Ken tossed some cash onto the table for the tip and followed Jon out of the restaurant. They stepped out into the hot August sun, and he immediately felt sweat break out on his forehead. He’d originally thought he might drive to some job sites and inspect them today, but since the heat index currently pushed close to a hundred and fifteen degrees, maybe he’d spend the day in the air conditioning finishing up paperwork instead.

“Good night! Why didn’t we eat at the office?” Jon asked, looking up at the sun.

Ken smirked but, as usual, didn’t reply. He’d suggested the sandwich shop in the lobby of their building, but Jon had wanted barbecue. He slipped his hands into his pockets and considered the rest of his day. He hadn’t seen Daisy this past weekend because her family had come to town, worried about her mother’s recent hospital stay. Instead, he’d spent the weekend working on his new house: getting air conditioning running in the main room, assisting with an electrician buddy on upgrades, and making sure all the installed electrical was up to date on the specifications he’d found filed at the county building offices.

They’d had regular contact, though, texting and calling. But he hadn’t actually seen her face for a solid week and realized that he had just about reached his limit. He might pin her down to pick a night this week for dinner. Tonight, he had the regular weekly family meal, but maybe tomorrow they could do something.

He walked into the lobby of their building and stopped short. A woman sat in a chair in the waiting area. She had blonde hair, a tear-streaked face, and a suitcase at her feet. She bent her head and pressed her fingertips to her eyes as if to contain more tears. As he started toward her, concerned about a crying woman, Jon spoke from behind him. “Alex?”

She whipped her head up and met Ken’s eyes. For a moment, a confused look crossed her face, then looked over his shoulder at his brother. “Jon,” she said, licking her lips and standing. “I’m sorry to drop in. I—” Her breath hitched, and she froze, putting a hand over her chest.

“Hey!” Jon said, stepping around Ken and putting his arms around her. “It’s okay.” He met Ken’s eyes over her head. “Clear an elevator, please.”

Ken dashed across the lobby and caught an elevator door as it slid shut. Putting his boot in the door’s path, he jerked his head toward the lobby. “Out,” he said to the six people in the car. “Please catch the next one.”

No one said a word of challenge to him. With rapt curiosity, they just got out and watched Jon guide Alexandra, with her tear-stained face, into the elevator.

As soon as she got into the elevator, she shored her shoulders and shifted slightly away from Jon. “I’m sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed right now.” She looked up at Ken. “Hi. I’m Alex.”

Even if Jon hadn’t said her name, he’d have guessed as much. Jon had dated someone named Alex while in Nashville. When he and Brad visited him last month, he’d left them one afternoon to go have a lunch date with her. He knew Jon’s trips to New York had something to do with her. “Ken. Youngest son.” He gestured at his brother with his chin. “He’s the oldest.”

A look of understanding crossed her face. “I thought you must be his brother. You two look very much alike.”

Surprised, Ken raised an eyebrow. “Like identical alike?”

Alex looked between them again, first at Ken, then Jon, then back to Ken again. “Well, not really.”

A grin crossed Jon’s face. “I cannot tell you how happy I am that you said that.”

“So,” Ken prodded, “I’m better looking is what you’re saying.”

Jon barked a chuckle. “You’re very pretty, Ken.”

Alex just looked between the two of them with curiosity. The elevator stopped on the tenth floor, and Ken followed them down the corridor with offices on one side and the sea of cubicles on the other. When they reached Jon’s door, Ken kept walking. Suddenly, as if he remembered the social graces at the last minute, he paused and turned. “Very nice to meet you, Alex. Hope to see you again soon.”

After running interference, he headed back to the elevator and went to his floor. He went to his office and shut the door behind him. He wanted to go back to Jon’s office and find out everything he could about Alex’s tears and suitcase. And, more importantly, how he could help her. But, he didn’t. Jon tended to keep to himself about his personal life, and Ken tended to not pry.

Jon had worked on a job in Egypt a couple of years ago. While there, he had gone back to the village where the three of them had helped build a girls’ school during their first solo mission trip before their sophomore year in high school. The day Jon got there, religious extremists had burned down the school with all the children locked inside. Jon had witnessed it, and it had broken him. When he came home from that trip, Ken barely recognized him. He sulked, drank, argued, and completely shut himself off from everyone, including their parents.

After a few months, he asked Brad to send him away from home so he could re-commune with God without the pressure of the family around him. Brad had assigned him to a two-year project building a shopping mall in Nashville.

After meeting Alex in Nashville, he found out she had been in that very same village on the same day. A picture she had taken during the tragedy had earned her a Pulitzer nomination. That news had thrown Jon off-center. The three brothers had spent hours talking about serendipity and God’s ultimate authority and plan and His perfect timing.

Ken had grown closer to his brothers and closer to God himself during that conversation. He hadn’t realized until that time how much of a rut he had fallen into in his relationship with the Almighty. His deep and abiding faith had become mere habit. Everything he said to Jon and Brad that night in the form of counseling his brother to help him come to grips with this memory that caused him so much pain had resonated with his own soul and in his own daily life. It made him pay more attention to Whom he worshiped and why he worshiped Him.

Not even a month later, he had walked into Daisy’s office. As he sat here today contemplating the time with Jon in Nashville and then the timing of Daisy coming back into his life, it occurred to him how God had prepared his heart for Daisy through that time of fellowship in Nashville.

He picked up the phone and called her. She answered on the second ring. “Hi, there.”

“I miss your face.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath, and then she said, “You always seem to know exactly what to say, and yet you actually say so little over the course of the day.”

He didn’t even know what that meant. “You free to share a meal anytime the next few days?”

“My brother leaves tomorrow. He’d love to see you. Can you come to my parents for dinner tonight?”

“Love to, but I have family dinner.” He contemplated his schedule. “How about breakfast tomorrow?”

She paused momentarily, then said, “Breakfast would be great. Would you like to come to my place?”

“Seven okay?”

“Hmm, let me check with my brother. He’s still on central time. But I know they are planning to be on the road by two. I have to be at church by ten for the Bible study, so earlier is better.”

“Let me know. I have a nine o’clock at my office, so I need to leave your house by eight-thirty.”

“I will get up with you later this afternoon.” She paused. “Ken? You make me happy.”

He felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “Likewise. Bye.”

He tried to focus on the pile of work on his desk, even though he had no desire to track expenses, log hours, write memos, or approve accounting requests. All of that just got in the way of him wearing a tool belt around his waist and holding a hammer in his hand.

When the time had come for his father to contemplate retirement, he knew he needed to appoint one of the three of them as his replacement as the CEO of Dixon Contracting and Design. He pulled all three of them into his office and said that he would leave it up to God by having them draw straws.

If they didn’t know him as well as they did, they would have thought he was joking. Instead, they gathered around him as he held three straws in his hand, and they each drew one. The relief Ken felt at Brad pulling that short straw had nearly brought tears to his eyes. The thought that a single decision of which straw to pick stood between him and a lifetime with a tie around his neck in an office day after day, hour after hour, would have driven him completely insane.

He believed sincerely, as did his father and brothers, that God had directed that exchange. Everyone knew Brad was the fit for CEO, but their dad wanted to make sure none of them thought he had played favorites.

Even though he wouldn’t have chosen it for himself, Brad had embraced his role and new responsibilities with perfection. In the time since Valerie had come home and come back to him, he had only gotten better at his job.

As the director of residential building, Ken loved building communities. He loved planning shopping and transportation, dining, and entertainment. They had bought several hundred acres outside of Columbus, Georgia, where they built a community of one-bedroom townhomes to three-bedroom houses, with a Main Street that had little shops and restaurants all along it. They’d sold every unit halfway through construction.

The final house closed three months ago, and the last time Ken drove through there, the Main Street bustled with activity looking much like the architect’s concept drawings. He looked forward to taking part in more communities like that.

But he also enjoyed the mansions. He loved the intricate detail that went into the woodwork and the quality of the expensive materials that went into the construction.

Ken knew Brad planned to put Jon in charge of the commercial side of the corporation. Jon would build schools and malls and civic centers and airports and parking decks. He wondered if Jon knew about that yet.

Deciding the paperwork wouldn’t go away unless he did something about it, he woke up his computer and grabbed the first stack out of his in-box. Twenty minutes later, while he read an interoffice memo from an in-house architect, Toby tapped on his door. He called out, “Enter.”

“I’m back from lunch. Do you have anything specific you need me to do before I get back to what I was doing before lunch?” Toby asked.

He gestured at his out-box. “There’s some sensitive accounting stuff in there. Can you get that over to them?”

“You got it.” He left the office, and Ken looked at the clock, then at his in-box, and performed a mental calculation. He had another good hour of work left to do before he could escape to a jobsite. Maybe by then, it would have cooled off a bit outside. Sitting here thinking about it wouldn’t get the work done. He refocused his attention on the memo and grabbed his tablet to make some notations.

Ken pulled into the circular drive at his parents’ urban castle, the shadows of the turrets darkening the cab of his truck. He remembered classmates had teased him all through middle and high school for living in the castle his father had built for his mother. Their jealously had never bothered Ken in the least. His father built it in a show of love for his mother, fulfilling a promise he’d made to her in high school. Nothing embarrassed him about that.

He had arrived last. Brad’s truck and Jon’s truck had already claimed the prime parking spots.

His parents had Wednesday meals with the family most weeks. He hadn’t seen Jon since he left him and Alex at Jon’s office door after lunch today. He hoped he had a moment to speak to Jon privately and find out what happened with Alex, and if he could personally do anything do to help her.

Ken walked into the dining room and found both of his brothers already there. Brad and Jon both gave him mildly curious looks. “Mom said dinner. Not something I’m willing to turn down.”

“It’s great you’re here,” Jon said. “It’s your turn to do the dishes.”

Ken snorted. “You wish.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I actually keep a list.” He didn’t keep a list, but he may have to start now that Jon was home.

Brad laughed. “You would.”

“Yeah, because I always get stuck doing them. Now I can prove when it’s not my turn.” He glanced at his phone. “It’s Jon’s turn.”

Brad looked skeptical. “You sure?”

Ken nodded. “Wouldn’t have said it if the topic were up for debate. It’s Jon’s turn for the next two years or so. That’s how long he was in Nashville. Got to catch up.”

Brad laughed, and Ken grinned.

“That’s fine,” Jon said. “I’ll remember, too. Maybe I’ll make a list.”

Alex walked in from the kitchen, carrying a large salad bowl in one hand and two dressing containers in another. She hesitated at the table, then set the salad bowl down. She looked less stressed-out than she had this morning but still had circles under her eyes. “Alex, meet my other brother, Brad. Brad, Alex Fisher. And you met Ken this morning. Alex will be staying with us for a while.”

Alex looked Brad up and down, then looked at Jon. “He actually looks like you.”

Jon slipped an arm over her shoulder and hugged her to his side. “Just a little.”

It fascinated Ken that she could tell them apart. He wanted to dissect that and examine it. Valerie could, but she had grown up alongside them, so that made sense to him. Was there a significance?

The kitchen door opened again, letting his mom, dad, and Valerie into the room. His mom set a bowl of baked beans next to the corn, and his dad walked to the head of the table.

Once everyone sat at the table, their father said a prayer over the meal, asking God to bless them and bless the food. As soon as he said, “Amen,” platters and bowls started circulating.

Ken chatted with Valerie about her ideas for painting the baby’s room when his mother spoke to him from her end of the table. “Ken, how’s the house coming?”

“I got drywall up in two of the rooms last week. It was a busy week at work, so I didn’t get as much done as I wanted.” He didn’t bore her with the electrical work or any other mundane tasks he had accomplished. He knew her interest lay more in the layout and final design than anything else.

Brad gestured at him with his fork. “You going to keep the trees in the yard?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. I think I’m going to create a perimeter and cut down those trees, get good landscaping in, but keep the wooded line on the edge.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

It never occurred to Ken that he spoke more with his family than at any other time or to any other people. “I think I want a pool. Maybe even a garden. Would want sunlight to have a chance.”

As he finished speaking, he heard the end of Alex’s conversation with his mother. “I’m looking forward to that part of the pregnancy being over.”

A hush settled over the table, and everyone looked at Jon and Alex. Ken processed what he’d just heard. Jon’s girlfriend was pregnant? What?

Alex’s eyes widened, and she looked from his mom to his dad. “I’m sorry. I assumed you all knew.”

From the head of the table, his dad said, “It wasn’t our news to share. But, let me take this moment to officially and formally congratulate you, Alex—and Jon as well. I’d also like to reiterate what Rosaline told you earlier, that you are welcome here, and whatever you need, just ask.”

Valerie grinned and clapped. “When are you due?”

“March fifth.”

“So close to us!”

Jon leaned toward Alex and murmured to her. Ken looked from Jon to Brad. Both of his brothers had babies coming. His heart constricted in his chest almost painfully. Would he ever get that opportunity to announce such exciting news to his family? He tried to imagine what family dinners would look like a year from now and could hardly picture it.

Ken met Jon’s eyes and lifted his water glass in a mock toast. He felt a little envy, yes, but he also felt sincere in his excitement for his brother and wished him and Alex all the best.