Page 2 of Maybe
No, that wasn’t right. A hell of a lot had changed. To start, ten years had elapsed since Ezra’s last-ever row with our dad and the final time I’d seen him. He’d been a sophisticated eighteen to my hero-worshipping fourteen, and he’d sauntered out of the frontdoor and into the cold night without so much as a backwards glance. As though he hadn’t just informed our revered father, knighted for his leadership of worthy charitable causes, that he was thebiggest fucker of a charlatan ever born, he was the reason Ezra’s middle finger had been invented, and that the only reason he was a fucking heart surgeon was so that one day he’d work out how to fucking give himself one. Oh, and thathe hoped his next blowjob was from a shark.
Ezra always had a knack with words.
At the time, I’d stifled a laugh, not knowing that quarrel had been more serious than all the rest. That a decade would plod by before I saw him again. But, after a while, I stopped sitting on his bed and sniffing the old T-shirt hanging in the wardrobe. I stopped taking out the second-hand guitar he’d gifted me from under my own bed, plucking the few clumsy chords he’d taught me while imagining I looked and sounded as cool as Ezra did.
That immature confused teen was long gone. Surely Ezra no longer held any power over me?
Yet, when he casually strolled back into my life as if I hadn’t been waiting for him for over a decade and this posh solicitor hadn’t been kept waiting fifteen minutes, I might as well have been fourteen all over again, still dreaming of how that caustic tongue might feel against my own.
“Mr Fitz-Henry. Welcome, come and take a seat. I’m David Trethowan. How do you do?”
Ezra shook his hand, albeit briefly.
“And obviously, Isaac here needs no introduction.”
The full weight of Ezra’s dark gaze settled on mine. Underscored by twin stripes of black eyeliner, his sharp eyes roamed across my face, like he was storing up amusement for later. In much the manner they always had done, if the pillars of my memory held strong.
“I know Isaac,” he acknowledged softly.
I know Isaac.
My pre-rehearsed greeting swallow-dived. Oh God, I really shouldn’t have done this after a night shift. Thank goodness David Trethowan fussed around us, busy doing the polite stuff, as twenty-five-year-old Isaac silently congratulated innocent teenage Isaac on his good taste in men. Never mind the inconvenient detail that the man he was perving over was his brother.
Bluntly, Ezra looked good, really good. As irksomely good as I remembered. I pinched my thigh to remind myself there was more to life than well-applied eyeliner and an excellent set of cheekbones. Challenging, when confronted by Ezra’s. Not to mention his lush, smirking lips. What kind of pervert loser brother still wondered about the taste of those, ten years on?
I know Isaac?What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He’d spoken in the posh, lazy type of gay way he always had, raking those knowing eyes—dark as a lake—casually up and down my tired, anxious, oh-so-civilised façade. As if he could see right through it, as if he’d already filed away every single one of the so very wrong fantasies I harboured about him.
I didn’t even know if Ezra was gay. Conversations about sexuality only ever took place under our father’s roof in my head, involving me trying to talk myself out of mine. Ezra’s life beyond his visits home during his boarding school holidays could have taken place on Mars for all he shared it with us.
Ezra himself had never hinted either way, and today, I was none the wiser. Not unless he hid a pink mesh top underneath his grey overcoat, of the kind I used to dream of wearing but had never been brave enough because I wasn’t that kind of gay. Sadly, the collar revealed a plain grey woollen sweater.
“Seeing as we’re running a fraction late, let’s get on, shall we?” Making himself comfortable behind his solid desk, David regarded us over the top of his reading glasses.
“Thank you for coming, both of you. And can I start by saying how sorry I am for your loss. Your father’s death must have come as a great shock. I acted for Sir Henry for quite a number of years and considered him a friend.”
“Thank you,” I said, automatically.
Languidly, Ezra crossed one lean, denim-clad leg over the other, his expression neutral.
David turned to him. “Ezra. As I explained to Isaac.” He glanced down at his papers. “This meeting today isn’t a legal formality— as joint executors of Sir Fitz-Henry’s will, either myself or Isaac can do the first reading. Or we don’t actually have to do one at all and we can all read it for ourselves. Having said that, in practical terms, having us both here as we commence the process of probate and distributing his assets saves a lot of back and forth. And to bring you up to speed, neither Isaac nor I have had a chance to go over the nuts and bolts of it yet.”
He shuffled the bunch of documents. “I anticipate probate taking six to nine months, hopefully closer to six. We’re not expecting any surprises; Sir Henry kept his financial affairs in good order. He showed great prudence, too, and always assured me his children would be well provided for. We’ll start with the charitable bequests, shall we?”
Since his rise to fame, my father had trodden a canny path between acts of great benevolence and self-serving aggrandisement. Unsurprisingly, in death, he behaved no differently. Hence, as David outlined, several Malawian hospitals would benefit from his largesse, but only on the proviso his name was written in neon lights above every newly built ward. Working closely with my father’s favourite international charities, David assured us he would distribute the money equitably between them. Thank fuck; no way did I have the space in my life for that.
Especially as, with his next breath, David informed me I’d been appointed to oversee a trust much closer to home, supporting medical students and young doctors pursuing careers in cardiac surgery. “Seeing as you’re well on the way to becoming a cardiac surgeon yourself,” he explained, as though the Gods had decreed it. Next to me, Ezra shifted slightly. “A bursary to the brightest and best brains pushing the frontier forward.”
While David droned on in legalese, I dared a glance at Ezra. Heat rose up my neck as if, from one guarded look, my perverted schoolboy crush on my older brother would be embarrassingly obvious. Or, worse, Ezra himself would catch me staring and say something clever and cutting in that laconic way he used to have, though rarely directed at me.
Neither of those things happened. David continued to drone, and Ezra examined his fingernails, painted black and chipped. He wore several rings. One was a tarnished steel band with wolves prowling the rim, another a coiled snake, and another had two green stones set in it, like a pair of hungry eyes. A small tattoo of a playing card— the joker—adorned the knuckle of his middle finger. He looked bored, as though he was indulging us. As if he had somewhere else he’d rather be.
Me too, buddy.Principally, my bed.
I felt a flash of annoyance, not helped by twenty-four hours without sleep. Once upon a time, I’d thought we were friends. I thought he liked me. I was his brother, for fuck's sake! Despite our four-year age gap, we’d bonded over a shared antipathy towards that difficult man otherwise known as our father, even if only one of us inherited his uninspiring blocky features and medium height.
Ezra’s mother, whom I’d never had the fortune to meet for the hellish reason we never,evermentioned, must have been a willowy beauty.
“Now we come onto Sir Henry’s personal bequests.”
