By Sorbus
“So, you have 4 brothers? No other family? Parents?” He turned off the stove, after giving the food a quick check with a meat thermometer. I saw now why he didn’t let anybody use his kitchen. He didn’t just ‘cook’ food, and saying he ‘prepared’ it was also an understatement. This man could have been, should have been a chef! He’d had to pause his culinary performance twice, snapping his fingers to get me to refocus and continue when I’d trailed off because I’d been enraptured by his skills. His cooking had literally been on fire- in a good way- when he deglazed the pan with a red wine from a bottle written only in French.
“No, Sir,” I replied, my restraints only allowing half a shrug. “Killed in a car crash a month after I graduated high school. It’s almost a 10-year gap between me and the brother just older than me, I, uh, was a ‘surprise’ baby. My brothers sold the house and split the money between us. They were kind enough to give me mom’s brand-new car- they even paid it off for me. Of course, they used a big chunk of the house money I would have gotten to do that. And my oldest brother was both executor and lawyer So. . . uh, yeah?”
