The Only Brother by Caias Ward Page B

for my last year of school. I knew that I’d probably end up staying in England with money being so tight, but I didn’t feel that I needed to flee the country any more anyway. I could stand being with my olds again, and they didn’t always wonder why I wasn’t part of the family.
    Buzz wanted a private place to meet me, away from my parents. Trevor had let me use his house for many things, from a private place for Caroline and me, to a mailing address for my contest entries. I had a key, so I just met Buzz there. Buzz wasn’t a drinker but he didn’t say anything about my pouring a pint from the tap.
    ‘So what’s the big secret, Buzz?’ I sprawled out on the sofa downstairs in the bar room.
    Buzz looked at me, exhausted. Exhausted for him, that is. Actually, he only seemed slightly tired for someone straight off a flight of six hours and still jet-lagged. He had stacks of papers in a bag, all differentkinds of documents and forms, and spread some of them out on the table.
    ‘It’s not a secret, Andrew.’ Buzz made some notes on a legal pad. ‘I just thought it best to let you know about what is going to happen, before we sit together with your parents to announce it all formally. I didn’t want to catch you off guard when it all comes out.’
    ‘Alright,’ I said, ‘so what’s going on?’
    ‘We read your brother’s will next week. Once we execute the will and it is certified, we can get money into the estate account, pay off the last of the bills, get money back to your parents and disburse the rest of the estate.’
    ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What does this have to do with me?’
    ‘Come here, Andrew.’
    I put my beer down and sat at the table. Buzz slid a document across the table to me,neatly folded in a textured envelope.
    ‘Last Will and Testament,’ I read from the envelope.
    ‘Read it,’ he told me.
    I took the will out of the envelope and opened it.
    “‘I, William Simmons,’” I read aloud, “‘declare this to be my Will, and I revoke any and all wills and codicils I previously made.”’
    ‘Go on,’ Buzz said.
    “‘I direct my executors to pay my enforceable unsecured debts and funeral expenses, the expenses of my last illness, and the expenses of administering my estate. I bequeath all my tangible personal property and all policies and proceeds of insurance covering such property in the following manner: Andrew Simmons, seventy-five per cent; Richard and Margaret Simmons, twenty-five per cent.”’
    I put the will down.
    ‘OK,’ I said. ‘My olds told me just to use the laptop. We’ve already sold off William’s car, though, to pay for the funeral and the medical bills. I mean, what else is there?’
    ‘They never told you, did they?’
    ‘Told me what?’ I said.
    ‘You know how your brother got his nerve damage?’
    ‘Yeah, from the delivery, when he was born,’ I said. ‘Messed up his motor skills, made it hard for him to do things. Maybe it even caused all the other medical problems later on.’
    ‘Well, Will ended up with a settlement from the doctor and the hospital. From their insurance if you want to be more accurate. You probably don’t remember much about it, since you were young during all of the legal wrangling. Anyway, Will set up a trust for you.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘He wasn’t good at telling people that he cared about them,’ Buzz said. ‘And he knew how you lost out all the time. All the attention, all the money spent on him, all the… well, everything. He had lots of problems, some we saw and some he kept hidden. He wasn’t good at dealing with people or letting them know how he felt about them, like I said. And that hurt him.’
    I could understand all of that. William wasn’t good with people at all. Grew up without lots of friends, got made fun of all the time because he was so clumsy, because of his weight and… well, lots of stuff. When they got to know him, people usually thought he was a pretty good person. I wish the same could be said