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Their mom’s depression became progressively worse as they got older. Conor couldn’t remember her ever shutting herself in her room before he was nine or ten. In his mind, those early childhood years had been blissful. Mom read books to him and made him his favorite cookies whenever he came home with a good report card. Dad hadn’t gotten his hooks into Matt yet, so he, Matt, and Gage were best friends as well as brothers.
Dad had been a dark shadow in Conor’s teenage and adult life, but when he was young, his father left him and his brothers to their own devices, letting Mom do the lion’s share of raising them since they didn’t serve any purpose to him yet.
When Matt turned thirteen, that changed. Dad stepped in to begin molding his older son—his heir—into his own personal mini-me. Matt was resistant at first, but before long, the lessons took, and for years, it felt to Conor as if he’d lost his big brother.
Gage had always been the loose cannon, the black sheep, and a thorn in Dad’s side because he was devoted to Mom, her constant companion. And while he and Dad butted heads, Gage seemed to get a bye from a lot of the pressure put on Matt because Gage was taking care of Mom, something Dad either didn’t know how to do…or didn’t want to do.
“She didn’t help you because she was in her room, wasn’t she?” Gage asked.
Conor nodded. “I was twelve, and more than old enough to study for my own test. It was just…” The rest of that sentence wouldn’t come. While he’d hated his father, hated everything he stood for, too many of his old man’s lessons had stuck. If he finished his thought now, he would sound weak.
“Say it,” Matt prodded. “It’s just us, Conor. Dad’s not here anymore.”
He wasn’t sure how Matt knew, but he let his brother’s words bolster him.
“I hated it when she went away,” he whispered. Mom didn’t really go away, except in her head, but his brothers understood what he meant. “Dad yelled at me after he got off the phone with my teacher and sent me to bed without dinner. By the time I got to my room, my chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe, and I swear to God, I thought I was having a heart attack. I lay on the floor for hours, sure I was dying.”
“Jesus,” Gage said, scrubbing his jaw with his hand. “Why didn’t you come get one of us, man?”
Conor shook his head. “I don’t know why. I… You were in Mom’s bedroom with her, playing video games, talking to her, cajoling her like you always did, trying to pull her out of her sadness. And—” He glanced at Matt and stopped.
“And I had my head stuck up my ass, emulating the world’s biggest prick,” Matt said.
“I rode it out,” Conor said. “Then I checked out a book on mental illness from the library.”
Gage gave him a sad grin. “Of course you did. You and your damn books.” As he spoke, he looked around at the utter destruction in his living room, but he didn’t say anything.
Thank God.
Conor didn’t have a clue how he was going to explain the mess.
“I researched what I could, found out it had been a panic attack. I guess I don’t handle anxiety all that great. Over the years, I’ve found ways to deal with it. I’ve tried a lot of things, and some work with varying degrees of success.”
“Like?” Matt asked.
“When I feel one coming on, I shut myself in, focus on my breathing, close my eyes, practice mindfulness. There’s a three-three-three method that I like. I’ve got a shit-ton of lavender candles here and at the office because I read the scent is calming. I have a mantra I say over and over.”
At Gage’s curious head tilt, Conor answered the unspoken question. “I say, ‘I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay,’ over and over.”
“You know,” Matt pointed out, “a wise man once told me to go to therapy.”
Conor smirked. That was exactly what he’d told his big brother to do when he confessed that he was the one who’d found Mom after she slit her wrists, admitting he blamed himself for it because he’d left her alone, knowing she was upset.
“Did it never occur to you to see someone?” Matt asked.
Conor crossed his arms as he leaned back. “Of course it did. I saw a therapist for a couple of years, but it didn’t help. The guy just kept wanting to shove prescriptions into my hand, no matter how many times I said no drugs.”
Gage took a sip of his coffee, making a face and putting the cup down. Like Conor, Matt liked his coffee strong and black. Gage, on the other hand, nursed his with so much cream and sugar, Conor wasn’t sure it even classified as coffee. “Why are you so opposed to drugs? There’s nothing wrong with taking antianxiety medicine.”
“I didn’t want to be a zombie like Mom. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what was worse, the depression or the supposed cure.”
Matt sighed. “Conor, she was on some seriously powerful medication—thanks to Dad’s demands that the doctor ‘fix her.’ She wasn’t receiving the right treatment because Dad refused to acknowledge her illness. He wanted her in that doped-up state because it kept her meek and quiet.”
Conor frowned. “I didn’t know that.”
“All your memories of what Mom was going through were seen through the eyes of a boy. She was gone before you turned twenty. It makes sense you wouldn’t have understood all the things you were seeing and hearing. It’s not like anyone was trying to explain it to you.” Matt lowered his head, and it was apparent he was taking on the burden of not talking to Conor.
“You were a kid too,” Conor pointed out. “And my brother, not my parent. It wasn’t your job to talk to me about any of that.”
