Meeting this woman would be different, though. I was Henry’s brother. Henry, who’d apparently wanted nothing to do with his own child and had bailed before the woman had even given birth. I didn’t know if Hen had been paying child support or not—I really hoped he’d at least done that much.
There was a good chance that Morgan Riley wouldn’t want anything to do with me or our family. Unfortunately, if that was the case I couldn’t really blame her. Henry had fucked her over in a big way, and if I was in her shoes, I didn’t know if I would want anything to do with the family who would raise a man like that, either.
I locked the front door and turned off the lights as I made my way into my room. I still needed to pack my bag, and I wanted to get a decent night’s sleep.
My room was boring as hell, much like the rest of my house. In the middle of the room I had a sweet king-size bed that I’d splurged on, but the rest of my furniture was plain and mismatched stuff that had been passed on to me from various family members. I’d spent a lot of money building my house, making it exactly how I wanted it, but I’d never really cared about decorating the place. I’d always figured that when I got married my wife could do it up the way she liked.
Now that I was in my thirties, I was beginning to wonder if the whole wife thing would ever happen. I dated and I met plenty of women, but I’d never found one I wanted to spend more than a few months with. At first things would look promising, but inevitably I’d start questioning whether she was the person I wanted to see every day for the rest of my life and the answer was always no. I usually cut ties when I realized that. Four months seemed to be the magic number for me.
Pulling a duffel out of my closet, I briefly glanced at the box of Henry’s stuff my parents had given me. Some of it was mementos from our childhood, and the rest were things the Marines had sent home from his barracks room. I hadn’t been able to go through it yet, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to open it tonight.
God, I missed my brother. He was a pain in the ass—selfish and egotistical and sure of himself in a way that few people were—but he was also the sweetest and funniest kid I’d ever met. I could still remember when he’d come to us. He was the youngest child my parents had ever fostered. My mom and dad had always chosen to take the harder cases and the older kids no one else wanted, but for some reason they’d agreed to take Henry, even though he’d completely upended their life in a way they weren’t used to. Taking care of a two-year-old was very different from taking care of an older child, but they’d figured it out quickly.
I’d been leery of the tiny blond kid at first. I’d been nervous that I’d trip over him, or I’d accidentally leave my new pocketknife somewhere he could find it, or he’d choke on something and die while I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him. I hadn’t been able to keep my distance for long, though. He’d just been so damn cute. His haircut was some ridiculous form of a mullet and one of his front teeth was missing because someone had knocked it out, but he’d had the biggest smile I’d ever seen and he talked a mile a minute in a language no one understood. For a long time I’d thought he was speaking Russian or something, but when I was older my mom had laughed and assured me that whatever he’d been saying for the first few months he was with us was complete gibberish.
It took less than two years before Henry became a permanent part of our family. By the time he left for kindergarten, his last name was Harris just like mine. And, just like me, he had an Iron Man backpack and a pair of high-top sneakers my parents could barely afford, and the same lines shaved into the sides of his fine blond hair. It didn’t matter how different we looked; my little brother had wanted to be a mini version of me for his first few years of grade school.
I clenched my jaw and shook my head, trying to ignore the memories that would stop me from getting anything done except maybe lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling. I’d done enough of that already. For the first few weeks after Henry’s death, I’d barely felt able to function. My brother had been away for years in the Marines, but at least I’d known he was somewhere in the world, laughing and using cheesy pickup lines that always seemed to work because the jackass was so damned good-looking. I’d known he was just a phone call or a plane ride away. Once he was gone, it was like a giant hole opened up inside me, and it sucked the air out of my lungs until I couldn’t breathe without pain. Losing Henry had caused a physical ache in my chest that was so bad I’d gone to the doctor to have it checked.