Page 28 of Wintering with George

“Say something,” she finally snapped at her brother. “You’re the shrink.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked her, sounding so horrified, I snickered.

“What in the world can possibly be funny about any of this?” she railed at me.

“Sin,” Kurt scolded her, “George saved your kids.”

“Oh God,” she gasped, leaning forward and taking hold of my shoulder. “I’m so sorry and so grateful and⁠—”

“Screw that,” I said, turning to look at her. “Saving or no saving, I laughed at you wanting some input from the only person qualified to dispense advice in the whole car.”

“Yes,” she whispered, rubbing at her eyes.

I turned to look at Kurt’s profile. After a moment, he quickly glanced at me before his eyes returned to the road.

“What?” he asked.

“She wants you to say something profound.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“So go ahead. Let’s hear it.”

“I don’t dispense advice on command.”

I chuckled because he was all puffed up and bent out of shape. “All right, then, so this is what I think.” I took a breath. “I think Thom deserves to be super pissed at Brad for doing her thinkin’ for her like she’s not perfectly capable of figuring the ins and outs of her own goddamn business.”

“Yes. Exactly,” she agreed.

“But come on, Thom, the idea of selling houses you’ve only redecorated…” I grimaced. “You had to know that was crap.”

“I… In hindsight, yes.”

“And in fairness to Brad, it wasn’t your core business he was helping with. It was a new thing you were trying out that you were looking to him to make successful.”

“That’s absolutely correct,” Brad chimed in.

“You thought you were doing the right thing.”

“I did,” he stressed to me, then to his wife, “I really did.”

“And you, Thom, gave up oversight over your new business because you weren’t certain about it but went forward with it anyway.”

“That’s true.”

“It’s like you let Brad run with it because it was not in your wheelhouse.”

Kurt said, “And because you trusted him to make all the decisions on something that was not tested and might or might not be profitable, you sort of threw him in the deep end. He had all your hopes and dreams on his plate, plus the expectation of success.”

She sighed deeply. “That’s true too.”

“Your mistake, Brad,” Kurt continued, “was not telling her that the new business was not profitable.”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Instead of disappointing her, you overextended yourself and then had to cover the debt with loans from unscrupulous people.”

“Unscrupulous people?” I repeated with a snort of laughter.