by Jessi Kirby
I’d stepped toward it like it was a sleeping animal I didn’t want to disturb. Picked up the envelope. Run my thumb over the address, over Finn’s writing. And then put it down in the exact same spot and backed away. “I can’t. . . .” Looked at Lilah. “You wanna go out for a while? We can drive the Pala this time.” She’d nodded quickly, and we walked straight back out the door. I didn’t go in the kitchen much after that.
The thing was, Finn didn’t write letters. He wrote e-mails, once a week. And every time I got one from him, I’d give him a hard time about writing me a real letter, with real thoughts, instead of just telling me it was all “fine” over there and how the dusty desert wasn’t all that different from central Texas, and how combat drills reminded him of football. I wanted him to tell me the truth, even if it was a hard truth, because those things are too heavy to carry alone. He’d always been that person to me, the one I could tell everything to, and I liked to think I could be the same for him. But once he made up his mind to enlist instead of go to college and play football, it felt like he decided I couldn’t.
Lilah said he was trying to protect me and that I should just let it go, but it sat like a rock in my gut and I tried to tell him as much. I wanted him to know he didn’t have to be so sunny and upbeat all the time—that it was okay to be honest, for once, about how it really was, and if he was scared or wished he’d never gone.
Which was why I hadn’t opened the letter.
I was afraid, when I saw it, of what I’d find. And now, especially after the fact, I didn’t want to know that he’d been scared or lonely or homesick, because any one of those things would be enough to break what was left of me. Now I needed to keep thinking he’d been happy over there and it wasn’t as bad as I imagined.
But he’d written it, a real letter. I owed it to him to read it.
I glanced through the doorway into the living room at Gina, who seemed to have aged twenty years in the last two weeks. Her blond hair fell loose and dull around her face, and her chest moved rhythmically up and down beneath her wrinkled black blouse. She didn’t flinch at the sound when I slid a chair out and sat at the table. I picked the envelope up, surprised at the thickness of it between my fingers. A deep breath didn’t feel near enough to prepare me for reading whatever he’d written, but I drew one in anyway then slid my finger under the top flap and tore up through the seam of the envelope. I exhaled once more before I brought out the folded pages and opened them to read.
Dear H—
First off, I know this is gonna get to you late—that’s just the way things work around here, but I’m hoping that since I’m finally sending you a “real letter” you won’t hold it against me.
I wish more than anything I could’ve come home to see you graduate, tried every which way to figure it out, but there was just no way that was gonna happen. But you have to know how damn proud of you I am. Mom and Dad would’ve been too, you know. So proud.
And now you got a wide-open road ahead of you with nothing standing in your way. I hope by now you’re all packed up and ready for school. It’s a big thing, you know. You better go and do it up right or I’ll have to come back there just to kick your ass into gear. There’s a big world out there and I’m seeing it now—the good and the bad. And you will too. Have a few adventures while you’re out there. Put your feet in the ocean. Watch the stars disappear into morning. Then when I get back we’ll compare notes.
How’s that for a “real letter”? Everything you thought it’d be? Wise and inspiring, since it’s on paper? I tried. Just so you know, that took me twice as long as an e-mail would have. Hope you’re happy.
Love,
Finn
PS — Do me a favor—next time you see Kyra Kelley, make sure you tell her all about your handsome older brother.
Something deep in my chest unhinged. Overflowed. Tore through every little space in me until I thought I might burst. It was so Finn, so what he’d say, that I let myself think for a second that he wasn’t actually gone. I ran my finger over the indentations of his pen strokes. He had no idea when he wrote it that I would sit at our kitchen table and read it after his funeral, or that I wouldn’t laugh or shake my head but weep as quietly as I could, so I wouldn’t wake Gina.
Hot tears cut silent paths down my cheeks. I set the letter down on the table and wiped the wetness from my face. The seconds ticked away in the heat of the evening, and the pages in front of me fluttered lightly beneath the lazy current of the ceiling fan.
Pages. There were more than one. After another deep breath, I gently lifted the one with his handwriting on it away from the two behind it, almost afraid of what they might be. And seated alone at the kitchen table, in the sad quiet of the house, I laughed when I saw.
I laughed out loud, but without any sort of joy, because this had to be a joke. All of it. The car accident that took my parents, the hand-rigged bomb that took my brother, and now this. A letter he had to have sent to me months ago, when the road really was wide open, and the two tickets to Kyra Kelley’s farewell concert were the perfect punch line to his PS joke.
He would’ve written that last line with a smile, knowing I’d get it as soon as I looked at the printouts. He would’ve known I’d stare at the seat numbers wondering how, from half a world away, he’d managed to get tickets to her very last show. And he probably would have pictured Lilah and me going nuts over them, then immediately shifting into planning mode for the trip out to California for the concert.
But really, it should’ve been me and him.
When I turned fourteen, he surprised me with a trip in the Impala all the way down to Austin to see her sing, and I swore she smiled at us in the front row. When I turned sixteen, he let me drive to the show in San Antonio, and when she looked our way more than once, I decided she remembered us. Miles of road and gallon after gallon of gas were the links between me and Finn and Kyra Kelley.
If he was the guide in my life, she was the soundtrack. In my mind, we’d all three grown up together. I loved her from her very first album, and Finn did too, though eventually he stopped admitting it. She was sweet and earnest and wrote her own songs. Songs about getting her heart broken by boys who didn’t know she existed or who were in love with girls all wrong for them. She wrote my life, and I loved her for it.
I followed in magazines her transformation from country girl to pop crossover, to graceful twenty-something singer-turned-model-turned-actress. I watched her get her heart broken some more and thought she deserved better. Someone good and solid like my brother, who would open doors for her and look out for her heart. The kind of guy who would surprise his little sister with an impossibly perfect gift and ask only one thing in return.
Tell her about him.
The thought grabbed at me, and I glanced over at Aunt Gina, who was still sleeping. Even when the chaplain had informed us that Finn’s services would need to be held the day before I was supposed to leave for school, she’d insisted—forcefully—that I not change my plans. And there was something in her voice that warned me not to argue. Life had to go on, she’d said. She needed to get back to work to pay the bills. I needed to go to school like we’d all talked about. The best way to honor Finn was to do that. We had to do these things, because otherwise this huge, gaping loss would swallow us, and life would keep right on going whether we did or not.
I’d been furious at her for saying those things that sounded so callous, but she knew better than anyone how true they were. She’d buried my mom and dad—her sister and brother-in-law, then took us in and kept going the best she could. And now she expected me to do the same. But on the pages in front of me, Finn had given me a gift. And a final request. I had five days to honor it.
I eyed Gina once more and made a silent promise that after I did this one thing, this one thing that Finn had asked, I would keep going, right to school. Getting to Kyra Kelley would mean missing orientation week, but I quickly justified it. I’d make it back in time for the start of classes, and Gin
a would be none the wiser. I hated the idea of lying to her, but there was no way I could tell her what I really meant to do before life could go on. I couldn’t say that I was going to take the tickets he’d given me, get in the Impala, and drive it out to California so I could see Kyra Kelley. She’d think I lost my mind.
Nervous resolve settled over me. I folded the letter and tickets and tucked them back in the envelope, slid it into my purse, and woke Gina to tell her a plan I hoped she’d believe: that I was going to do just what she said; that when she woke up the next morning and left for work, determined to keep going, I would get in Finn’s car, point it straight toward Austin, and I would keep going too.
3
It was early, but the vinyl seats were already hot against the backs of my legs when I slid in. I’d be driving with the windows down for sure, probably barefoot before noon. My fingers found the lever under the seat, and I popped the trunk to load the stuff I’d piled next to the car—the contents of my life packed into a few boxes and a duffel bag. I’d packed most of it weeks ago in giddy anticipation of the day I’d drive off to my new life in Austin. At the moment, though, that was a distant thought on the edge of my mind. I slammed the trunk shut and breathed in the morning air, which was already heavy with August heat. This was stupid. Ridiculous for sure. But Finn hadn’t ever asked me for anything. And now this was something. He’d want me to go. He’d think it was a great big adventure, a crazy story I could tell later on.
Sun glinted off the corner of the hood, looking like a white spot on its shiny black surface, and I thought of oil. I needed to check the oil. And the water, so I didn’t fry the engine in the middle of the desert. I propped the hood open and pulled out the dipstick, which looked all right. Under the radiator cap, the water hovered around the fill line. Everything else seemed fine, but Finn had always turned the car on to listen for anything off. I had no idea what I’d be listening for, but it couldn’t hurt. When I leaned in and turned the key, the rumble rippled through the quiet.
“Sounds like shit, you know.” I knew the voice instantly.
He’d come out of nowhere. I ducked my head out the door and stood up slowly, trying to decide how to answer. Rusty stood in the same suit I’d seen him in at the service, but now his shirt hung untucked and his tie was gone. He still had the bottle in his hand, though, and from the looks of it, he was still drunk. Not funny-drunk Rusty, as I’d seen him so many times, but surly drunk. Probably freshly failed-out-of-school drunk.
“You reek,” I said, pushing past him to look at the engine.
He turned his head in slow motion to follow me, then took another pull from his bottle and swallowed hard. “Maybe. But the real issue, Honor, is that you were supposed to be taking care of her for Finn.” He surveyed the car, hood to trunk. “I don’t think he’d be too happy with this.” He swayed, then focused his eyes right at me, and in that second I couldn’t stand him. I’d heard he’d gone and partied his football chances away, but I didn’t imagine it’d be this bad.
“Yeah? Well, he’d be disgusted with you right now.” I took a step closer, then immediately regretted it when his thick, boozy breath hit me. “You’re a wreck, Rusty. Following right in your dad’s footsteps, I see.” I nodded at the bottle, but he didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “The least you could have done was show up at your best friend’s funeral sober. He would have.” Guilt stung inside me somewhere. I’d known Rusty for so long, I knew exactly where to hit him: Compare him to his dad, and compare him with my brother. One he hated, the other he’d looked up to as much as I had.
He set his bottle on top of the car, stared past me with bloodshot eyes, then stumbled to the open hood and leaned in. I didn’t move. This all felt so, so wrong. Finn would have hated this. He would have hated Rusty this way and me so angry. He would’ve found a way to smooth it over like he’d always done with everything.
Rusty yanked at something, and the rumble of the engine jumped noticeably louder. He stood back and nodded to himself, then seemed to remember I was standing there. “Carburetor needed more air. No point driving around in a muscle car when it doesn’t sound like one.”
I looked at the ground, silent, and kicked a piece of gravel with the toe of my boot. “Right.” I leaned back on the side of the car, and he shut the hood and ambled over next to me after grabbing up his bottle again.
“You goin’ somewhere?” He nodded to the cab, where a creased map sat on the bench seat, and now I was sure he’d flunked out. He didn’t even realize it was time for school to be starting up. Good. No need for me to mention it.
I blew a wisp of hair off my forehead. “Just getting out of town for a little while.”
He nodded, then stifled a burp. “You got family elsewhere?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?” I shook my head but didn’t look at him. He took another drink, then leaned in too close. “Where you going then, H?”
“Nowhere.” I pushed off the car and walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and rearranged my stuff. There was no way I was actually gonna say it out loud to Rusty. It’d be an open invitation for him to make fun of me. Even in my own mind, it still sounded ridiculous. Going to Kyra Kelley’s last concert to tell her about my dead brother? Because he sent me tickets? Not the thing I wanted to share with anyone, especially Rusty. But it was something to hold close to me, a goal for the moment in the middle of the hazy emptiness all around. A plan.
When our parents died, Finn was five years old. Even then, he’d figured out a way to deal with it. Gina said that from that moment on, he never stopped moving or playing or planning. He was always busy with something, and he kept me busy too, like if we both always had something to do, we wouldn’t ever have to be sad. And he continued with it, always. He focused on concrete things he could accomplish. In high school it was grades and football and his car. It was why the Impala was in mint condition. He’d worked on it every day since he got it, telling me about all the places it’d take us one day. And I’d sat inside, breathing in the smell of old vinyl and thinking how I’d never want to go anywhere without him. Now here I was again, in the cab of the car, thinking the same thing, but about to do it anyway.
Rusty ducked his head into the cab on the driver’s side and turned the engine off. Then he slid in behind the wheel and looked at me with quickly sobering eyes. “Where you goin’?”
I tucked my map beneath the seat and rolled up the Us Weekly. “It wouldn’t make sense to you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not much that does these days. Try me.”
I sat down, eyes on the dash. Maybe he’d leave if I told him. Or maybe he’d somehow understand and think it was a great idea. I looked right at him, drunk and disheveled, and mustered what confidence I could. “I’m going to California to see Kyra Kelley’s last concert.” It sounded infinitely more ridiculous than I’d anticipated. I waited. He looked me over, bemused, and for a second I thought maybe he was too wasted to realize the idiocy of what I’d just said. I fumbled, trying to make it make sense to him. “To tell her about Finn. He sent me these tickets. And then he asked me to tell her about him.”
He nodded reverently, and for a second I thought in some tiny way he got it. Then he leaned over, put his hands on my cheeks, and smooshed them together. “That . . . is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” I smacked at his hands, and he let go and leaned back against the seat, laughing.
I hated him. I hated him for the way he showed up yesterday, for showing up here today, for being a mess and making fun of me, and for not being Finn when I needed him most. My brother was everything he wasn’t. There’d been plenty of times I’d wondered how they were friends, because they were so different, and now I didn’t care.
“Get out, Rusty.” I shoved him, and he almost toppled out the door, which made him laugh even harder. I crossed my arms over my chest, willing myself not to cry in front of him.
He sucked in a deep breath and tried to get ahold of himself, I could tell
, but I refused to look over at him. Finally, he put a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry, H, I’m sorry. That just sounds like—”
“I know what it sounds like. All right? I know. But I don’t know what else to do right now, and Lilah just left for school, and Gina’s telling me I have to move on, and he wrote me this letter and sent me these tickets. And the last thing he said to me was to tell Kyra Kelley about him. That was the last thing he asked me to do.” Tears came now, but I didn’t care. I was already humiliated. “So I’m gonna go to her concert and do that. And yes, I realize how stupid it sounds, okay? But you don’t get to have an opinion about it.”
I got out and heaved the passenger door shut, then wiped my eyes and walked around to the driver’s side, where he sat, finger tapping the steering wheel, stunned-quiet. “So get out. I need to get on the road.” He didn’t move. “Rusty, come on.”
He waved me off. “All right, all right.” But he didn’t get out. Instead, he shoved my stuff onto the floorboard and scooted over to the passenger side. “I’m going too, then.”
“Like hell you are.”
He stretched out his legs in front of him. “Yep. Finn wouldn’ta wanted you going off by yourself like this.” He patted the dash. “What if the car breaks down? Or you get lost?” I didn’t move, and I didn’t say anything. He leaned his head back. “What’re you waitin’ for, H? Let’s go see what’sher-name. I’ll just take a little rest here while you drive.” He patted the seat, then grinned up at me with half-closed eyes before his chin fell to his chest and he was out.
I wasn’t getting him out of the car. I thought for a second about driving to his house and rolling him out onto his front yard, but I didn’t hate him enough to leave him like that to deal with his dad. And what if the car did break down or I did get lost? What then? I glanced down at him in the passenger seat, where he’d ridden alongside my brother for all of high school. Then I turned around and went in the house, to Finn’s room.
