Aurora(50)

He slowed to a crawl on Cayuga, checked the street addresses, and turned into Aubrey Wheeler’s driveway, careful not to bottom out on the crack in the sidewalk. He’d made it fifteen hundred miles without incident this time, and the last thing he needed was to crack an axle in the last twenty feet. Brady put the car in park, put his hands atop the wheel, and said a quick prayer of thanks to Saint Christopher and the BMW, which had never given him a moment’s trouble.



“I have to admit, this is not what I was expecting,” he said ten minutes later, sitting in the living room across from Aubrey. The blue duffel was on the coffee table between them, the center of attention and topic of conversation.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. You had a very long drive, and I don’t imagine it was easy.”

“I’m just not exactly sure what to do now,” he said. “You saying ‘No, thanks’ was not something I’d been led to believe was an option.”

“I can imagine. I tried to tell Thom, but he didn’t want to listen to me. Sometimes my brother can be a little, you know, obstinate.”

“Which is, no doubt, how he achieved all that he has,” Brady said, without particularly meaning it.

“No doubt,” Aubrey echoed. Shit, this one drank the Kool-Aid. “Can you just take the money back to him?” she asked. “I mean, stay here, spend the night, I don’t have a guest room, but you’re welcome to the couch. Head back whenever you want, and just, you know, return it to him. With my thanks.”

“That doesn’t seem like something that will be acceptable to Mr. Banning.”

“Well, you can’t make me keep something I don’t want, Mr.— Sorry, it’s Brady what?”

“Brady’s my last name, not first.”

She frowned, confused. “Thom calls you only by your last name?”

“I don’t think Mr. Banning knows my first name.”

Maybe not all of the Kool-Aid. “Can I ask your first name?”

“Patrick.”

“OK, look, Patrick. I’m going to propose something else. I want you to hear it all the way through, because you strike me as a certain kind of person, the kind who’s not interested in this sort of thing, and that’s great, but we’re all in the middle of some crazy shit right now and I really want you to consider this.”

Brady just looked at her. He had an idea where she was going, and she was right—he was not interested. “I’m not keeping the money,” he said.

“Now hang on, just wait. My brother and I are, well, it’s complicated, and you don’t need to be involved in it. I just don’t want his money, that’s all. You have a job to do, I can see that you care about it, and what I’m suggesting never has to go any further than just you and me. Keep the money, do what you will with it, and I’ll tell him that you gave it to me. That secret goes to our graves with us. Sounds good?”

Brady smiled, immensely uncomfortable. “I am grateful for the offer, but I’m already being paid for this.”

“Well, then you’ll be paid whatever you’re getting plus this much. How much is it, by the way? No, never mind, I don’t want to know. Just take it. Nobody will know.”

“I can’t. It’s meant for you.”

“OK. I get it. I accept it.” She reached out and made a show of pulling the bag a foot closer to her on the table. “Thank you, Patrick, you’ve delivered the money. Oh, wait a second, I don’t need this. I think I’d like to give it to a new friend.” She shoved the bag two feet away from her, so it was now squarely in front of him. She shrugged. “How’s that?”

“Ma’am, it is a very generous offer, and I do appreciate it. A corny thing is about to come out of my mouth, and I apologize for it in advance, but here it is anyway. You say nobody will know, but I’ll know. And my mother would know. I don’t know how, because she’s in her mid-eighties and doesn’t remember my name half the time, but something tells me the next time I saw her she’d take one look in my eyes and say, ‘Oh, Patrick, what have you done?’”

Aubrey laughed, and Brady smiled. “I’m not kidding, she’s like that. I promise you, I’m being paid very well for this job, what’s in that bag would just be, well, more, and in my experience, more money doesn’t mean more better. It just means more. Sometimes having more even creates a need for more that wasn’t there before. So, no, thank you. I’ll take you up on the offer of the couch, and if I could trouble you for a bit of dinner, I’d be grateful for that too. But then I’ll take the money and go back and do my best to make your brother understand that some people just want to make it under their own steam. Sounds good?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“May I ask a personal question, though?”

“This wasn’t personal yet?”

“Why won’t you take it? Really.”

She took a breath and looked away. “There’s only one person in the entire world that Thom owes anything to. Me. I guess I’d like to keep it that way.” She looked back at him. “Childish, right?”

Brady shrugged. “Well, you were children together.”

“Briefly.”

“Still. Things stick. I have a wealthy brother. He sends me a card with a hundred-dollar bill in it every year on my birthday. Drives me nuts. I make my own living.”