“The last time I saw my brother,” she said, breaking a long silence, “we had a rare argument. Mitch and I had rented a place in the Hamptons for a weekend with Toby and Jenny, two weeks before Toby died. Mitch was asleep on the beach—well, passed out, I should say. Jenny had gone to shower, and Toby asked me to take a walk with him. We went down to the water and walked along the shore, talking about law school and his job and his and Jenny’s wedding, which was a month and a half away. And then he told me he had something he’d wanted to say for a while by then—that I could do better than Mitch.” She paused before she continued. “I was so angry with him for saying that, for putting those thoughts in my head, because he knew how important his opinion was to me. I was more furious with him that day than I’d ever been before. I’d gone out of my way to make Jenny feel welcome in our family, which was certainly no hardship. I loved her from the first time I met her, and I thought he owed me the same courtesy.”

Slim continued to stroke her arm as he listened to her, watching over her as she shared her pain with him.

“I’d just moved in with Mitch and had made this huge commitment to him, and here was my brother, my best friend, the most important person in my life, telling me I’d made a mistake.”

“Did he know you were pissed?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said with a laugh. “He knew. I walked away from him, and he ran after me. When he caught up, he took me by the arm to keep me from storming off again. He said, ‘Mitch is not a bad guy, but you can do better. Don’t settle for him, Erin. Hold out for something better.’”

“Yikes. That must’ve gone over like a fart in church.”

She smiled at his choice of words. “You could say that. Things were tense between us for the rest of the weekend. Mitch asked me what was up. Jenny asked. But I never told them, and I don’t think he did either. And when it came time to leave on Sunday, he hugged me, told me he loved me best of all and that he didn’t want me to leave mad. I said if he didn’t want me to be mad, he should’ve kept his opinions to himself.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He laughed and hugged me again as tight as he had in years, and he said, ‘Someday, you’ll know exactly what I mean, and you’ll thank me.’”

“Cocky bastard, huh?” Slim said, grinning.