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The words landed, and my ears rang.
Twenty-five years ago, the first time I came to the Simmons house, it was winter.
Rodney Simmons led me by the hand through the front door, and a wall of warm air hit me. My frozen fingers began to prickle.
Angela, her hair in two little pigtails, jumped down from the couch and ran over, looking up at me.
Her eyes were bright, and every other word out of her mouth was "big brother Miles."
She pressed her own hand-warmer into my palm and pulled me off to see her toy room.
That afternoon she lined up all her dolls in a row and introduced them to me one by one.
At dinner she insisted on sitting beside me, and she picked the chicken drumstick out of her own bowl and put it in mine.
"Big brother Miles is too skinny. Eat more meat."
Rodney sat at the head of the table, smiling at the two of us.
Fred arrived the next day, but Angela only circled around me.
When he tried to come over and join in, she pouted and pushed him away, saying, "I want to play with big brother Miles."
The old man's reason for taking us in was simple.
The Simmons line had passed down through three generations with a single heir each time, and by Rodney's generation there was a daughter born late in his life and no son.
He was afraid that once he was gone there would be no one to hold the family up, so he went to an orphanage and picked out two boys.
Fred was clever, good with people, sweet-tongued.
But he was restless, the kind who couldn't sit still through the hard, thankless work.
I was steady, hardworking.
I studied hard and wasn't afraid of hardship.
The old man never said it outright, but I only worked it out slowly, later.
From the start he'd never meant to raise both of us as his heir.
He was choosing.
Choosing the one who could carry the Simmons family.
Choosing the one who deserved Angela.
The year I turned twenty, his illness worsened and he was admitted to the hospital.
Once when I went to see him, he was propped up in the bed, already very weak.
But he held my hand and talked for a long time.
He said Angela was a stubborn girl, but her heart wasn't bad, and I should bear with her.
He said that once we grew up, we should be married, so that when he went down below he'd have something to answer to her mother with.
The pendant had been handed down through the Simmons ancestors, and only the head of the family had the right to wear it.
By giving it to me, his meaning was already clear.
"Miles, look after this family. Look after Angie."
"As for Fred... give a little more ground to him. He's a child with no father and no mother too. There's bitterness in his heart."
I said yes, with tears running down my face.
The night the old man passed, Angela cried all night long.
I stood guard outside her door, listening to the broken sobbing inside, and it tore at me.
I wanted to push the door open and go in, but I was afraid I didn't know how to comfort anyone and would only make her worse.
Later Fred went in.
I don't know what he said, but Angela's crying slowly quieted.
From then on, she changed.
At first she just didn't talk to me much, and at the table she'd only sit on Fred's side.
Every time Fred caused trouble, I was the one who had to clean it up.
She never once said thank you. Instead she'd turn it around and blame me, saying I was too hard on Fred.
He was just a little fond of fun, so did I have to wear a long face all day?
Then she stopped touching company matters entirely and dumped all of it on me.
Yet from time to time she'd take Fred along to all kinds of events.
In the years after the old man died, I ran Simmons Group as if my life depended on it.
From what started as a mid-sized construction company into one of the top enterprises in Riverton.
We moved into real estate, finance, and tourism, growing from a few dozen employees to over a thousand, and now we were about to go public.
Every day I was the first into the office and the last to leave, and I spent my weekends there too.
When a project went wrong, I took it on. When cash flow got tight, I covered it. When someone tried to poach our people, I held things steady.
At business dinners people plied me with drinks until my stomach bled and I landed in the hospital, and the next day I pulled out the IV and went straight back into meetings.
Angela never once asked whether I was tired.
She only came to me when Fred had gotten into trouble again, saying, Miles, help him out, just this once.
Every single time it was "just this once."
Two months ago, Fred drowned Mr. Finch's beloved dog.
It was a purebred border collie Mr. Finch had raised for eight years, flown in from overseas, one that had cost over a million.
The reason was simple. Angela had sneezed twice when she saw the dog.
When he found out, Mr. Finch was so furious he flipped the table on the spot.
I was still away on a business trip overseas, and I flew back through the night. First I apologized, then I got people to track down the same breed abroad.
That dog wasn't easy to find. I pulled three or four layers of connections and spent nearly two million to get one.
But Mr. Finch wouldn't take it at all.
I made six or seven trips to his company, gave up profit margins on three projects, and signed away our priority partnership rights for the next two years.
The last time, I sat with Mr. Finch in his office for four hours, and no matter what I said he wouldn't give.
My knees went weak, and I knelt down.
Mr. Finch was stunned. In the end he sighed.
He said, Miles, you haven't had it easy either.
The project was saved.
I never told Angela about it.
Those two months, she was flying all over the world with Fred, posting a dozen updates a day.
The northern lights in Iceland, the volcanoes of Italy, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Every one of those locations was a spot pinned on the map in my study.
Over the years I'd built up a thick stack of travel plans.
I'd thought that once the company went public and things settled down, I'd take her to all of them.
There was no need for that now.
Because Fred had already taken her to every one.
