He put the glass down. “He’d been threatening me with it for two years, but I was always too busy.”
“Threatening?”
He gave a faint smile. “Red and I were very—different.”
“Red?”
“His name was Lance, but everyone called him Red because if there was danger to be found, that’s where you’d find my brother. I was the serious one. Tech addicted, focused, driven. He was a laid-back cool surfer dude. He loved water. I hate water. When we were teenagers, I built a surfing game that I could play from my bedroom so that we could connect—it was our joke. That I managed to find a way to surf on dry land, while he was out there doing the real thing.” He stared into the glass of water. “I used to ask him when he was going to do something serious with his life, and he always told me that serious was overrated and that looking at me made him realize he’d made all the right choices. He thought my life was insane. I felt the same way about his. Despite that, we were close. That probably sounds unlikely to you.”
“No. One life does not fit all, a bit like clothes. Just because you’re wearing something I wouldn’t wear, doesn’t mean I don’t think you look good.”
He smiled. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”
Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? Just because her decisions seemed bad to her family, didn’t mean they were bad. For some reason she didn’t understand she was programmed to believe her family were right in all things.
She forced her attention back to Josh. “Is that why you’re hitchhiking? You’re wearing his clothes? Doing it his way?”
“In a way. He said I’d forgotten how to connect with real life. He wasn’t right, but still—” He let go of her hand. “He died in a surfing accident, which is exactly how he would have chosen to go. It’s been two years, and I miss him every day.”
He’d been traveling the road alone, thinking of his brother. Missing his brother.
She’d been thinking that he had life all figured out, and he didn’t have it figured out at all.
“I think it’s great that you’re doing this trip. It’s the perfect way to honor him and remember him.” Martha felt her throat thicken. “What was on his list? What would he have talked you into doing?”
Josh sat back in his chair and smiled. “You’re right—we would have wanted to do different things. I would have tried to drag him to museums and places that highlight the history of the road. He would have been using my credit card to book an expensive river rafting trip. I would have complained the whole time.”
She made a mental note to research it. She was going to make him do something he would have done with his brother.
“Do you have a photo of him?”
He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “This one was taken when he visited me at my offices. It was one of the few days when I was wearing a suit. He wouldn’t let me forget it, even though I’m usually in jeans.” He pushed it across the table. “He joked that he wore his only clean shirt.”
Martha picked it up and saw a smiling man with shaggy blond hair and a wicked smile. “You’re alike.”
“We’re nothing alike, Martha. Apart from my aversion to water, he’s vegan and I’d drive seven hours for a decent steak. He can name every breed of shark, and I can build a computer from scratch. I don’t think there’s a single area where our tastes aligned. And I’m doing it again—talking about him as if he’s still here.” He paused, emotion close to the surface and she felt a stab of sympathy. She’d done the same thing herself, many times.
“I’m not talking about what you enjoy, or the way you’re dressed. But you have the same smile. And eyes.”
“That’s what you see when you look at that photo?”
She saw love.
And pride, in both their eyes. But maybe this wasn’t the time to say that. “I see brothers.” Sadness punched through her. She didn’t have a single photo like this one with her sister. Josh and his brother looked comfortable together. She and Pippa had never willingly appeared in a photo together. They’d never been comfortable together. Maybe she should stop trying to fix that and accept that it was the way it was. “Do you have more?”
He flicked through his wallet and pulled out a couple more. “These were taken when he took me surfing. He joked that the ocean was his office. I was never sporty. I can fix your laptop but don’t ever ask me to catch a ball or a wave.”
And yet he’d gone surfing with his brother. And he lit up when he talked about him.
She handed the photos back. “You had fun.”
“Spending time with him was fun, although I would have chosen to spend it on dry land. I wish I’d done it more often. I wish I’d spent less time fixated on work and more time having fun with Red. I’m not big on life advice, but if I were to give some it would be ‘do it now, because there may not be a tomorrow’.”
And now she understood why he’d reacted so strongly to their conversation about success. His success was a wound. He was being tortured by every moment he’d spent at work and not with his brother.
She could see the regret in his eyes. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.” He put the photos back in his pocket.
“I don’t pretend to understand what you do, but it does seem to me that you love it. It’s your passion, yes?”
“Yes. Since I was a kid. I was as crazy about my computer as my brother was about his surfboard. I had as much fun with my virtual surfing game as he did with the real thing.”
She sipped her water. “You both followed your passion. It wasn’t as if you’d gone down the route you chose because you were chasing money, or corporate success—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Money is a necessity, that’s a fact. But the point is you loved the job. So did he. You were both doing what you loved. You said you had nothing in common, but you had that. I don’t claim to know much about anything, but doing what you love is the very definition of a life well lived, surely? That’s the success I see, not the money. And I think that’s something to be proud of, not a cause for regret.”
He was silent for a long moment. “You’re wise, do you know that?”
“No. Usually I’m told I know nothing about real life.”
“I think you know a lot more about life than you think, Martha. Maybe you should spend less time listening to other people and listen to yourself.”
Kathleen had said the same thing.
She put her glass down. Did she have the confidence to do that? Ignore the people around her, and follow her own instincts?