My Brother's Best Friend

by Nikki Chase

  “Bertha Jones?” I ask.

  “Yes, dear. That’s me.” She pulls me into a hug and continues to cry into my chest, her tears soaking into my shirt.

  “Can we sit down somewhere and talk?”

  “Of course.” Bertha sniffles as she pulls away, her hands remaining on my arms. “You’re such a big, handsome man now.”

  I give her a polite smile. I still have no idea what’s happening so it’s probably best to say nothing for now.

  “And who’s this lovely young lady?” Bertha asks, shifting her attention to Daisy, who’s been standing awkwardly behind me on the porch.

  “Hi, I’m Daisy.”

  “Very nice to meet you, dear. Come in.”

  The little bun of silver hair on Bertha’s head bobs up and down as she walks in front of me. A sweet smell fills the entire house. Laughter, shrieks, and conversation drifts out from the kitchen, where I see three adults and two kids making a mess on the stone counter.

  “We’re baking,” Bertha says. “I would’ve made the cupcakes last night if I knew you were coming, so you could have some now.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The hallway opens into a living room with a couple of couches, where she tells us to sit.

  “What brings you here?” Sitting beside me, Bertha fixes her sparkling blue eyes on me, her face excited and impassioned.

  “My father wanted me to see you—”

  “Oh!” Bertha raises her hands to cover her mouth and her eyes start to water again. “How is Robbie doing?”

  Robbie? Just how close are they?

  “He’s doing okay. He’s been having some minor health problems, but the doctors say that’s normal for his age.”

  “Oh, I’m really glad to hear that.” She seems genuinely pleased by the news, which means they really haven’t connected with each other for a long time. So she’s not one of Pop’s recent lovers.

  “He says he wants to see you, but he understands if you don’t.” I repeat my Pop’s message, word for word. It seems important to him that I relay this message accurately.

  “Of course I want to see him,” Bertha replies quickly. “All this time I thought he didn’t want to see me.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. How do you know each other?” If Pop’s not going to tell me, I can at least find out from Bertha.

  “He hasn’t told you?” Bertha furrows her brows.

  “I don’t know what he’s supposed to have told me.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “He said it’ll be clear when I see you.”

  “Oh, dear,” she repeats. She takes my hand and sandwiches it between both her hands. She scoots forward and angles her body to the side toward me. “I suppose that means he wants me to be the one to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Caine.” Bertha takes a big breath and holds it in for a few seconds before exhaling. She hesitates. Her eyes, which are still looking intensely at me, look troubled. “I don’t know how to say this, so I suppose I’ll just tell you the whole story from the beginning.”

  “Please do,” I say, gripped by curiosity.

  “Your father and I… We used to… We used to see each other,” she says.

  So they were lovers, after all.

  Bertha swallows, then continues, “That was thirty-six years ago.”

  My heart starts to beat faster. No. She can’t mean…

  I frown and look deep into her eyes, searching for truth. There’s no guile in those eyes. This is a good, honest woman. She’s not lying, and she knows exactly how I’d interpret her words.

  “You mean…when my mother was still alive and married to him?”

  “Yes,” she says with pain and regret in her voice.

  I expected her answer, but I’m still taken aback. Maybe my parents didn’t have the best marriage, or the warmest relationship, but I never came across any indication that he’d cheated on her.

  “I didn’t know he was married, though. Not in the beginning, at least. Not until it was too late,” she adds.

  “What do you mean by ‘too late’?” I can already guess her answer. Deep down, I already know. I’ve had my suspicions for as long as I can remember.

  “Well, it was too late when I got pregnant, dear. With you.”

  She looks up at me with concern in her eyes, searching my face for signs of shock, or distress, or something. But I’ve trained myself to put on a good poker face.

  “I’m your biological mother. I gave birth to you,” she says, making sure I understand.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go.” The words glide out of my mouth without even thinking.

  I get up and quickly follow the path we took coming in, before this crazy revelation. Bertha calls my name from somewhere behind me, but her voice grows fainter and fainter.

  This is crazy. Too crazy to be true. She must be crazy.

  Pop didn’t send me here so Bertha Jones can tell me she’s my biological mother. This must be some kind of a joke.

  With my heart racing, I walk out the front door and slam it behind me. I get into the rental car and drive away.

  I don’t even know where I’m going.

  Daisy

  I get up from the couch as Caine takes long strides with his long legs. Bertha chases after him down the hallway, but he’s already out the door before she catches up to him.

  I should probably leave, too. I don’t have any money, although the ticket for the return flight is already in my shoulder bag.

  I hurry out the door, only to see the black rental SUV speed down the street. That self-centered jerk! He’s just leaving me here all alone, with no money, after that dramatic scene?

  “Oh, no.” Bertha is right behind me, standing in the doorway with tears running down her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” I quickly put my arm around her plump shoulders and rub her back. “He can be…difficult.” I choose my words carefully. Although Bertha didn’t raise Caine, she’s still his mom and she probably wouldn’t appreciate me saying anything bad about Caine.

  “I should’ve tried to soften the blow,” she says between sobs. “I knew I should’ve said it differently. I should’ve known exactly what to say. I’ve had more than thirty years to practice.”

  Bertha pulls out a piece of tissue from the little pouch in her floral apron and blows her nose. It’s weird that she’d keep tissue in there, but this is not the time for an interview on her hygiene habits.

  “And I did,” she continues rambling. “I practiced so much. When I was alone, trying to sleep, I’d be thinking of the moment I’d finally get to see him. I’d imagine how the meeting would go. It never ends up like this in my imagination.”

  “I’m sure this is not the end.” I say the first consoling thing that comes to my mind. “He’ll come around.”

  “You think so?” She looks at me, eyes brimming with tears and hope.

  “Yeah.” I try to sound confident, but I have no idea what Caine will do next. I seem to have succeeded in making Bertha feel better, though. She wipes away her tears and gives me a grateful smile.

  Caine is complicated, to say the least. He’s a dickhead to everybody except for his family. When it comes to his father, I’ve seen firsthand just how far he’s willing to go, how much he’s willing to sacrifice.

  I just have no idea if he’ll ever accept Bertha as part of his family. It’s possible he’ll begrudgingly maintain some kind of connection with her if his father insists on it, but a genuine relationship might be a bit of a stretch. Either way, anything’s better than this.

  “Maybe we should just go inside and wait. He’ll probably come back for you, dear,” Bertha says.

  “I don’t think he will.”

  “What kind of a man would leave a lovely girl like you stranded on her own?”

  I’ve asked myself multiple times what kind of a man would do all the things Caine has done to me. There’s no e
nd to this line of thinking, so I steer the conversation toward more practical matters.

  “I have the ticket for the flight back to San Francisco. It just seems like I left my wallet in the car, so could I borrow some money for the cab fare? I’ll pay you back through PayPal or a bank transfer as soon as I get home.”

  “Oh, you’re not staying in town?”

  “No, we bought return tickets so we could fly back this afternoon.”

  “I’ll drive you to the airport myself, dear.” Bertha pauses, thinking. When she opens her mouth again, there’s a mischievous gleam in her kind eyes. She says, “On second thought, I’ll fly back with you. That way he’ll be stuck with me in the same plane.”

  Bertha and Caine may not have met before today, but I can already see some resemblance between them.

  “He’s going to show up, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeat the same answer I’ve given her multiple times over the last few hours.

  This idea to get Caine in the same plane, just to trap him in an enclosed space for an uninterrupted conversation, is looking worse and worse. Here we are, sitting side by side on the bench by the gate in the airport, waiting for Caine to show up, with only five minutes left to the boarding time.

  “You don’t remember his phone number, dear?” Bertha asks for the seventeenth time. She seems to have missed the fact that I grew up with the cell phone and have never had to memorize a single phone number.

  “No, Bertha.”

  “You don’t have Robbie’s phone number, either?”

  “No.” I didn’t even know who Robbie was until I asked her ten minutes ago, so how am I supposed to know how to call him?

  “You’ve never met Robbie?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I thought Caine’s fiancée would have at least met his father.”

  “You have the wrong idea about me. I’m not Caine’s fiancée.” I frown. Where did she even get the idea that we’re engaged?

  “Oh, you’re not? I thought it was strange that you’re not wearing a ring, but I hear many couples these days get matching tattoos instead. Weddings aren’t as traditional as they used to be back in my day.”

  “Right.” I grin, amused by the idea of Caine getting inked. That arrogant control freak, letting another man put a permanent mark on his body? I really don’t see that happening.

  “I’m surprised Caine’s fiancée doesn’t mind him traveling with a pretty young girl like you,” Bertha says. “I keep up with the news about Caine, you know.

  “I was happy when I read that he got engaged a few months ago, but the article didn’t come with a picture. I really want to meet her. Her name starts with a D, if I’m not mistaken, so I thought it was you, Daisy. I think her name is Dana? Diana? Something like that.”

  “I don’t know her,” I say, shrugging and forcing a smile on my lips. I look into the distance as multiple contradictory emotions war inside me.

  Caine is engaged to someone else?

  My heart sinks. My whole body feels cold as I imagine him with another woman in his arms, moaning underneath his sculpted body as they fuck. A lump forms in my throat—try as I might to swallow it down, it stays.

  Why should I care?

  Maybe they have an open relationship, or some kind of an agreement. I’m not necessarily breaking apart any relationship by sleeping with him. This is a totally different situation from my mom and her married boyfriends.

  I mean, we just have a business arrangement. We literally have a contract.

  This is not romantic. Even the sex that we have is not slow and sweet like it is in chick flicks. When we fuck, it’s raw, primal, animalistic. It’s pure lust; not love.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have given him up,” Bertha says, snapping me back to the present. She looks like she’s about to cry again. “Now he’s a stranger and he doesn’t even want to talk to me.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  “I did. But what kind of a mother just gives her child up? There’s no excuse good enough.” A lone tear rolls down her cheek—the first of many more tears, it seems like.

  I rub her arm quietly, having run out of comforting words to say.

  “I was so young.” Her blank stare tells me she’s traveling back in time, remembering what happened in that defining moment in her life. “I had no money, I still had to go to school, I wanted to work. My parents were telling me to take the deal Robbie’s family was offering so I could get my life back.

  “They wanted me to give up the baby, you see. They told me they would pay for me to sign away my rights. And I did, in the end, but it wasn’t because of the money. Not really.

  “I wanted Caine to have the best upbringing he could have, the best education and opportunities. I suppose that’s somewhat related to money, but it was for his benefit, you see. I wanted what was best for my baby.

  “My parents were right. I was young, inexperienced. I had no idea what I’d be getting into, and having to raise a child would’ve crippled my education, and my career.” Slowly, the corners of Bertha’s lips curl up and a wry smile appears on her face. “Ironically, I became a housewife and never had a grown-up job.

  “And there was also that bastard, Nathan.” Bertha’s voice takes on an angry quality. “Even knowing all the challenges that I was facing, I still wanted to do it. I still wanted to raise the baby myself. Until Nathan came and blackmailed me into giving up the baby.

  “He said he was going to kill me and my whole family so the baby would fall into the hands of Robbie’s family anyway. I believed him. Wouldn’t you? The Foster family was notorious back in those days. They could’ve killed my whole family and the cops wouldn’t have even batted an eyelid.”

  My eyes grow wider and wider the longer I listen to Bertha’s story. I study her face. She hasn’t told a lie. Everything she has said is the truth, even if it sounds crazy.

  As we board the plane, I give Bertha my boarding pass. I tell her to take my big, cushy seat in the business class while I slink back to the coach section.

  After the day—no, the life—she’s had, she deserves a little reprieve. Maybe some premium in-flight entertainment and free-flowing booze would help cheer her up.

  Besides, as nice as she is, I’m ready to be by myself and enjoy some peace and quiet for a few hours.

  Daisy

  When Caine walks into the apartment the next morning, his eyes are bloodshot, his normally impeccable suit creased and stained.

  “Where have you been?” I ask from the couch in the living room, where I spent the entire night, waiting for him, worrying about him.

  “Denver,” he says, chuckling humorlessly.

  “Yeah, Denver, where you left me alone with no means of getting to the airport.”

  “You’re a big girl, aren't you? You can take care of yourself. That's what you want everyone to know, right?”

  I flinch. He's hitting me where it hurts. I brace myself, knowing he's not done.

  “A big girl with $125,000 in your bank account. Yeah, you can take care of yourself.”

  I know he's just lashing out because he's hurt, like a wild animal with one paw caught in a trap, trying to bite the hands that are only trying to help him. Suspicious. He's trying to hurt me before I can hurt him, treating me like a villain in fear—no, anticipation—of the day when I’ll inevitably turn on him.

  “Bertha was waiting for you last night,” I say softly.

  “Here?” He frowns and stares at me incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “What, you’re on her side now? You're best friends forever?”

  “No,” I say as calmly as I can. “There are no sides here. There's just a mother who wants to make a connection with her son.”

  “And you brought her here? I never said that was okay.” He stalks toward me now, anger in his eyes.

  “You never told me not to bring her here either. And it's not like I could've called you to ask. You w
eren't around to call the shots, so don't blame me for doing what I had to do.”

  “You’re right,” Caine says with a resigned sigh, to my surprise, the angry flame in his eyes snuffed out.

  Where is his barrage of arrogance and rudeness? Where are his biting words?

  Instead of fighting back, Caine collapses onto the couch next to me, looking like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  “It doesn't matter,” he says with his eyes closed, as if shielding himself from everything. He leans his head over the back of the couch. “Everything is a lie anyway. It's all just one big joke.”

  My heart clenches. Of course. How could I not see how Caine would be affected by this?

  What I saw was a woman who, like me, found herself in an impossible situation and had to improvise. Bertha made choices she never wanted to make.

  But, to Caine, it was betrayal.

  He's already been let down by everyone else to the point where all he has is his family. And he's just learned that even his own family has been deceiving him his whole life.

  I inch closer to him, scared of what this injured beast can do to me in his unstable state, yet yearning to bring him some measure of relief regardless.

  With my heart pounding in my tightened chest, I reach out my hand and touch his head lightly. When he remains still, I stroke his golden hair, combing it with my fingers. He lets out a big sigh, then another.

  When he opens his eyes, he stares at me with muted blue eyes. They're beautiful as always, but this morning there's a vulnerability in them that makes me want to take him in my arms and comfort him, even if he ends up tearing me to pieces.

  So I do. I wrap my arms around him, knowing full well how dangerous it can be.

  He feels as warm as usual, his body is as hard as usual, but I feel something soft within him, too. His tough shell is cracking, and he's letting me stay and be an audience to this rare occasion. I realize what a privilege it is to see this side of him.