Best Friend's Brother #3 (Best Friend's Brother Romance Series - Book #3) Read Free

floor. She wiped up
the spots the coffee had reached but she stayed down there like that, looking
down at the floor for way too long. “You need help up old lady?” I asked her.
Before Emma died, she and I used to joke about her turning forty-five and how I
was going to put her in a home soon. It was funny then, because she always
seemed so young to me. Looking at her now, it was like Emma’s death had taken decades off her life. I sadly realized it wasn’t funny
any longer. She finally pushed herself up and said, “Thank you. Have you eaten?”
    “No, you want me to run and get us something?” I
usually brought them something but I’d been so damned distracted today. “Is Dad
at work?”
    “No, he’s here somewhere. He’s probably out in the
shop in the backyard. That’s where I keep finding him.”
    “He didn’t go to work? Is he okay?” I knew when Dad
didn’t go to work it meant he was having one of his bad days.
    She shrugged. “He won’t talk to me about how he’s
feeling. I think he’s getting a little tired of me talking to him so he spends
all of his time out there, avoiding me.”
    “I’m sure he’s not avoiding you Mom. He probably
just needs to grieve his own way.”
    She nodded and   said , “I’m going to fix you something
to eat.”
    “I don’t mind grabbing something and bringing it
back…”
    “Nonsense! I have groceries; I can cook for my son. What do you want?”
    “Whatever you have is fine,” I told her. I wasn’t really
even hungry, but she seemed to need something to do. “If you insist on cooking,
I’ll go out back and see Dad until it’s ready…unless you need any help?”
    “No, you go on,” she said kissing me on the cheek.
“Maybe you can snap him out of his funk.”
    I doubted it. I could barely manage my own. I made
my way out to the backyard and the little shop my dad built there. He liked to
make things out of wood so he’d built the shop when I was in high school. For a
few years there I think he was too wrapped up in my crap to find time to work
in it. When I finally got my shit together though and he had more time and less
stress, he started making some pretty cool stuff. He’d made a welcome sign for
the front of the house and some bird feeders that he put in the trees out
front. He had built a bookshelf for Emma’s room and I had an end table at my
place that he’d made for me.
    I could hear the circular saw running when I got
close. I looked in the small window to make sure he wasn’t near the door with
it before I went in. What I saw nearly made me turn around and leave and keep
going. That weight was back on my chest and crushing down even heavier now. He
had a wooden sign he’d made for my sister. He showed it to me a few weeks
before she died. It was for her dorm room and he’d put her name on it and
burned flowers into it. He was planning on giving it to her when she came home
for winter break. Now he was cutting it up into little pieces. It looked like
he was trying to make mulch out of it as he fed it through the saw over and
over again. The worst part was that he was sobbing as he did it. In twenty-two
years, until my sister died I‘d never seen him cry. I still wasn’t used to it.
I stood there, battling with myself. Did he need me to go in there, or did he
want to be left alone? I didn’t have to wonder too long before there was a big
crash in the kitchen. I had to go check on Mom. I went running into the house and
I found my mother sitting in the floor, surrounded by spaghetti noodles and an
upside down pot. There was water all over the floor around her.
    “Mom! Are you okay? What happened?” I knelt down to feel the water
with my hand and make sure it wasn’t hot. It wasn’t, thank God. She was
sobbing again. “Mom?”
    She finally looked up at me. Her eyes were so
swollen it looked like she could barely see out of them. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I can’t do anything right anymore.”
    “Oh Mom,” I sat all the