Page 39 of Overkill

“Can I get you both at the kitchen table, please?”

“Why? You gonna move in with your new boyfriend? The homeless guy from the barn next door?” Marcus said.

Again, I ignored him. So did Miriam.

She walked into the kitchen and sat down, her sock-covered feet barely making any noise compared to her brother’s stomping.

I took the other seat at the breakfast table, hands clasped in front of me as I took a shuddering breath. I didn’t know how to get it out, so I wouldn’t try to walk around it. I wouldn’t try to soften the blow or prime them for what came next. I’d just say it.

When all my feelings warred inside me, when the day had too much going on, instead of being full of ambivalence, I was full of…nothing. Empty.

Hollow.

“I am not letting that fucking bum move in!” Marcus yelled. “Who the hell is he anyway? God!” He was trying to act like he was the guardian.

I took in a shuddering breath, and quietly said, “Marcus, please sit down.”

He didn’t make things easy. From the day he was born, he’d been difficult. Miriam and I were born in four hours. Mom said she recovered in days and had felt healthy the whole time. But with Marcus? Mom was sick the whole time. All nine months! And she was in labor for twenty-three agonizing hours.

It was a trait he’d had his entire life. There was no simple task he couldn’t turn into a fucking Odyssey.

I started again. “Please, sit down.”

Marcus glared at me. “This is embarrassing!”

I swallowed my sigh. But he kept going. Of course, he did.

“This is exactly what Uncle Turner said would happen. Instead of sticking it out, or just asking him for help, you’d rather shack up with some low-class, unemployed, poor bastard. You run to him like a lovesick teenager all because he looked at you! No wonder you ran off to Colombia! It was to find a husband, right? Just like Mom. Just like—”

“Marcus, just sit down!” I slammed my fist and screamed so loud, I was surprised the windows didn’t shake in their frames.

He didn’t shrink in fear, but I was glad he didn’t…not the way I used to.

But his words. Those horrific accusations, the words whispered too loudly at family dinners when they compared my low-class heritage with Miriam’s and Marcus’s. I was obviously less than they’d ever be, because I didn’t have any Gray blood.

I was just a person.

My veins were green, and my skin was russet. My eyes were too narrow; my face was too flat. My lips were brown. My eyes were brown.

I had nothing they wanted. Nothing they valued. Not like Marcus, who was blond with those blue eyes. Not like Miriam, who had brown hair that streaked gold in the summer and shone green.

The weight of the Grays’ disappointment and disapproval always weighed me down. I was free of it in undergrad, where no one had heard of Mourningkill or the Gray family, and I was seen simply as myself. A girl, like many others, leaving a less-than-ideal home.

Marcus finally sat when the silence lasted too long.

“Do you remember when Sheriff Whitlaw came here?” I asked, losing steam now that I was faced with telling them the news.

Miriam nodded. Marcus crossed his arms.

“They found Luke’s body in the lake. He…he was dead. This morning, I went to identify his body.”

“What?” Marcus’s eyes widened.

He looked from me to his sister. She stared at her hands.

“What happened?”

“As far as they can tell, he went boating, got drunk, and drowned the morning he disappeared.”