The Suit My Brother Left Behind

The folder

On the bus I opened the prep folder a guy named Kyle had pressed on me two days earlier.

Kyle was one of Trent’s buddies from the bar. He had come around all friendly, said he had a cousin who did contract work for Cornerstone, said he had gotten his hands on the numbers they would grill me about, said he wanted to help me out for old times’ sake.

For about ten minutes on that bus I almost believed him.

Then I actually read the numbers.

Wrong.

Not a little wrong. Not a rounding here or there. The loss ratios were flipped. The reserve figures were upside down. The whole strategy he told me to memorize would have made me sound like a man who had never opened a book on the subject in his life. If I had walked in and recited what was in that folder, I would have talked myself out of the job inside of five minutes and never known why.

I closed it slow.

Then I remembered a photo I had thumbed past on my phone the night before without thinking about it. Trent and Kyle at the bar. Two whiskey glasses lifted. Both of them grinning at the camera. Celebrating something.

Celebrating early.

My brother had not just mocked me at the crosswalk.

He had tried to sink me before I ever reached the water.

At the next stop I stood up, walked to the front of the bus, and dropped Kyle’s folder into the trash can by the driver’s seat.

I did not need their numbers.

I had my own, and I had earned every one of them.