by A. Zavarelli
Brayden sat on the sofa, a beer in his hand and an incredulous expression on his face. His suspicion turned to relief when he saw my bags, and a moment later he enveloped me in the warmth of one of his hugs. But it didn’t feel warm anymore. It felt hollow and empty and filled with lies.
“I knew you’d come back,” he whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t turn your back on us.”
I pulled away from him and crossed my arms, staring up into his dark brown eyes.
“It’s time to tell me everything,” I insisted. “And I mean it, Brayden. Not a single part left out.”
***
Brayden kicked his heels up on the end table, his eyes trained on a passing cockroach as he took another puff of his cigarette. It was a disgusting habit, one he must have picked up in prison. We'd always complained as kids about how Norma-Jean refused to smoke outside, and we had to go everywhere smelling like a dirty ash-tray. But now, as the lines on his face had changed from a boy to a man, so had his demeanor.
He was rough around the edges, and a lot harder too. He was blunt with me in a way he’d never been before, and a hint of resentment lingered in his eyes every time he looked at me. I would have to ask him about it later.
“It was Frankie,” he said, crushing the roach beneath his boot. “You didn’t know him because he didn’t want you to. He said it was safer that way. That if his family ever found out he’d bred an Irish bitch, they’d cut off his dick and kill Norma just for the hell of it.”
“But you knew him?” My voice sounded thin, and I hated it. I hated all these fucking secrets and lies.
Brayden didn’t care. He just shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“I was ten when he started coming around,” he said. “But we made sure to keep you out of it. He said I needed to be the man of the house and do him proud. He had a wife and kids already, and they weren’t from a filthy blood line.”
I shook my head in disgust, and Brayden sliced his hand through the air, flicking ash everywhere.
“Those were his words,” he grunted. “Not mine. But Frankie didn’t have any sons, he told me. And that’s the only reason I meant anything to him I guess. He wanted someone he could be proud of, and since I didn’t look like you or Norma, you could hardly tell there was any Irish in me.”
He glanced towards the small laminate dining table in the kitchen as though he were recalling a particular memory I wasn’t familiar with.
“As I got older, he came around more often. He didn’t want you to meet him, though. He said he couldn’t look at you without seeing Norma.”
I sucked in a harsh breath and cast my eyes to the floor. The rejection stung, even though it shouldn’t have. My father was a murderer. I knew this now. But it didn’t change the fact that I’d always wondered why he abandoned us. Or that I had longed for his love as a little girl.
“You wanted the truth,” Brayden said. “I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, Brighton. Not this time.”
I blinked away my tears and gestured for him to continue though it was the last thing I wanted him to do.
“Frankie picked me up that day,” he went on. “He said he wanted to take me on my first job. He wanted me to do my old man proud. I knew what he did for a living. Norma-Jean told me when he started lurking around here more often, making her real nervous. And I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t want it because I did. I wanted to live by his code, and his honor and have all the things he promised me. He said I’d live like a king after I earned my dues. That I’d be untouchable and gain the respect of an honorable bloodline.”
I wrung my hands together and bit my lip to stay quiet. I wanted to ask Brayden what the hell he was thinking. How he could ever even remotely consider what he was talking about. But I needed to hear what he had to say first. I needed to hear it all.
“He didn’t say much else as we were driving.” Brayden flicked his cigarette butt into the tray and scrubbed a hand across his face. “I wondered why we were in such a beat up old truck. I’d only ever seen Frankie in nice cars before. After we got onto the freeway, he told me there was a family in town he needed to deal with, that the guy owed his boss some money. I should have understood then what he meant by that, but I guess I was too fucking stupid at the time.”
He stopped to light up another cigarette, cracking open a can of beer while he was at it. I frowned, and he narrowed his eyes.
“It was like clockwork,” he said. “We pulled off to the side of the road and waited. He got a call on his cell phone, and this weird expression on his face as he started the truck back up. Calm. That’s what it was. And it never changed, even when he ran them off the road.”
I clutched my stomach and rocked back and forth, images of little Sophia Lockhart burning through my brain. Of Ryland trying to comfort her during her last painful breaths. The enormity of his pain weighed heavy on my chest. I wanted to rip out my own heart and watch it bleed to pay for my father’s sins. For the heinous and unfathomable things he’d done that night.
I was crying now, but Brayden didn’t try to comfort me. I was glad. And when he continued, I just listened in between mouthfuls of air.
“He pulled a gun out of his jacket and handed it to me,” Brayden said. “He told me to finish it with one in the head for each of them.”
His voice was quiet now. Too quiet. And I didn’t know how to feel about him anymore. I waited anxiously for his next words. The words I needed to hear from him to confirm what Ryland said. That my brother was a monster, like our father.
“I went down there.” He looked me straight in the eye while he said it. “And I was going to do it. I really thought I was. I kept telling myself over and over it was about honor. Family. Blood. But when I saw the fucking mangled bodies inside, I vomited all over the place.”
“Jesus, Brayden!” My entire body shook. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He didn’t answer me. He just kept talking, in the same flat tone, staring off into the kitchen.
“I put the gun right between Jacob Lockhart’s eyes. He looked at me like he didn’t understand. He had no fucking clue why this was happening. He was bleeding all over the place, and the little girl next to him made some kind of weird gurgling noise. And I couldn’t handle it. So I shot five rounds into the forest and walked away. I figured they were going to die anyway. And if they didn’t, then I knew Frankie would kill me. But I didn’t care.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God….”
I ran to the kitchen and vomited up the meager contents of my stomach. Everything in my body burned. Everything in my world was falling apart, and it felt like it was my fault somehow. The only thing I could think of was Ryland. Of what he had gone through because of Frankie. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, but because of Brayden too.
I rinsed my mouth out and slid down onto the floor, clutching my arms around my knees as I stared at the dingy tile. Brayden kept talking, as though he needed to purge himself of the details, regardless of whether I listened or not.
“When the news reported that Michael Lockhart had lived, I never heard from Frankie again. The cops found his body a couple days later, in a dumpster in Chicago. And the evidence trail led back to me. They knew I fired the bullets they found there, but they didn’t know why. I wouldn’t tell them. So they pinned me with a drunk driving charge instead, and I never said otherwise. Neither did Michael Lockhart. I was sure Frankie’s boss would come after me. It didn’t matter what happened in court because I would die one way or another.”
“Then one day, Jacob showed up. He told me that Michael had handed himself over to Frankie’s boss, along with the money he owed to spare Jacob’s life. He wanted me dead, and he made it a point to let me know. But he told me he was going to take pleasure in destroying my life first. He said that I’d had the chance to kill him, and he would make certain I regretted that decision every day for the rest of my life. When the coroner’s report came back, and they upgraded the charges, I was fucked. I couldn’t do anyth
ing but take the fall if I wanted you and Norma to live, and Jacob knew it too.”
“That isn’t fair, Brayden,” I croaked. “Don’t make it sound like you did this for me and Norma. You did this for you. You chose to go out with Frankie that day. You chose not to call an ambulance… to let that little girl suffer. What you did was wrong, and you knew it too. You went to prison because you wanted to punish yourself.”
Brayden shot me a glare that would have withered me any other day. But I had nothing left to give anymore. Every tear had already been purged from my body, and every ounce of emotion completely dried up. All that remained was the harshness of reality.
“And what would have happened if I wasn’t there that day?” he laughed hollowly. “Your precious fucking Ryland would be dead, Brighton. But you know what, now that you mention it, I wish I wasn’t there. Because then he’d be rotting in hell where he belongs.”
“You don’t even know him,” I snarled. “And you’re full of shit. You can’t possibly think what happened was justified. Frankie murdered that entire family, Brayden! And for what, some money?”
“I didn’t know,” he snapped. “And I didn’t fucking care. I was only thinking of Frankie. Of how I wanted my old man to be proud of me.”
The callousness in his words gutted me. Because when I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see my brother anymore. I saw a stranger. He believed what he said, even though I didn’t.
“You mean you wanted to be like him,” I accused. “A low life fucking criminal?”
“Why not, Brighton?” He threw out his hands and shot me a scathing look. “What the fuck else am I gonna’ do? Live in this shit hole for the rest of my life? Frankie said he lived like a king, and yeah, I’ll admit it, I wanted a piece of that too. I wanted something better than this life.”
“And what about now?” I asked. “What are you going to do now?”
“The only thing I can do,” he replied. “Sit here and twiddle my fucking thumbs until I can get a job flipping hamburgers for the rest of my life.”
His words made me realize something. Something that hadn’t occurred to me before.
“Why didn’t they come for you?” I demanded. “If they killed Frankie, why didn’t they come for you too?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess Frankie never told them what happened. Maybe it was the only honorable thing he ever did.”
It sounded too easy, but it was a lie Brayden and I both readily accepted. I needed to believe for my own sanity it was true.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Six agonizing days had passed since I’d felt Ryland’s presence near me. He’d continued to text me, to tell me this wasn’t over. That he needed me. That he would come and get me if I didn’t answer him soon.
There were voicemails too. I couldn’t listen to them. But I’d kept my GPS bracelet on. I wanted a reason to feel close to him because he wasn’t there. I looked at it every day, wondering if he thought about it too. If knowing where I was kept him at bay. And if I were to take it off, would he show up at my door?
It was too painful to think about, so I made myself stop. I wasn’t really dealing with anything, I was just surviving on autopilot. I’d been tempted to take a page from Norma’s book and drown my pain in alcohol, but I still wanted to believe I was stronger than that.
Besides, Brayden was doing enough of that for the both of us. And I’d been treading on eggshells as I thought about how to bring it up with him. I was a stranger in my own house, living with two people who didn’t even look at each other but claimed to live by some code of family.
I couldn’t talk to Brayden the way I used to. He was a changed man. One I was afraid I would never really know again. After our conversation that first day, we’d barely spoken at all. I had yet to bring up the subject of Norma though I’d been trying my best to keep her at home as much as possible. She was already sick of me too, asking when I planned to go back to California.
My presence wasn’t a comfort to anyone anymore, and I wallowed in the self-pity. I started sleeping in. Sitting on the couch and shoveling pizza in my mouth while Brayden watched the Discovery Channel. Norma passed out on the laminate table in a plate of cold spaghetti. It had been five years, and nothing had changed. I had no idea what I was doing anymore. But I couldn’t stay here in this smoke-filled, poisonous environment. The walls were closing in on me, and I couldn’t breathe. So I stood up and started pacing.
“What the hell is wrong with you now?” Brayden grumbled.
“This!” I waved my arms around the room. “How can you live this way? How can you sit here all day and watch your life go by in this shitty existence?”
“Well, excuse the fuck out of me,” he snapped. “I didn’t realize it was so goddamned horrible here. You see, I just spent the last five years behind bars… so to me, this is mother fucking paradise!”
“Don’t you put that on me again!” I pointed a shaky finger at him. “I know what you think of me, Brayden. I know you resent me for it.”
“Damn straight I resent you.” He glared. “I went away so you could have a better life, and what do you do? You run straight into the arms of the one fucking man I despise. You fall in love with the sadistic bastard, then you come back here with your tail between your legs, expecting me to feel sorry for you. Well, it ain’t gonna’ fucking happen. So if you don’t like it here, misses high and mighty, go back to your castle in San Francisco. I won’t stop you this time.”
“I can’t,” I snapped.
My eyes burned with tears because I hated fighting with him. I hated that I lashed out instead of telling him the truth. So finally, I collapsed onto the couch and unburdened myself.
“He’s been sending Norma money.”
Brayden blinked as if my words hadn’t registered. But one glance at Norma’s slumped over form in the kitchen was all he needed to put the puzzle together.
The vein in his forehead throbbed as he swung his gaze back to me. “How much money?”
“Enough.” I stared at the floor. “Whatever she asks for I guess.”
He stood up and shook his head in disbelief. “Goddammit.”
“He’s waiting for her to... overdose I guess. Or die from liver failure. Whatever’s quicker.”
Brayden glanced at Norma again, his eyes filling with a rage I’d never seen in him before. It fizzled out a moment later as he collapsed back onto the sofa beside me.
“We can’t compete with that,” he said. “What the fuck are we gonna’ do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I thought maybe we could talk some sense into her, together.”
A dry laugh squeezed from his chest as he dismissed my suggestion entirely. “She isn’t gonna’ fucking listen to us, Brighton. Are you even hearing yourself right now? When has she ever chosen us over any damn thing?”
“Well, I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do,” I bit out. “We can’t force her to go to rehab. And I can’t babysit her for the rest of my life. I’m going to have to get a job soon.”
A strange calm washed over Brayden’s face as his head fell back against the sofa and he closed his eyes.
“Just let me think on it for a while,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
***
I woke up in a cold sweat, clutching my pillow against my chest.
I had dreamt of Ryland again. The same dream I’d had every night since I’d been back in Illinois. His hands on my body, his lips on my skin. The heat of his chest pressing against my back. I called out to him, but he didn’t answer. I reached for him with my hand. Usually, I could feel him, somewhere in the darkness. But not this time. I didn’t feel him at all.
I reached for my phone and looked for one of his texts. There weren’t any since yesterday morning. My stomach clenched.
I opened the messages from Nicole that I’d been avoiding all week, scrolling through them. She said she was worried about him, and he looked really bad. He was snapping at everyo
ne around the office, missing appointments, and forgetting things. Important things, from the sounds of it. But I couldn’t do anything else for Ryland. I had to remind myself and her of that. He needed to get help. Help I wasn’t qualified to give him. I didn’t know how to deal with grief on a small scale, let alone a catastrophic one. I didn’t know how to be torn between him and my family. Because no matter what I did, someone would get hurt.
I wiped my bleary eyes and dragged myself from the room. As I walked down the hall, Norma’s tiny frame came into view. She peered out the curtains, tapping her foot anxiously.
“What are you doing?” I headed straight for the Fruit Loops and grabbed a handful before I sat down on one of the rickety kitchen chairs.
Her gaze swung to me, and I could see the wheels turning in her brain before she even opened her mouth.
“I gotta get out of this house,” she snapped. “But I need some money. You got any?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
“What does it matter why?” she asked. “I just do.”
I shrugged and went back to eating my cereal, knowing that the argument wouldn’t end there. I never had to push with Norma. For a master manipulator, she was actually quite easy to manipulate herself, when she was desperate enough.
“I had some in my purse,” she said sourly. “I know I did. I didn’t go nowhere last night. But this morning it was gone.”
I snorted at her predicament and mentally reminded myself to thank Brayden later. I was surprised he wasn’t up already since it was past eleven. I didn’t usually sleep in this late myself, but it was becoming a habit lately.
I polished off the rest of the cereal I'd shoved into my mouth and walked down the hall, ignoring Norma’s grumbling.
When I knocked on Brayden’s door, he didn’t answer. I pushed it open quietly, expecting to find him asleep. But one glance at the bed and my mouth went dry. He hadn’t slept in it last night. And his backpack was gone too.
