My husband sent his brother, and I was holding the guest-room key in a shirt that wasn’t mine.
Mark had texted from the double shift. Wes needs a bed. Key’s in the bowl. Don’t wait up. I had put on the first thing in the drawer. His old T-shirt. No shorts. No bra. I thought I had twenty minutes to find pants and look like a wife who hosted. The knock came in five.
Wes filled the doorway the way Mark never had. Older by two years. Quieter. The polite one at every dinner, the one who looked away when I bent for a dish and then looked back when he thought I wouldn’t notice. He had a bag over one shoulder, rain on his jacket, and eyes that dropped, once, to my bare thighs, then came back up like he had scolded them.
“Mark said the guest room,” he said.
“Mark says a lot of things from a hos
