“That’s actually a good point.” Brodie never talked about this shit with anyone, but since he’d started, he might as well go on. He picked up a plastic knife and tapped it on the table. “Sometimes I think…I just wish he could see us now. A lot has changed in the four years since he’s been gone. I think he’d be proud as hell of Will. To your point, my brother’s won more medals in freestyle skiing than anyone in the world, but it’s the way he dropped everything to raise our half-sister that would make my dad proud.” He gave her a smile. “So, yeah, you’re right about that.”

“Is it all right if I ask about your mother?”

“Sure. There’s not much to say, though. She hasn’t been in our lives in years.” He tapped the knife. “Which goes back to how I got injured in the first place. When I was nine, my brothers and I went night skiing. I messed up and had to get Life-Flighted to a hospital in Utah. Right after that, my mom took me to New York City for physical therapy. She never came back to Wyoming.”

She looked appalled. “Why not?”

“My mom’s a New Yorker. She met my dad at Stanford—a university in California. When they graduated, he hit it big in venture capital, and they lived the high life in San Francisco. But, after she kept popping out boys, my dad moved us back here, where he grew up. My mom hated it.”

“Okay, but her sons lived here.”

“She didn’t like us much.” It sounded weird to say it out loud. Parents were supposed to love their kids.

“That’s…I don’t even know what to say about that. She lost out on knowing some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.”

He sat forward. “But, see, that’s my point. We’re good people because of my dad. My mom had nothing to do with it.”

“Wait, so, what happened in New York? You obviously didn’t stay there.”

This was the part he hated thinking about. “Right after I got out of the hospital, she took me and my younger brothers there so I could get the right kind of therapy, and when she figured out she couldn’t handle us any better in the city than she had in the Tetons she sent us home.”

“Hang on. Will’s older, right?”

He nodded.

“So…you’re not saying she left him behind, are you?”

“Yeah.” He gave an awkward laugh. “It’s a pretty shitty story. From her perspective, Will was a hellion, and she couldn’t control him. From my dad’s perspective, she didn’t want to be a parent. She wanted Will, the oldest, to keep us in line. And when he didn’t, she got pissed.”