Page 77 of Neat
“You forget that I lost my career,” I pointed out.
“No, you didn’t,” Jordan said from where he stood. “You lost a promotion, but that’s all. And who knows, maybe Mallory will crash and burn and they’ll have no choice but to give the job to you.”
“Or to a rookie, since they seem hell bent on keeping Beckers out of leadership,” I argued.
“Maybe,” Jordan conceded with a shrug. “But, that’s the fight we all knew we’d be in, right? When Dad died, when that company covered it up and made it seem like an accident, even though we know there’s something more to it… we all agreed to keep Dad’s memory alive in this town, in our own ways. You and Noah and Mikey knew going into jobs at the distillery that it wouldn’t be easy, but you’re still there. And you’re going to tell me that because of one setback, you’re ready to quit? To leave it all behind?”
I blinked, shaking my head as my gaze fell to the chipping wood planks of the porch. “I don’t want to quit.”
“Then don’t.”
I nodded, letting their words settle over me. They were both right, of course — another annoying trait of the Becker family. When one of us lost our cool, we found it hard to see clearly, but the rest of the crew was always right there to help light the way back to rationality.
When we fell, we fell hard. When we loved, we loved with all we had. When we fought, we fought until we dropped. And when one of us was knocked down, the whole team stopped everything to get them back on their feet.
That was the Becker way.
I sighed, deciding in that moment that there was nothing more to say. Jordan was right, there was no way I was going to walk away from the distillery. If anything, I reckoned that was what Patrick wanted me to do — and I’d be damned if I’d give him what he wanted. I was there to stay — even if it would suffocate me to see Mallory in that job every day.
And as for what I felt for her, maybe Mikey was right about that. Maybe what I thought we had, what I desired from her, from us… maybe it didn’t actually exist. She had ties to her family, and I had ties to mine, and for that reason alone, it didn’t make sense that we would ever be together. I’d lived in the apartment above that shop with her in a secret hideaway, a place where we could pretend we were someone different, that what we had could last.
Now, we were back in the real world.
And it just was what it was.
I stared at the laptop in my hands, and my chest ached for a completely different reason. “There’s something else I need to tell you guys,” I said, looking up at both of them.
Their frowns mirrored each other as I opened my laptop again, and I swallowed, turning the screen toward them.
Jordan squinted at it. “Username: Becker dot John at Scooter Whiskey dot com,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. Are you trying to break into Dad’s old email?”
“I’m trying to break into his old laptop.”
Mikey leaned in closer. “But his laptop is gone,” he said. “They never recovered it from the fire.”
“They did,” I corrected. “They just never told us.”
My brothers watched me for a long moment before Mikey pulled the laptop into his hands, and Jordan watched over his shoulder while I told them the whole story. I told them about the storage closet, the laptop, how I’d extracted the hard drive, but it was password protected. I told them that I didn’t want to tell them at first, because I thought it was hopeless. But, I’d tried everything that I knew, and now, I needed their help trying to figure out the password.
“If we can get into it, maybe we can find something,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, but maybe…”
“Maybe there are answers,” Jordan finished, his eyes scanning the screen.
“Ky knows a little about hacking,” Mikey chimed in. “She’s big into gaming and computers, and one time she hacked into the school system and changed everyone’s grade to an A in Mr. Zee’s anatomy class because he was such a stickler and never taught us what was actually on our tests.”
“Oh shit, I remember that. Your sophomore year, right?” I asked
He nodded. “Maybe she can help.”
“Here,” I said, reaching for the laptop. I safely ejected the external hard drive that now housed the one that had been inside Dad’s computer and handed it to Mikey. “Take it. You guys can work on it for a while. I’ve been obsessing over it, anyway. Need a break.”
“Okay. We need to tell Noah, too.”
“I will,” I said. “As soon as he’s back. He’s happy right now, I want to let him have that.”
For a long pause, my brothers and I were quiet. I felt marginally better, though my chest was still tight. I figured it would be that way for a while, until time could do its work and heal me, my heart, my soul. It’d been that way when Dad passed away, too, and I’d survived.
If I could make it through that, I could make it through anything.
