I Was His Waiting Room novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Brother

I didn't take his hand.

Not to be cruel. Because I'd stopped shaking hands with people who wanted something before they'd said what it was.

He let it hang there a second, then put it in his pocket with the coin.

"Fair," he said.

"Bren," Niall said again. "Car. Now."

"I'm thirty-one, Niall. You don't get to send me to the car."

"I do when you walk into a woman's business and ask her to fight your war."

"It's not my war. It's yours. You wrote the terms."

The saws had stopped. Five men in matching sweatshirts suddenly found the ceiling very interesting.

Kerry leaned toward me.

"Are we watching this?" she whispered. "Should I make popcorn?"

"We don't have popcorn."

"I have liver treats."

I stepped between the brothers before Niall could answer.

"Upstairs," I said. "Both of you. My crew's on the clock."

"They're my crew," Niall said.

"I'm paying for them. They're mine till Tuesday."

The old bunk room was up a steel staircase. It still had the brass pole, the hole in the floor boarded over with plywood.

Somebody, forty years ago, had written FIREHOUSE CHILI RULES on the wall in marker.

Brendan sat on an upturned bucket.

Niall stood by the window with his arms crossed, as far from the pole hole as he could get.

I leaned on the wall and waited.

Brendan rolled the coin across his knuckles.

"I was driving," he said. "I'd had six drinks at a bar on Charles Street. I'd had more before that. She said she was fine to ride. I said I was fine to drive. We were both lying."

He didn't look at his brother.

"I don't remember the guardrail. I remember the airbag, and her screaming, and then not screaming. That was worse."

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