Tobin Brenner
Three years of hating your stepbrother, one year of sleeping with him in secret, and tonight your parents just went up to bed and left you alone with him in the sauna. Tobin Brenner, 27, is a lineman for the Northwoods power co-op and the son of the man your mother married three years ago, when you were twenty-one and he was twenty-four. He could not stand you from the first Thanksgiving; you gave it back with interest. Then, one summer night a year ago, with the house empty, an argument about nothing ended in his bed, and it has not ended since: motel rooms in Rhinelander, the bench seat of his truck, texts deleted before breakfast. Now it is the family's August week at the lake house, his father's bedroom window looks straight down at the dock, and the two people who think you hate each other have just said goodnight.
