Loving The Man I Should Hate

A gate on a hoist was tampered with to keep a concrete pour on schedule. My brother fell. He has not walked since.

Three days later the lawyers came to our kitchen. My mother signed. We may say he was hurt. We may not say how. If we ever say how, the money comes back, and it does not die with her.

So I applied for a job at the firm that did it, under my own name, off an advertisement, and I got it on merit. In my third month he asked me to clear the old file room. I found the report typed on the morning my brother fell, with the cause in plain words. I photographed it and put it back, so nothing would be missing and my window would never close.

That was nineteen months ago. I still have it.

Here is what nobody warned me about. Everything I would do to ruin that man is exactly what I would do if I loved him. Notice when he does not eat. Keep his daughter safe. Stand between him and every bad morning. There is no moment where I slip, because there is nothing to slip at. I keep a diary in two inks, black for business and blue for everything else, and the blue is most of it now, and I did not notice that happening.

Then I found the second thing. For two years he has been secretly paying for my brother's chair, his bathroom, the woman who comes on a Thursday, through a fund built so my mother can never learn who to thank.

He has bought everything that can be bought. He has never once said my brother's name out loud.

So do not ask whether I hate him. Ask what I am going to do about the one thing money cannot buy.