“Not once, in all those years.”

Martha’s hands stopped over the buttons.

The back door opened with the complaint it always made, the one that never latched.

Brandon came through the kitchen with a stack of contractor flyers under his arm and stopped at the edge of the rug.

“Nobody told me there was a meeting.”

“It isn’t a meeting,” David said.

Brandon walked past him, set the flyers on the coffee table, and picked up the bank folder from the side table without breaking stride.

One motion.