“Mom,” Joe interrupted. “Leave him alone. Nate’s not interested.”
“Let him tell me that.”
“Nate’s not interested.” Nathan parroted his brother’s clipped baritone.
“Listen to him, Sofia.” Nathan’s father appeared by the doors of the dining room. “He clearly wants nothing to do with the company.”
Beto cast a shadow over their mood in his black suit and bloodred pocket square. He was tall and broad, like his sons, but with dark eyes, unlike the golden-brown color they’d inherited from Sofia. When Nathan learned about black holes in school, how nothing escapes them, not even light, he pictured Beto’s eyes, placid as midnight, absorbing his excuses for a bad grade with the apathy of a gravitational pull.
Zara had it wrong. If Nathan’s family were cast in a movie, his mother would be the critical mentor who was impressed only if you saved the world. Joe was the hero who walked into a zombie apocalypse, inspiring hope in everyone that they would make it out alive. But Beto was the real villain, and not the easily defeated kind who monologued while you reloaded a gun. He was sinister like a shadow, the devil that struck as soon as you forgot he was there.
Nathan liked to think of himself as the comic relief, but in reality, he was an expendable bit player who was too sensitive and emotional to survive till the end. As a kid, Nathan was quick to shed tears or have emotional outbursts. After Joe read him Where the Wild Things Are, it gave him nightmares for weeks. Even now, he could recall the terror that seized his five-year-old chest when Beto yanked the night-light from his wall, grumbling, “There are better things to be afraid of.”
Joe tried coping with the pressure of being Beto’s favorite by having modes he switched on and off like a computer. Big brother mode was the annoying, overprotective know-it-all who was obsessed with collared shirts. The Apollo mode made him the charming boyfriend who convinced Zara he’d make a good husband, even though he showed up late for his own wedding. Finally, there was the workaholic: the version of his brother who only left the office to yell at someone else for leaving work early. That mode put everything else on the back burner. Eating. Sleeping. Family. If it stayed on too long, it was almost impossible to turn off. Beto liked that mode the most.
Twelve years ago, Joe pushed himself so hard, for so long, that his body finally gave out. Nathan was fourteen when he had found his brother slumped on the floor of his office, sweaty and pale, staring at a coffee cup he swore had been put there by their dead grandfather.
When Beto arrived at the hospital, his favorite son was sleeping off sedation, strapped to beeping machines, while his youngest son sobbed incoherently in the corner. Before the doctors explained that Joe had experienced anxiety-induced psychosis and sleep deprivation, Nathan could tell Beto blamed him for Joe’s condition. That was the type of father he was, a man who viewed his children through a lens of bitter cynicism instead of empathy.
Nathan was sent to boarding school on the same day his brother was checked into an inpatient program. Joe had reassured Nathan they’d both be fine. “I know this feels big, but it’s not. We’re going to do what we have to and shrink all of this down to nothing. Things will get better. You’ll see.”
Nathan thought Joe meant he was done working for their father. What he had really meant was that he would take medication and stop eating meat because it was better for his heart. Joe could work twenty-four hours a day, whittling himself down to nothing, and never be convinced it was enough. Not for the favorite. Not for Beto’s Apollo.
Eventually, Nathan learned how to face Beto without falling apart, particularly during lectures about the family business. His father was predictable. Years had passed but the insults never changed.
“You can’t force a grown man to respect his legacy,” Beto grumbled, his eyes stubbornly fixed on Sofia. Criticizing Nathan directly would imply that his youngest son was present and visible, not a vague source of annoyance. “Particularly when it’s taken for granted.”
Joe moved closer to Nathan, ready to act as a human shield if necessary. “Come on, Dad, that’s not fair. Not everyone wants to pick apart coffee markets twenty-four hours a day.”
“Since when is work about want?” Beto punctuated his words by slapping his knuckles against his palm.
Nathan focused on a brass wall sconce and drained his voice of emotion. “It’s not the work I’m avoiding.”
“Same old excuses,” Beto sneered. “Repeating something doesn’t make it true.”