It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover

She makes a face. “No. Of course not. He’s not missing, he’s just trying to
piss me off.”
I have to squeeze my temples to refrain from raising my voice. I still don’t
understand how she found me or why she thinks an eleven-year-old kid is
trying to teach her a lesson, but I’m laser focused on finding him now. “Did
you move back to Boston? Did he go missing here?”
My mother makes a confused face. “Move back?”
It’s like we’re speaking two different languages. “Did you move back here
or do you still live in Maine?”
“Oh, God,” she mutters, attempting to remember. “I came back, like, ten
years ago? Josh was just a baby.”
She’s lived here for ten years?
“They’re going to arrest me, Atlas.”
Her child has been missing for two weeks, and she’s more worried about
being arrested than she is about him. Some people never change. “What do
you need me to do?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping he reached out to you and that maybe you
knew where he was. But if you didn’t even know he existed—”
“Why would he reach out to me? Does he know about me? What does he
know?”
“Other than your name? Nothing; you were never around.”
My adrenaline is rushing through me so fast, I’m shocked I’m still sitting
across from her. My whole body is tense when I lean forward. “Let me get
this straight. I have a little brother I never knew about, and he thinks I didn’t
care that he existed?”
“I don’t think he actively thinks about you, Atlas. You’ve been absent his
whole life.”
I ignore her dig because she’s wrong. Any kid that age would think about
the brother they believed abandoned them. I’m sure he hates the idea of me.
Hell, he’s probably the one who has been—Shit. Of course.
This explains so much. I would bet both of my restaurants that he’s the
one who has been vandalizing them. And why the misspelling reminded me
of my mother. The kid is eleven; I’m sure he’s capable of googling my
information.
“Where do you live?” I ask her.
She practically squirms in her seat. “We’re in between houses, so we’ve
been staying at the Risemore Inn for the past couple of months.”