by Megyn Ward
March
Ryan is hurt. Wounded on what Declan called a routine patrol. Taken to a military hospital in Germany where he lay in a coma for weeks, battered and torn. Burned and broken. Hooked up to machines. Tube and needles stuck down his throat. Stuck in his veins.
While I wore couture and drank champagne, flashing the diamond on my finger on the London party circuit, my brother was dying.
He was dying, and no one bothered to tell me.
Because no one thought I would care.
I don’t know why Declan came. Why he felt compelled to tell me. Maybe because he feels guilty for the way he treated me when we were kids. Maybe because he knows Conner didn’t want me to know and he wanted to ruin his day. I don’t really care. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that Ryan is hurt. He’s home and he needs me.
My brother needs me.
I wanted to drop everything and run. Throw some clothes in a bag and commandeer one of Spencer’s planes. It’s what I should’ve done. What I was supposed to do. But I couldn’t. I had to be patient. Wait for my opening. Be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Eventually, my mother would get bored. Flit off to some spa Switzerland or the spring shows in Milan. Eventually, she’ll leave and so will I.
“Whaddya say, Sparkplug?”
We’re having dinner for Jeremy’s birthday at Davino’s, my favorite restaurant in Manhattan. It’s a small party. Spencer and my mother. Jeremy’s parents and his younger brother. I’m staring at my plate of black truffle pasta, lost in thought when I hear Spencer call out to me. I look up at him with a ready smile. He’s the only person in this room I care about. Even Jeremy. I’m following through with my obligation to him because my mother is right, I can’t sacrifice his life for my happiness—or Gregg’s. He’s an innocent bystander in all of this. Like Conner, all he did was make the mistake of falling in love with the wrong person.
“I’m sorry?” I give Spencer a puzzled smile and everyone at the table laughs on cue.
Spencer gives me an indulgent smile but there’s something about it that makes me sit up. Makes me pay attention. “I said, I have business in San Francisco. You mother has some charity thing she can’t get out of and I thought maybe you’d like to keep an old man company.” He wipes his mouth before lifting his glass of scotch to take a drink. “I know how much you love the San Francisco house. Leave tomorrow—whaddya say?”
I look at my mother. She’s pissed, but her face is so botoxed, no one would know it but me. But pissed or not, she’d never defy Spencer. He holds the purse strings.
I don’t want to go to San Francisco. I need to get to Boston. I need to get to Ryan, but anywhere is better than were I am now. Anywhere but here is closer to where I need to be.
“Do we have anything planned this weekend?” I ask Jeremy, not because I care but because it’s expected.
Jeremy opens his mouth, brow furrowed, but before he can raise an objection, Spencer cuts him off. “I think Jeremy can survive without you for a week, right, Jer?”
Jeremy flushes but nods. “Of course.” He picks up my hand and kisses that back of it. “As long as it’s only a week.”
“Excellent.” Spencer gives me a beaming smile. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
I applied for my own credit card before I left for Boston in the fall. It has a ridiculously low limit but it’s mine. An emergency fund my mother doesn’t know about. I didn’t even tell Jeremy. When I got the car in the mail, I felt bad about that. Keeping something from him. Now I’m glad I did because its credit limit is just enough to buy a one-way plane ticket from San Francisco to Boston.
I pack light. A few pairs of jeans. A few sweaters. A pair of boots. My wallet. When I throw my backpack in the trunk of the car, Spencer doesn’t say a word about it. He probably thinks I plan on shopping while I’m there. I feel guilty for planning my escape on his watch, but I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to get away.
As soon as we’re settled on the plane, I recline my seat and doze off while Spencer shuffles through a stack of paperwork and puts out fires via teleconference a few rows over.
“Miss O’Connell.” The steward gives my shoulder a gentle shake. “We’re landing in a few minutes. You’ll need to fasten your seatbelt.”
I sit up and rub a hand over my face. We can’t be landing. It’s a five-hour flight from New York to San Francisco. “How long was I asleep?” I reach for my seatbelt and fumble with the clip.
“Thirty minutes or so,” he looks at my face, obviously concerned with my appearance. “Would you like to freshen up? I can have the pilot—”
“Thirty minutes?” I shake my head. “That can’ be right. San Francisco is two-thousand miles away.”
“Mr. Halston-Day requested a quick stop over in Boston before continuing on the San Francisco.” The steward, straightens, moving back when I throw off my seatbelt and lunge out of my seat.
Spencer is sitting in a window seat a few rows behind me, looking out the window. No paperwork, his phone tucked away, like he’s waiting for me.
“Why are we going to Boston?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead he gestures for me to sit across from him. I do, making sure to fasten my seatbelt so the steward doesn’t have a fit. “Spencer?” I lean forward in my seat, as far as the belt will allow, trying to get his attention. Finally, he looks at me. “What’s going on? I thought we were going to San Francisco?”
“I’m going to San Francisco.” He reaches out and pats me on my knee. “Boston’s your stop.”
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head. Now that I’m here. Now that I’m where I need to be, I’m terrified. “Why—”
“I’ve really missed those freckles, Sparkplug.” He gives me a quick smile, nodding his head like he just answered my question.
“My freckles?” I raise my hand to my face again. I keep throwing the bleaching cream my mother gets from my dermatologists in the trash and she keeps replacing it. I feel bad for throwing it out. It costs five-hundred dollars an ounce but if she wants me to use it, she’s going to have to hire someone to hold me down while she puts it on herself.
I’m sure that solution is under consideration.
“Yup.” His smile turns wistful. “I don’t think I realized how much until you came home with a face full of them again.” Sitting back in his seat, he aims his gaze out the window again. “There’s a car waiting to take you to Boylston. I’ll be back to get you next Friday.”
I shake my head. “Mother will—”
“Let me worry about your mother.” He gives me a quick look, flashing me a smile. “She’s a difficult woman but I think I can handle her.”
Sixty-two
Henley
I don’t go to Boylston.
I found an address in Cambridge for the Sojourn Center on my phone and gave it to the driver as soon as I was settled into the back of the car. We pulled up in front of a stately-looking brick building with a wide porch and white-washed columns way sooner than I was prepared for.
“Am I waiting, ma’am?”
I jerk my gaze away from the front of the building, shaking my head. “No.” I open my door and get out before can protest. “Thank you.” I toss the last of it over my shoulder, barely sparing him a glance before I climb the porch steps and let myself inside.
Inside, the building is and interesting mixture of new and old. Restored hardwood and original crown moldings, coupled with gleaming glass and automatic doors. Stopping at the information desk long enough to check in, I follow the directions the attendant gave me, Taking the elevator to the third floor, I find Ryan’s room. Hand poised on the door handle, I take a deep breath. Declan said he was badly injured. That there’ve already been multiple surgeries to save his leg. Skin grafts to reduce scarring. That he’ll never had children. That he’s suffered long-term memory loss. I’m suddenly afraid of what’s I’ll find on the other side of the door.
Your brother.
That’s what you’ll find on the o
ther side of the door.
Your brother.
I push the door open to find the room empty.
I stand there, for a moment, wondering if I have the wrong room. Maybe the attendant—
There’s the sound of a toilet flushing seconds before the door directly across from me opens. “I said I don’t want to play today, fuckface. Go bother that cute—” Ryan stalls in the doorway, the rest of whatever he was going to say getting stuck in his throat. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move. He just stares at me.
I look down at myself and instantly feel ridiculous. Vintage Chanel dress under my Gucci coat. Louboutin pumps, despite the cold. Jeremy’s pearls around my neck like a collar. His ring shackled to my finger.
I should’ve gone to the apartment to change before coming here.
“It’s Henley.” I say it because I don’t know it he recognizes me. If I were him, I wouldn’t know who I was. I’d see a total stranger.
“I know who you are.” It comes out hard, like an accusation. “I have brain damage, I’m not blind.”
“I didn’t mean—” I shake my head. “You haven’t seen me since…” I lift a hand to my nose, touching it for a moment before dropping it again. “I look different. That’s all I meant.”
“What are you doing here?” He doesn’t look like he believes me. “Shouldn’t you be drinking champagne or off buying diamonds or some shit?” He throws the towel in his hand on his messy bed before taking a slow step through the doorway, leaning a cane I hadn’t noticed until now.
It’s nothing different than what he’s said to me a hundred times before. He’s always teased me about the money. The life of privilege I’ve lead since our mother separated us. But the way he says it now is different. He’s not teasing anymore.
He’s angry.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I tell him, as I watch him walk. It’s a slow, painful process. He looks like he’s on the verge of collapse and I feel myself lean into the space between us, ready to throw myself under his arm to keep him from falling. “No one told me—”
“Then how’d you find out?” He finally makes his way to the chair by the window and eases himself into it slowly, like an old man.
“Excuse me?”
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “If no one told you, then how’d you find out?” He says it slowly. Like I’m the one with cognitive issues.
That’s when I get it. When I understand.
“You don’t want me here.”
He doesn’t answer me. He just stares out the window. “Why?” I practically shout it, the volume of my voice instantly shaming me. “Why didn’t you want me to know?” I rush at him my heels clicking fast across the hard linoleum floor to stand over him. “I’m your sister, Ryan—you’re my brother.”
He looks up at me and shrugs. “So?”
“So? So?” I feel my knees wobble a little before they give out completely, my hand flailing behind me and I find the arm of the chair behind me before I collapse completely. “So you’ve developed a habit of keeping things from me—important things—and I want to know why.” I slide into the chair, pressing my knees together, clasping my hands around them. “Why didn’t you tell me about Dad?” I feel my chin start to tremble and I have to clench my jaw to keep from crying.
“I told you I didn’t want you coming here.” He looks at me, jaw set and stubborn.
“Why?” I shake my head, refusing to accept his answer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you to wait for me.” He swipes an angry hand over his face. “You wouldn’t listen. You never fucking listen.”
When I don’t answer him, when all I do is wait for his answer, he turns toward the window again. “How many of your friends know you have a brother?”
I don’t have friends. I have acquaintances. I have people I associate with. People who smile and air-kiss my cheeks while silently judging everything about me, from my shoes to my hair. But I know what he means. I understand what he’s asking me.
“None.” I hate saying it. I hate that I’ve allowed my mother to erase him but it’s true and he deserves to hear it, even if it hurts. “No one knows about you.”
“Because mom refuses to acknowledge me.” He laughs a little. “Because she took you and left me behind. Didn’t want me.”
“Ryan…” I shake my head because I don’t know what else to say.
“He’s a lousy drunk and the shittiest father on the planet but he was our father.” He makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Jack was the only thing that connected us. The only thing that made us family. Without him, what are we, Hen?”
“We are family, Ryan.” I insist, reaching for him. I close my hand over his and he lets me. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t look at me either. Doesn’t believe me. “Let me talk to Spencer. We’ll get you transferred to a facility in New York. Somewhere close by.” The plan tumbles out, faster than I can form it. “Maybe an apartment. We can—”
“No.” He pulls his hand from mine, his gaze finds me face, flat and dull.
“What?” I feel my spine jerk straight. “I—” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “We’re family, Ryan. I want to help you. Take care of you.”
“The way you took care of Dad?” His mouth quirks, fast and ugly. “Cleaned him up when he pissed himself. Kept him from choking on his own puke. Dumped his bottles down the drain after he passed out.” He flattens his mouth and for a moment, looks so much like our mother I feel my heart twist a little in my chest. “What are you gonna do? Fit in weekly visits between your luncheons and your spa days? Maybe if I’m lucky, you’ll introduce me to your friends. Tell them all about your long lost, brain-damaged brother who got his shit blown off.” He stops talking, the muscle in his jaw twitching and clenching.
“She didn’t take me with her because she loves me.” I reach for him again but this time he pulls away. “She took me because I was weak.” Looking up at him, I find him watching me. “Because even though I hated her, I needed her to love me.”
For a few painful moments, neither of us say a word. Neither of us look away. Finally, he cracks. “I have physical therapy in a few minutes.” Ryan’s gaze slides away from mine and finds the window again. “You should probably go.”
I realize it’s something we’ve always done. Push each other away. Hold each other at a distance. We say we love each other but don’t really know what that means.
We want to love each other but we can’t.
Not really.
No one ever showed us how.
Sixty-three
Henley
I’m not sure how I ended up here.
I know that I shouldn’t be here. That I don’t have a right to be, but here is where I am because there’s nowhere else for me to go. Nowhere else I want to be.
My mother is right.
I’m a sad little homing pidgeon.
I can hear her music from here. Guns n’ Roses, wrapped around the clang of tools and the sound of her caterwauling along to Paradise City.
She doesn’t hear me, and she’s buried so deep under the hood of the truck she’s working on that all I can see is her ass, the tiptoes of her boots skimming against the concrete floor for purchase.
I look around. The office is empty, and Conner’s apartment is dark. He’s not here.
I’m both relieved and disappointed.
Not knowing what else to do, I sit on a tall rollaway stool pushed against the tool bench and wait for her to notice me. Seeing the old coffee can sitting on the bench, curiosity gets the better of me and tip it toward me to look inside. A few random bolts. A bunch of washers. Some oddball fittings for a socket-wrench. And the watch Tess makes Conner wear.
Neither one of them explained it to me. Why it was so important to her that he wear it. Why he got so angry when she demanded that he put it on. I run my thumb over the smooth face of it and it lights up, displaying the time. Swiping left, a list of alarm times show on the tiny screen.
/> Suddenly the music is gone.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” The watch is snatched out of my hand and I look up to see Tess glaring at me, Conner’s watch held away from me like she’s protecting it from me.
Like she’s protecting him.
“I—” That’s as far as I get. I can’t answer her question because I don’t know what I’m doing here. I shake my head, clamping my mouth shut against the torrent of tears that threatens to sweep me away. I swallow hard to clear my throat, so I can try again. “I’m sorry, Tess.”
Her expression softens but only a little. Her shoulders lower but they don’t relax. “I told you.” She shakes her head at me, shoving Conner’s watch into the pocket of her coveralls like she’s afraid I’ll break it if I get my hands on it again. “I told you.” This time she hisses it at me, jabbing her finger in my face for good measure. “This shit was going to go bad and when it did, it wouldn’t matter to me what kind of horrible shit he did or said to you. I’m with Conner, ‘til the end of the fucked-up line.” She shoves her hands into her pockets. Probably so she won’t give into the urge to punch me in the mouth. “So, you don’t get to come here and tell me you’re sorry because I don’t fucking care.”
It’s exactly what I expected, and I suddenly realize it’s exactly why I came here.
What I needed to hear.
“I know and I’m glad.” I nod, standing up from my stool while I wipe a few errant tears off my face. “I’m glad he has you. That you have each other… is he okay?” I have no right to ask and I expect her to tell me so. I expect her to stick her finger in my face again and tell me fuck off.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she looks at me and chews on her lip ring, like she can’t decide between answering me and dragging me out of the garage by my hair to toss me in the gutter. “He is,” she finally says, leaning against the tool bench, crossing her arms over her chest. “He’s solid. Focused on Ryan right now. Getting him better.”
