small details of her life.

I don’t know for certain, but I’m fairly sure she told Tim
about Claire and me in that very first letter. It had taken her a while to accept us when she first found out, which was unfortunately from some local gossip before I’d had a chance to tell her myself.

“I just heard the strangest thing,” she said to me on the phone, where she’d caught me at work. “I’m sure Betty must have it wrong …”

“Have what wrong, Mom?”

“Well, honey, she said that you and Claire James are dating.”

She gave a nervous laugh, trying to convey a that’s-so-ridiculous air, but not quite managing it.

When I fessed up and told her it was true, she went into flutter mode. “Well, I … If you think … are you happy?”

I assured her I was and that I knew it was a bit weird but that it was a good thing. Eventually, she believed it, but she couldn’t quite let it go until she found out how Tim felt about it.

When the next postcard arrived from him, three months later, the p.s. he added after saying he was working at a bank was:
Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi
.

There were two ways to take this — as a passive PFO, or a tacit acceptance that things had moved on without him. I chose the latter, at first, and though it wasn’t with my mother’s speed or frequency, I wrote him back, writing of surface things. My practice, the latest town gossip about the boys we grew up with. Not much about Claire, but enough to let him know we were together and we were serious. That it maybe wasn’t the best situation there ever was, and that my happiness was tinged with moments of regret.

He didn’t answer my letters, or my sporadic emails when he finally divulged his email address. He treated my mother’s correspondence with more respect; emails were usually answered
within a week. He’s a busy guy, after all, my mother would say, making excuses for him, as she had during all those years of virtual silence.

Tell Jeff and Claire I said hi
.

I waited a while to tell Claire about that one. When I did, casually over breakfast one morning, she went quiet, still, before asking me if I was going to write him back. I told her I wasn’t sure, and thought about asking her if she was planning to. But somehow I couldn’t get the words out. I’m not normally a jealous guy, but jealously has a different texture to it when the woman you love used to be in love with your brother. I held my tongue, and if she wrote him, she never said.

I don’t know if I expected him to answer me, or what the answer would be if he did. Instead, all I got was radio silence, the absence of words telling me all I needed to know. Tim was pissed, and whatever it was that had driven him halfway around the world, well, the blame for that was now shifted to me.

Eventually, I stopped writing. Maybe I wanted to send my own signal. Maybe I was tired of the lack of response. And there was life to live too. It was a good life; one I hoped was about to get better.

When Claire accepted my proposal at the Thai restaurant where we’d had our first date, we decided quickly that we didn’t want a big wedding. Family, a few close friends. If we went beyond that we might have to invite the whole town. I didn’t really care one way or another, so long as she showed up and said yes, but Claire didn’t seem interested in the spectacle.

She was the one who sent Tim the invitation. I saw it sitting on a stack of ones to mail near the front door of her apartment. Right on top of the stack like there was nothing
unusual about it. And maybe there wasn’t, but it led to our first big fight, one we’d probably been putting off since the beginning, one you didn’t really want to have two months before your wedding.

“What the fuck is this?” I asked, holding Tim’s invitation by the corner, standing over her in a way I knew was more aggressive than it should be.

She glanced up from the kitchen table, where she was making her way through a pile of case law. “A wedding invitation.”

“Come on, Claire.”

She put her pen down. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. “Come on what? He’s your brother.”

“Right.
My
brother.
Your
ex-boyfriend. The guy who hasn’t spoken to either of us in years.”

“I thought he should be here, or at least have the option to be.”

“And you didn’t think to tell or ask me?”

“No. I did.”

“The hell you did.”

“I meant, I thought about it.”

I threw the envelope on the table. It skipped like a pebble across a pond, once, twice, and landed on the floor with a soft whooshing sound.

“So you thought about it and decided not to tell me?”

“That’s right.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

She reached down to retrieve the envelope. “I don’t know why you’re getting this upset.”

“You don’t? You used to sleep with the guy!”

I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that I’d said the wrong thing. This had always been unspoken. That he’d
touched and kissed her lips, her breasts, and the soft, wet folds between her legs. But it was something I was all too aware of the first few times we were together, when I was trying to figure out how to unlock the sighs and cries I craved.

Of course, I’d been with women before who’d been with someone else. There was often that feeling the first few times, before the present began to erase the past.

Someone’s been here before me. Was he better? Did she cry out his name? Did he make her come easily, the first time?

I always shoved these thoughts down with the reality that I, too, had practised on others. That this particular swirl of the tongue, or rub of her clitoris, might not satisfy like it had done in the past.

Adjustments were necessary.

Adjustments were made.

But I’d never had to adjust for the fact that one of the men before me was my brother. That if I disappointed her, if I continued to do so, her lack of satisfaction could always be compared with him, another man who’d been in my place, the place I hoped to make mine exclusively.

She gave me a cold stare. “You’ve known that from the beginning, Jeff. What does it have to do with us now?”

“You’re the one bringing him into it. Sending him that invitation is bringing him into it.”

“Inviting him to our wedding isn’t bringing him into it, it’s keeping him out of it.”

“How’d you figure?”

“He’s your
brother
. If he isn’t at your wedding, people will talk. And your mother would be heartbroken if he didn’t come. You know that.”

“I don’t give a shit what people say. I only care about—”

“That we were together? Is that it?”

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Seems like that’s something you should’ve figured out a long time ago.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you think I’m still in love with him?”

“No, I …”

She watched me stumble, unable to deny it. “If you feel that way, I don’t think I should be sending these out.”

She picked up the invitation and walked out of the kitchen. I followed her down the hall. She placed Tim’s invitation back on top of the pile and straightened the stack, making neat hospital corners.

“You want to call the wedding off?” I said, my throat closing in panic.

She looked me straight in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

“You think I do?”

“I think you need to figure out if you can live with this. With me. The person I was and the person I am now. You go figure that out and let me know.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, but there was anger there too. So out the door I went to spend a miserable night at my own apartment, a place I barely spent any time in anymore, a place that no longer felt like home.

In the morning I crawled back to Claire’s, begged her forgiveness, and, when she gave it, buried my jealousy of Tim deep within.

Besides
, I told myself,
it’s not like he’s actually going to show
.

He did, of course. Not that he answered the reply card. Instead, he sent a cryptic email to my mother, which she decoded as his arrival time in Springfield two days before the ceremony.

I knew for sure by then that my take on his silence, his absence, wasn’t paranoia. It was all connected. But what I didn’t know was whether he was coming home to try to do something about it or to accept it.

I watched him closely in those first twenty-four hours after his arrival, looking for signs that might point the way. He looked older, tanned, and less restless. Australia agreed with him, I thought, as we sat across from each other at my parents’ dinner table, as we had all our lives, eating lemon chicken, because Thursdays was lemon chicken night, rain or shine.

He’d kissed Claire briefly on the cheek when we arrived and told her she looked well. Claire’s face was like glass, reflecting back the expression of whoever she was speaking to. When she looked at Tim, the few times I caught her looking, she seemed calm, impassive, and slightly distracted; a woman having dinner with her in-laws a few days before her wedding.

After dinner, Tim cornered me in the living room, passing me a Scotch glass with an inch of liquid in it, neat.

“So, brother, have you been properly feted?”

“Feted?”

“I’m talking bachelor party. Has it occurred, or will you be in need of sleep and half-drunk on your wedding day?”

I smiled, remembering the weekend with my college buddies, the golf, the drinks, and the drinks after that. “It’s been taken care of.”

“Good. Sorry I missed it.”

“No worries.”

It was his turn to smile. “That sounds like home.”

“Home is Australia now?”

“That’s right. For now. Maybe for always. We’ll see.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “You should … come visit sometime.”

“Sure, we’d like that.”

If he flinched, it was only a tick of the clock. He glanced around the room. “This place looks the same as always.”

“Nothing ever changes in Springfield.”

“A few things do. One or two.”

“Right. Sure.”

We stood there sipping our drinks in silence, both of us probably wishing the women would reappear and fill the room with chatter.

“Where did Dad get off to?” Tim asked eventually.

“Lodge meeting, I think.”

“Of course. Lemon chicken and lodge night. He inducted you yet?”

“Me? No, no. Never.”

“Never say never, brother.”

I didn’t like this new way he had of calling me “brother,” like he needed to remind himself of who I was. Or maybe he was reminding me.

“I guess. What about you? Any thoughts of settling down?”

He laughed. “You sound like Mom.”

“No one’s ever said that before. No one special?”

“Nothing on the horizon at present. All the good girls seem to be taken.”

I sipped my drink. “Mmm.”

Silence crept over us again and I thought about refilling my glass.

“What do you say to a private celebration?” Tim said.

“What? You and me?”

“You got anything better to do?”

“No. I’m just … forget it.” I put my glass down. “Where’d you want to go?”

“Hurley’s maybe?”

“Sure. Let me tell Claire.”

He nodded thoughtfully and twenty minutes later found us ensconced at the local bar. Tim ordered two rounds of shots, which proved to be the right amount of lubrication to wash away the years. As the drinks disappeared down our throats, we talked about safe subjects: remember-whens from our childhood.

When last call sounded we were both cut, and for my part, I was feeling more warmly towards Tim than I had in years. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him, my goddamn older brother, the man I always wanted to be when I grew up.

Tim seemed to feel the same as he slapped me on the back and suggested we walk the long way round to our parents’ house. I agreed, and as we stumbled home, we passed the edge of the Woods, its thick trees silhouetted against the sky.

“Man,” I said, “I haven’t been in there in ages.”

“Do you remember all those times we played … what was it again?”

“You Can’t Get There from Here.”

“Right, right. Say, let’s do it.”

“What, now?”

“Sure.”

“But we don’t have any flashlights.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick ring of
keys. A silver cylinder hung from it. He flicked a switch and a bright beam of light pooled around our feet.

“This’ll do, won’t it?”

“Aren’t you the Boy Scout.”

He held up his hand in the three-fingered salute. “With merit badges and everything. You game?”

I hesitated for a moment, but why not? The night seemed to be all about memories, and these were good ones.

“Okay. Who’s spotter?”

“We’ll flip for it.” He pulled out a quarter, getting ready to toss it. “Call it.”

“Tails.”

“Interesting choice.”

He launched the quarter into the air and we watched it flip upwards, twinkling in the street light, disappearing into the dark, then reappearing in slow motion to land in the palm of his hand. He slapped his palm against the top of his other hand.

“You sure about your choice?”

“I’m sure.”

He unveiled the coin. It was heads.

“Do you think the old bell’s still there?” he asked.