by Shandi Boyes
I work my jaw side to side, reminding myself that I’m not interreacting with a lifelong friend and brother. I’m talking to an addict—a person who can’t see sense even when it is staring him in the face.
“This isn’t about Savannah, Chris—”
“It isn’t?” he interrupts, his short reply incapable of hiding the slur of his words. “Because this sure as fuck seems to be about her. Everything you do, every word you speak is done with her entering your mind first. You preach for me to move on, yet you sit in denial, waiting for her. You’re wasting your life as much as I’m squandering mine.” He grins a nasty smirk. “But at least I’m giving it a decent shot.”
My chest puffs when I huff out a laugh. “A decent shot? This isn’t living, Chris. Drinking yourself into an early grave isn’t living.”
He stands from his chair, swaying like a leaf in a hot summer breeze. "How many times did you read her letter today, Ry?" he asks, not even attempting to deny my accusation. "How many times have you read it in the past week, month, fucking year?"
I feign ignorance, pretending I don't have a clue what he's talking about. My acting skills are as hopeless as Chris's promise to quit drinking last month. We're both shit. I read Savannah's letter a minimum once a day, as it is the only reminder I have that she existed.
I have access to the best tracking equipment in the country, and I still haven't located a single reference on a Savannah Fontane her age and description the past four years. I even searched for her father, confident his extensive medical bills would leave a trail of crumbs for me to follow. They didn't. It is as if they never existed. They vanished without a trace.
I don’t know if I’ve spent the last four years in grief or denial. It is probably a bit of both. I am also angry. Not just at Savannah, but myself as well. I shouldn’t have lied. Her disappearance is my punishment for breaking a promise I swore I’d never break. I took her choices away from her. In my eyes, that makes me as bad as Axel.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when I spot Chris prowling toward me like he always does when he plans to use his height to his advantage.
“Chris... don’t!” I warn, my voice one I generally reserve for when I’m on the clock.
Chris is a few inches taller than me, and a couple of inches wider, but with my mood the worst it’s ever been, I’m not in the right mind frame to wrestle a drunken idiot who thinks we’re still in high school.
“Not today, Chris. I can’t handle your shit today.”
Today isn't just the anniversary of Chris's brother's death; it is also four years to the day my brother killed my father, meaning in only a few hours, it will also be four years to the day I last saw Savannah. Four years to the day I broke her heart into a million pieces. And four years to the day she returned the heartache with a letter I've read a million times since.
She never said she was coming back, but she never said she’d stay away forever either. One day she will come home. One day soon. I hope.
Chris saw my lips move, but he didn’t hear a word I spoke. His focus is locked on his target, and he won’t stop until he gets it.
“It’s not your letter; it’s mine,” I snarl, praying he will stand down before our words are replaced with fists.
Chris has always had a playful edge to him, but it has become more aggressive since Michael’s death. “Bullshit,” he shouts, his voice rumbling through the shambles he calls home. “Savannah was part of our group long before she was yours. That means her goodbye letter doesn’t just belong to you. It belongs to all of us.”
Some of what he is saying is true. Savannah didn’t address her parting letter, but the signature reveals whom she intended her recipient to be: me.
“Let me read it, Ryan. I want to see what it says,” Chris asks, holding out his hand palm side up.
I shake my head. It’s all I have left of her. I’m not going to risk handing it to a drunk. The paper has already thinned significantly the past four years; imagine how much worse it will be with additional grubby mitts on it?
"I told you what it says; you don't need to read it." My voice is lower than Chris's, and less arrogant as well.
“I want to read it myself. I want to read what she wrote about me with my own two eyes." I swear, he sounds like a twelve-year-old boy having a tantrum because the ice-creamery ran out of sprinkles.
When he charges for me, I push him away, accidentally shoving him into the coffee table. Numerous empty bottles of bourbon join his ashtray on the floor when he lands on his backside with a thud. Even without a heart, my intuition remains spot on. He isn’t just hiding an addiction to marijuana from me; his drug usage goes way beyond an occasional joint.
"Fuck, Chris. What the fuck are you doing with your life?" I ask, stepping closer to him as my eyes absorb the numerous baggies filled with white powder, a burnt spoon, and a crack pipe.
I'm so torn. I feel bad for shoving him, but I'm so angry he is throwing his life away like this, I want to push him for the second time. Chris has always been a mischief maker. If there was trouble to be found, you could be sure he was first on scene. But this extends beyond recreational drug usage to forget a shit week. This isn't an addiction. It is a life sentence to a miserably bleak existence. I know this all too well, as it is the exact path my brother is traveling.
“Why are you doing this, Chris? I know you lost your brother. I know you’re hurting, but this shit won’t solve anything. You can’t bring Michael back. He is gone. He’s dead. He can’t come back from that. But you can, Chris. You can live a life worthy for you both.”
The anger in Chris’s eyes switches to panic when I grab the bags of powder from his coffee table and storm into his bathroom.
“No, Ryan. No!” he screams, following after me. His cries remind me of the ones he howled when I told him Michael had died.
“I won’t let you follow in your dad footsteps, Chris. You deserve more than the life of an addict.”
Using his thick, long arms, Chris wraps me up in a bear hug. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He isn’t holding me for comfort. He's using his body weight to stop me from flushing his drugs down the toilet. “My dad is a brilliant man. He had a great life.”
“Was a brilliant man, Chris. Was. Until alcohol took everything away from him. He killed your brother. He did that. Not your brother who asked for a ride. Not the driver of the van who was found not to be at fault. He did it! Your father killed Michael.”
“No! No!” Chris shrieks on repeat.
I don’t know if his screams are because he doesn’t want to hear the truth, or because I’ve just flushed over six ounces of drugs down the toilet.
I realize it is the latter when he snarls, “Why the fuck would you do that, Ryan? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how much that shit costs?”
He drops to his knees bowl-side, seeking any evidence of drugs in the circling water. The manic pulse of the vein in his neck grows when the cistern stops flushing, revealing not a single particle of white dust.
“That was my freedom! My way out! I don’t want to live like you, miserable and fucked up over a woman who left your sorry ass.”
Before I can stammer that being a drug addict isn’t living, Chris continues his obnoxious rant, “Savannah fucking left you, Ryan. She left you. How about you go deal with those facts before fucking with other people’s lives?”
"I'm fucking with your life?" I bang my fist on my chest, increasing the wild thump of my heart. "I saved your life! Me. I did that. Not that pathetic man sitting in jail for getting behind the wheel intoxicated with his four-year-old son in the back seat. Me!"
Chris rises from his crouched position and fists the scruff of my shirt before I complete an entire blink. His stability is so off-balance, we crash into the wall in the far right corner. My body doesn’t register the discomfort of the towel rack digging into my back; my brain is too busy processing the agony in his eyes to register something as weak as pain.
“Take it back,” Chris roars, his alcohol-laced breath hitting my face. “Take back every word you just said about my dad, or I’ll smash your teeth into next week.”
"No," I reply, shaking my head. "I'm sick of you defending people who don't deserve your sympathy. I get it, I do. I understand why you want to protect them, but there comes a point in your life where you have to realize some people aren't worth saving. Your dad isn't worth it, Chris, and neither is your mother. She's an abusive, manipulating, two-headed bitch who treats your brother like scum. And your father... your father... he's not even your fucking father."
The instant the words leave my mouth, I want to ram them back in there. I didn’t mean to say my last sentence. I was angry and upset and saying things I should never say. God, I hope Chris didn’t hear my last sentence. Please let this be one of the many times his addiction has him mistaking my words. I don’t want him to find out like this. He doesn’t deserve to find out like this. Not today. Not on the anniversary of his brother’s death.
My silent pleas go unanswered.
“Chris...” I barely whisper when he releases my collar from his fists.
“Chris,” I repeat when he turns on his heels and stalks to the other side of his living room.
"Chris?" I question in confusion when he snatches his keys from an entranceway table covered with empty beer cans and over-stacked ashtrays.
“Chris!” I shout when he charges out of his home like he has a missile strapped to his back.
When the loud growl of his engine rumbles through my heaving chest, I push off my feet. I make it into the passenger seat of his car by the skin of my teeth. His anger is so white hot, I doubt he knows I am sitting next to him. His focus remains on one thing and one thing only—seeking clarification to the secret I just exposed.
We travel across Ravenshoe at a record-setting pace. Remarkedly, Chris’s intoxication doesn’t hinder his driving ability. His skills are as hair-raising as ever.
Dust billows around us when he takes the dirt track of his parents’ property at the same speed he did the gravel road. We come to a stop mere inches from a side entrance hidden by large hedges. Chris's perfect parking is compliments of him yanking on the parking brake at the same time he spun the steering wheel.
"I didn't mean what I said. I was talking smack."
Chris ignores my pledge like he did the half dozen I issued during our five minute trip. He knows me well enough to know I am lying. It is what makes as brothers as much as it makes us friends. I should have told him what the coroner’s report said years ago. I wanted to, but ethically, I couldn’t. His father pled guilty, so the dispute in paternity was never made public. Neither Chris nor Michael are Trevor’s sons. They bear his last name, but only Noah carries his bloodline.
Usually, paternity doesn't rise in cases involving family, but something Regina heard in the seconds leading to me fleeing the hospital four years ago altered the perspective. The DA wondered if the accident was indeed an accident, or if Trevor was seeking revenge for the lies his wife had told.
One look into Trevor's devasted eyes answered the DA's questions without a word spilling from Regina's lips. He didn't kill Michael for revenge. He didn't even know he wasn't his son until Regina visited him the week after the accident. He was as blindsided by our findings as Chris is now.
My heart races at the same frantic pace Chris is charging through his childhood home, shouting his mother's name on repeat. My eyes go crazy as I chase after him. This is the first time I've been in his home. I wish it were under better circumstances.
I stop taking in the raked ceiling and polished marble floor when we enter a kitchen bigger than the lower level of my home. I thought Chris's family was as poor as mine. I had no clue he lived in such opulence. This house isn't as large as Savannah's family mansion, but it has a regal feel that makes it seem more like a castle than a residence.
“Is it true?” Chris asks, storming to his mother.
I linger to the side when I notice his mother’s face doesn’t hold the same disdain it did when she greeted Noah years ago. She has love in her eyes, not hate.
My gaze snaps up from the floor when Chris yells, “Are you abusing Noah?”
His mother startles, as shocked as me. I thought he was coming here to seek answers about his paternity. I had no clue he was here for Noah.
"You promised it was the only time! You said it was part of your grief!" Chris yells when she fails to answer his question promptly. "How many times do I have to tell you, Noah isn’t to blame for what happened to Michael, Mom. He was just a kid. He is still a kid.”
“He’s his son—”
“He’s your son too!” Chris interrupts, his anger growing. “You’re the one who had him when Grumpies raised suspicion on my birthright You wanted to sink your hooks into Trevor’s inheritance. Noah gave you a hook.” He waves his hands around the state of the art kitchen. “Noah gave you this. If Dad didn’t have a true heir, you would have never inherited Grumpies’ house.”
“He took my son! He killed him,” Chris’s mother argues with tears streaming down her face.
“No, he didn’t,” Chris denies, shaking his head. “Your husband did that. Your ticket to easy street killed Michael. Noah didn’t do anything wrong.” He stares down at his mother, his head shaking as much as his body. “I’m telling Noah the truth. He deserves to know the truth.”
“No,” Chris’s mom fights back, grabbing his arm when he pivots away from her. “You said you’d take your secret to the grave. You promised to keep my secret—”
“I promised to protect a woman who lost her son. I didn’t agree to watch my brother suffer. This is wrong, Mom. What you are doing to Noah is wrong.”
Chris’s trek through his family home is faster than his first. The room he wants is only a few feet from the kitchen, the smallest room in the house. It appears to be an old maid’s sleeping quarters.
The color heating Chris’s cheeks drains to the sole of his shoes when he walks into the barren space. Other than a dirty mattress sitting in one corner, the room is completely bare.
His mother blubbers out a string of incoherent words, no doubt a lengthy plea about the reason her teenage son’s room resembles one you’d expect to see in a crack house despite the rest of the house being furnished with priceless antiques and modern appliances. Nothing she's saying makes any sense, but Chris doesn’t need to hear her words for the truth to smack him in the face.
“Chris!” I shout when his open hand connects harshly with his mother’s right cheek.
Anger reddens Chris’s face as he tries to articulate the million thoughts running through his eyes, but not a word seeps from his lips.
“You’re a liar and a cheat, and I’m ashamed to call you my mother,” he eventually settles on.
When he exits Noah’s bedroom, it takes me a few seconds to follow after him. I’m too stunned to force my legs to move. He hit a woman right in front of me, but instead of arresting him as I had warned, I nearly cheered him on.
Fuck. Am I becoming my father?
Chapter 5
Ryan
“He’s not here,” I assure Chris when his manic search of his family home fails to find Noah. “He rarely stays here anymore.”
Chris’s chest reveals his exhaustion, rising and falling at double the rate of mine. I want to pretend his fatigue is merely from scanning every room in his massive home, but the width of his pupils reveals that isn’t the case. He's gasping in breaths with the hope it will ease the guilt sitting heavy on his chest.
How do I know this?
He has the same look on his face I did when I searched Savannah's family mansion four years ago. First, he was panicked. Then, he was angry. Now, he's confused. I tackled every emotion you could imagine the day Savannah left. I was so confident foul play was involved, I called Regina the instant I entered Thorn's empty room.
It was only when Regina stumbled upon Savannah’s letter tucked into a copy of the first romance b
ook she read did reality dawn. For the first time in my life, my acting skills were above par. Savannah believed every lie I spoke. She thought I had moved on.
She had left me.
Shaking my head to rid it of disturbing thoughts, I return my focus to Chris. Today isn't about Savannah. It is about Chris.
“Noah lives with his friend Jacob.” I keep my tone low, hoping my confession that I’ve been keeping an eye on his brother doesn’t re-spark his agitation.
I’m not watching Noah from afar because of my job. I watch him because the slap I witnessed him endure four years ago wasn’t the only one I’ve seen. Noah’s mom is a female version of my dad; she just abuses her teenage son instead of her partner. In a way, that makes her worse than my father. Children are innocent, no matter what.
“He’s with Jacob?” Chris asks, his voice unlike any I’ve heard. He sounds lost, void of a soul.
Unable to speak, I nod my head.
“How long?”
I lick my dry lips before replying, “Permanently, a couple of months. But he’s been back and forth for years.”
“Good,” Chris huffs out in a groan, his eyes fixated on someone behind my shoulder. “He’s better off there.”
Snubbing his mom’s request to sit down and talk, he exits his family estate with as much gusto as he entered it. After dipping my chin in farewell to his mother, I follow after him. It is times like today I wish I were a vindictive person. She doesn’t deserve my courtesy, but I can’t stop myself from issuing it.
Our drive back to Chris’s desolate house in the middle of Ravenshoe is made in silence. I have a million questions I want to ask and another million I want to answer, but easing his anguish is more important than settling my curiosity, so I keep my mouth shut.
I know from the stories Chris shared over the years that the man he mentioned when confronting his mother is his grandfather. Chris said although his infamous nickname was given in jest, the title suited him well. He was grumpy, but in a way Chris couldn’t help but admire... and emulate him. Even without having a drop of the same blood, Chris’s personality mirrors his father’s old man.
