“Maybe it’d be in your best interest to have your own attorney.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then why do you need an attorney?”
Healey closed his eyes. “I can’t say.”
Nash humphed at that.
Healey groaned. “I can’t believe I’m back in Bluewater Bay.”
“And you’re unemployed.”
“Don’t remind me. I’ve never done anything except study.” Healey hesitated before asking a question he’d had for a while. “Were you ever angry about how it all went down? When the testing started, and they singled me out?”
Nash’s cheeks darkened. “At first, yeah.”
Healey swallowed hard. “Sorry, man. If I could go back and do things differently, I would.”
“C’mon. I was jealous for, like, fifteen seconds. You got all this attention. Remember when those grad students baked you a cake?”
“I loved getting that cake.”
“But then all you got to do after that was school.” Nash gave a grimace. “You didn’t come to Pop’s workshop anymore, or watch cartoons on television, or play sports—”
“I played sports.”
“Quidditch is imaginary, Healey.”
That sent Healey right back to childhood. “Gaseous asshole.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
“You’re a flatulating blowskunk.” Healey rested his head against the seat and closed his eyes. He could remember everything. It was part of his gift. His curse. He could remember all the times he’d been the center of everyone’s attention, all the times he’d looked over and seen a grit-teethed, long-suffering expression on Nash’s face. As if he was determined to be happy playing with Legos in a corner while his brother undertook a series of complicated physical and mental tests.
Maybe Nash was only envious of the cake. At least he’d gotten cake too. One thing you could say about the Holly family is they shared, whether they had nothing or abundance.
“I missed having you around,” Nash said quietly. “I missed you being just mine back then.”
“I missed you too.”
Healey pushed the audio button, and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” came on. He laughed. Perfect way to break up a potentially maudlin moment. “Jesus, man. How can you still hear?”
“I was tired when I drove in last night. I kept the radio cranked up and the windows open to stay awake.”
Healey needed a station that didn’t offer his spleen as a sacrifice to the gods of rock and roll. He reached for the dial. “I’m here now. You don’t have to wake the dead to keep you company anymore.”
“No.” Nash flicked his hand off the knob. “Keep your alternative hands off my radio.”
“How does Spencer put up with you?”
Nash grinned like a hyena. “I’m necessary.”
“You’re what now?” Nash was so goddamn smug, Healey had to focus on finding something interesting outside his window. Maybe Spencer was Nash’s figurative letter to Hogwarts. Or maybe he was Nash’s Hagrid. In Hollywood parlance, Spencer was a big hairy deal. Healey thought the comparison apt.
Spencer gave Nash entrée to a world beyond loneliness. He’d drawn him into a global adventure, a passionate romance, and a new way of looking at himself.
And Nash was so happy. Probably for the first time ever. Healey didn’t just hope, he knew deep in his heart that his twin was in a forever kind of love.
Nash said, “Spencer loves me. It doesn’t make sense, but I don’t complain, you know?”
No. I don’t know.
I thought I knew a lot of things.
But now I’m not sure I ever knew anything.
Healey’s head ached.
“Can we play a station that’s somewhere between death metal and whatever banjo misconception you have about me?”
“Sure.” With a grin, Nash found a station they could both live with. Then, he ruined everything by asking where Healey wanted to go. When the starkly true answer to that question came to him, Healey didn’t want to say.
“Bayside Ridge?” Nash knew what he’d been thinking. He always knew.
Healey nodded. “Please.”
He closed his eyes and tried to bring his mother’s face into focus. As had often happened lately, he couldn’t do it. He didn’t remember her face anymore. Or her voice. Or how she smelled.
She’d been gone so long.
Pop and Nash visited her grave regularly, decorating with seasonal flowers, leaving trinkets and reminders. They sent him photos, even. He hadn’t been to see his mother’s grave since he graduated high school. For whatever reason, his father and Nash, the keepers of their mother’s flame, never pressured him about it.
Now, he probably didn’t need the grim reminder he’d almost joined her, wherever she was. Yet when they pulled into the cemetery and got out, the walk from headstone to headstone in the late-morning drizzle wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, he wouldn’t mind ending up in a place like this, next to his mother.
It was as good a place as any.
Smack. Nash swatted him, open-handed, across the back of the head.
Healey cowered away from a second attempt. “Ow. What the—”
“Goddamn it.” Nash’s breath misted the chilly air. “I told Pop you were going to fucking wallow.”
“Jesus. I guess we filled that swear jar for nothing all those years.” Healey’s step landed him near a sprinkler head. He banged his foot hard. “Shit.”
About twenty-five yards away, an older woman turned to glare at him.
“Now who’s waking up the dead?”
“Screw you.” Healey said as he limp-walked away.
Finally, he found his mother’s marker.
Just as he thought, it still didn’t tell him a thing except what he already knew. Beloved Wife and Mother. The words were true—he’d heard the stories.
“I hardly remember her.”
He had scenes, but maybe they only came from the videos and pictures his dad had shown him. He couldn’t remember her singing to him, but he knew she’d done that every night. “You Are My Sunshine,” sung to each of them in their separate beds.
“I don’t remember much either,” Nash offered. “I have feelings about Mom, but very few memories.”
Healey nodded. That was nice to know—time wasn’t only erasing his memories.
Misery loves company.
He swiped tears from his eyes before taking a deep breath.
In silent cooperation, they scooped rotting leaves away from the base of their mother’s grave. Healey wanted to shine the marker, but neither of them had any kind of cloth. It seemed the ultimate irony—the person who most certainly would be carrying a pack of tissues was also the one buried under the headstone they wanted to use it on.
Later that afternoon, they bought a pizza and a six-pack of beer to take back to the B&B. Once there, they holed up in their tiny room, talking until neither one of them could stay awake any longer.
Nash took a call from Spencer, and Healey dodged one from their pop.
When they lay on their backs in the barest light, Nash turned to him. “This feels familiar.”
“Be more familiar if we each had a bed,” Healey said drily.
Nash gave a little shove with his elbow. “Only if we fight over the one next to the window for an hour.”
“Or until Pop comes in, calls us ‘you darn Furbies,’ and says if we don’t go to sleep, he’ll invent the ‘Kid Klonker.’” Healey smiled. “You’re doing okay?”
“Hmm?” Nash could drop off like he was switching off a light.
“You got what you hoped for? Spencer and the traveling. You think you’ll get married?”
In the low light, the smile that blossomed over Nash’s lips was like a beacon. “Mm-hmm. I could, but Spencer still goes fight or flight when the word is mentioned. His eyes totally light up around kids, though.”
“You’d be awesome dads.” Healey drifted.
“What about you? I got
ta call you Dr. Holly now.”
Healey grinned into the darkness. “Hell yeah, you do.”
Sleepily, Nash shifted so he was facing Healey. He propped his head on his hand and blinked. “I get that you’re going through something painful. Ford didn’t work out. But hang on to how good you did. You blew through the doctorate program at Stanford, for Christ’s sakes.”
“Wait—”
“You’re ten times smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. And you’re awesome. Plus, look at me? I am all. Fucking. That. And you have exactly the same DNA going for you. There’ll be guys lining up to get with you, even though you’re right-handed.”
Healey laughed so hard he had to cover his face with the pillow. “I knew you were going to find a way to make this all about you.”
“Nah. Cheer up, little fella. Even a copy of a copy says the same thing if you can read it.”
“Fuck you.” If Healey hadn’t been so banged up, he’d have grabbed Nash and tried to strangle him. Eventually they’d have rolled off the bed. Then they’d get kicked out of the B&B for fighting and wrecking things.
As one does.
“It’s not about Ford.” As soon as Healey said the words, he knew they weren’t entirely true. He jammed the pillow back under his head. “Well. Tangentially, it is about him, by the principles of—”
“English, please.”
“I’m really not supposed to say. Ford’s parents, his lawyers, don’t want me talking about this.”
“Like I give a limp-dicked fuck about them,” Nash said. “What about you?”
“Ford is brilliant.”
“Yeah, he is.” Nash sighed. “And he made some poor decisions. Sometimes smart people do dumb things. And breaking it off with you—”
“It’s not that.” Closing his eyes was the only way to keep enough distance between him and Nash. “Shit happens. Scientists and statisticians factor that in. God, of course people make mistakes. Mistakes are easy. You own them. You move past them. This is different. This is—”
“Wait. What?”
“There are things so much worse than mistakes, Nash. You have no idea. I think I have a fundamental flaw . . .” Healey pressed his lips together. “I think it’s like bad genes, man.”
“Jesus.” Nash gave him a bony-fingered jab. “What happened between you?”
“We were going to save the world together. Our brilliant minds. Gonna save everyone. God, I can’t tell you how naive we were. How thoughtless and dripping with privilege.”
Healey couldn’t laugh or cry any more. He was numb.
“You gotta give me more than that to go on, bro.” Nash’s gentle voice killed him.
It killed him.
And because twins start pushing your buttons from their very first breath, it took nothing for his brother to strip all his artifice away. Healey gripped his pillow tightly. He couldn’t let Nash see him like this.
Didn’t want it.
Couldn’t prevent it.
“Heals . . . Gimme . . . What the ever-loving fuck is going on with you?” More insistent, now, Nash got Healey’s pillow-shield free, finally.
Healey glared at him. “I let Ford down. His meds needed tweaking. We all missed the signs. Not just me, Nash. His family. His doctors.”
Nash froze. “I see.”
“I know what you’re going to say, but he’s—”
“Like hell you do.” Nash shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Don’t make excuses.”
“It’s not that simple. Looking back, the last three weeks before the accident seemed strange. I chalked it up to the stress of school. The last few months things weren’t going so well. Now I think he must have started rapid cycling in late May. We talked it over.”
“Then what?”
“You know what. We decided to take a last-minute trip.”
“Why would you do that? Why would you—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You trusted him, even though you have tangible proof addicts can’t be trusted.”
“Ford is not an addict. Not only that, anyway. And I don’t have proof Ford can’t be—”
“You sure the fuck do now!” Nash said angrily. “Did you learn nothing from Pop and Christine? You have tangible proof that with addicts, everything can go to hell in an instant. Christine swore she wasn’t drinking and look at what happened to Shelby.”
“Goddamn it. Bipolar disorder is a diagnosis, not a character flaw. The substance abuse is a symptom—”
“What happened?”
“I can’t tell you. I wish I could tell you, but I’m under a gag order.”
“You will tell me, eventually.”
“I can’t, Nash. If there was anyone I would tell, it’s you. I just can’t.”
Nash knew him well enough to let the words just lie there. To turn and offer his solid, warm back to lean against. Healey turned too, and let his back fall against his brother’s.
Back to back.
They’d tried to come into the world that way. He hoped they’d go out of it that way too. Unlikely.
Spencer would probably have something to say about that.
But still . . . Healey was going to have to tell Nash what happened. He was going to have to describe the night Ford and he had ended up in a potentially lethal road rage situation together. How his highly overrated brains and his new diploma hadn’t saved him from nearly getting himself killed.
They didn’t have secrets, and he wasn’t going to change the rules now.
Irrationally angry, Healey took an experimental breath.
Smelled like home.
Diego never believed the Holly brothers would actually show up, but the black SUV rolled up at 7 a.m. and the twins practically fell out of it. They carried shopping bags with the Burnt Toast B&B logo on them. One of them had a carrier with three coffee cups.
As he watched through his security cam setup, they were smiling and laughing.
Who gets excited about moving a stranger’s boxes at zero dark thirty?
They were hot. White boys with dark hair and solid, muscled bodies. They reminded him of American Staffordshire Terriers—especially Healey with his black eye. Now that the image was in his head, he’d never get it out.
Before they could knock, Diego glanced out the peephole. They’d arranged themselves side by side on his porch and were wiping smug grins off their smug faces.
Okay, maybe Nash and Healey Holly weren’t smug, but Diego resented them anyway.
And he didn’t know why.
But if he did know, it might be because he was lonely now that his mother was gone. He hardly ever got to see his brothers. Before his conscience could use his mother’s voice to ask whose fault that was, he jerked the door open.
“Hello.” Nash stepped back in surprise. “Were we that loud?”
“No, man. Check it out.” Healey nudged his brother before pointing out the cameras Diego thought he’d hidden so well. “Dude’s just paranoid. You keeping a grow op in there?”
“No,” Diego said sourly. “I have high-end electronic equipment and some of it doesn’t belong to me. Security system. Big deal.”
“Only Healey is judging you,” said Nash. “It’s ’cause he’s all judgy like that. But I wouldn’t think you were paranoid, even if you put in a panic room.”
“Thanks,” said Diego.
“Did you?” Nash asked hopefully.
“There’s no panic room.”
Healey’s sneakered foot lightly caught his brother’s. “Where would he have put a panic room? There’s no space for a panic room.”
The American Staffordshire analogy deepened, solidified, and became a caricature. Oh, yeah. He could see it. Totally. And because he could never get enough of puppies, he started to thaw toward the Holly twins.
Which wasn’t at all what he had planned.
Then again. Erstwhile tenant was hot. Identical faces, Nash’s was harder. Leaner. Healey’s was more elegant. Both had the sides of their hair shaved.
Healey’s hair, which looked thick and wavy, hung below his shoulders, while Nash’s longest hair barely reached his eyes.
New tenant looked a little like the new James Bond’s Q.
All Diego could think was, How much is that doggy in the window? The image popped predictably into his imagination.
“Wait. What are you laughing at?” Healey asked.
“Nothing. Here’s the remote for the garage door.” Diego gave them the new unit. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“We’ll set up your breakfast outside like yesterday.” Healey pointed vaguely in that direction. Nash was already rounding the corner of the house.
After Diego closed the door between them, he sat in the foyer for a time, contemplating the plans he’d had for the day before the wrecking crew showed up. He’d found a thirty-second clip of his mother, standing in a field of sunflowers, and used it to piece together a very rudimentary opening sequence for the documentary Rachel wanted him to make. Over it, he’d laid the first words she’d penned for what she’d hoped would be her memoirs—the first of many books she’d planned to write:
“I never recognized the word ‘No.’ My parents were very religious. They wanted me not seen and not heard, even when it came to expressing my joy. I am convinced the first time I heard the words, ‘No, Gabriella,’ I recognized them for the oppression they were. After that, I never listened to anyone who told me no again.”
He hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Through the slider, he could see his guests setting his patio table.
He rolled outside to join them.
“Got coffee, cinnamon rolls, and some sort of—” Healey handed over a sandwich wrapped in parchment paper. “Egg and bacon ciabatta thing. Jim from the Burnt Toast sends his regards.”
Bemused, Diego took his place at the table between them. He took a moment to study his guests. For a while, he simply watched them talk. Listened for patterns in their speech.
Healey wore a man-bun. Kill me now.
Probably, even if they wore their hair the same way, he’d be able to tell them apart. One twin was right-handed, one left. That was an obvious difference. Healey’s hair had a cowlick that went one way from the center of his forehead, and Nash’s hair swept in the other direction.
Nash was talkative and comical. Healey was reticent, but that might have resulted from pain. He wanted to ask about the accident but sensed Healey’s emotions were still too raw.
All Wheel Drive Page 7
