His Brother’s Wife
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 10
He was up before her.
That was the first thing she noticed when she woke — the smell of coffee already made, and underneath it something else, something that took her a moment to identify as toast, and underneath that something she could not quite name until she heard the smoke alarm begin its short, indignant beeping and Joshua’s voice say a word she had never heard him say in the apartment before.
She got up.
He was standing at the toaster with a dish towel, waving smoke away from the alarm on the ceiling, two pieces of toast so thoroughly blackened they had achieved a kind of architectural integrity. He looked at her over his shoulder with an expression that was equal parts embarrassment and defiance.
“I was making breakfast,” he said.
She looked at the toast. She looked at him. Something rose in her chest that she had not felt in so long she had almost forgotten what it was.
She laughed.
Not the startled laugh from the synagogue steps — something longer, warmer, the kind that comes from somewhere real and doesn’t stop immediately. He stared at her for a moment and then he started laughing too, the dish towel still in his hand, and the smoke alarm beeped three more times and went quiet, and they stood in the kitchen laughing at two pieces of ruined toast until the laughter ran out naturally and left something easier in its place.
“I’ll make more,” he said.
“I’ll make the eggs,” she said. “You handle the coffee.”
“I can do coffee.”
“I know you can do coffee. You’ve been doing coffee for three months.”
He looked at her — checking, she understood, to see if that landed as accusation. It hadn’t. She was just stating a fact, and she held his gaze long enough for him to see that, and then she went to the refrigerator and got the eggs.
They made breakfast together in the small kitchen, moving around each other with the slightly careful choreography of two people learning a new dance, and when it was ready they sat down at the table — both of them, across from each other — and ate. He did not look at his phone. She did not look at the empty chair.
It was, she thought, the best breakfast she had made in this apartment. And she had not made most of it.
They were still at the table when he said, “I want to talk about what this looks like. Going forward.”
She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. “All right.”
“Dinner out, once a week. Somewhere we both want to go, not just somewhere I pick.” He looked at her steadily. “And one or two nights a week we cook together. Here. And Sunday brunch — that’s non-negotiable. Sunday brunch is a thing I believe in.”
The corner of her mouth moved. “You believe in Sunday brunch.”
“Deeply. It’s one of my core convictions.” He leaned back in his chair. “During the week, when I’m at work — you plan. Where we go on Saturday, what we do, where we eat. It’s your city too. You should know it.”
She was quiet for a moment. He watched her face move through something.
“Joshua.” She set down her cup. “My whole life has been six blocks in Crown Heights. I don’t know this city. I don’t know what’s out there or what I would even want to see. I’m going to need your help.”
He looked at her across the table — this young woman who had read every book the library would give her and watched a hibachi chef with open fascination and walked the neighborhood one block at a time teaching herself a world she’d been kept from — and felt something he recognized, after a moment, as the convicting ache of understanding a person too late and being grateful you still had time.
“Then we figure it out together,” he said. “You tell me what sounds interesting and I’ll tell you what I know and we’ll find the middle.”
“What sounds interesting,” she repeated, as though trying the idea on. “I’ve never been asked that.”
“I know.” He held her gaze. “I’m asking now.”
She thought about it with the seriousness she brought to everything. “Museums,” she said finally. “I’ve read about them. I’ve never been to one. And — I want to see the river. I know that sounds strange. I can see the bridge from the park but I’ve never actually been to the water.”
“That’s not strange,” he said. “That’s Saturday.”
She looked at him. Something in her face was still careful, still measuring, still not quite willing to believe that the ground beneath her feet would hold. He understood that. He had put her there and he would have to earn his way back out, and he was prepared for that to take as long as it took.
“What else?” he said.
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