AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Braden
I push the front door of my house open, trying to shake off the weight of the day. I’m met with the sound of voices coming from the kitchen.
When the door shuts behind me, a hush falls. I make my way to the kitchen to find Brent and my parents looking at me.
“Hi. Sorry, I’m late.”
“Don’t worry about it,” my dad says, to my surprise. In the several weeks since my therapist mentioned talking to my dad about everything, I haven’t worked up the courage to do it. I’m finally working regularly again, back on a normal schedule with Harper, and settling into school. There will be time for everything else.Theoretically. I guess we always say there’s time, even when it’s not guaranteed. It’s never guaranteed. That’s life.
“How’s Leigh doing?” my mom asks.
I shrug as I plop down on a stool, propping my elbow on the counter and letting my head rest in my hand. “I don’t know. Messy. Leigh’s not great at stuff like this.”
My mom leans over the counter and squeezes my hand. “How did it happen?”
“Overdose,” I say quietly. The word hits a little too close to home for me. I know I didn’t OD, but the level of drunk I was, the path I was on—it only would’ve taken a few steps for me to get there.
When I look up, I notice my mother staring at my father, who looks like he just took a hit to the gut. My eyes flit to Brent, who shrugs, looking just as confused as me.
My dad bangs his fist against the counter, then starts pacing the kitchen.“Thisis exactly what I didn’t want for either of you. Everything I was trying to prevent,” he mutters.
“What?” Brent asks, coming to stand next to me. “What are you talking about?”
My dad stops and looks at my mom. She gives him a slight nod, then squeezes his hand.
With a deep breath, my dad walks down the hall and comes back a moment later with a photo frame in his hand. He slides it on the counter in front of Brent and me. It’s a picture of my dad with my uncle Eric—who we stay with at the beach every summer—and their brother, Danny, who passed away when he was about my age. It’s always been a sore spot for my dad, and we learned not to bring him up too much. On the rare occasion he did talk about him, he’d grab a beer and go sit on the back porch alone for hours afterward.
“That’s my little brother, Danny. I know we don’t talk about him much. Mostly because even twenty years later, it still feels too raw. He was six years younger than me, three years younger than Eric, but it didn’t matter. We were best friends. Did everything together. I always tried to include him, even though he was younger. For years, I was closer to him than Eric because he didn’t piss me off as much.” He chuckles as tears fill his eyes. My father crying is off-putting, to say the least. He’s not stoic like Vince is, but he’s reserved. He doesn’t easily show emotion—other than anger or happiness—in front of others.
“When he was seventeen, he started dating a girl whose brother was into heavy drugs. It turns out she was too. Danny was the sweetest kid in the world, but—” He pauses and looks at me. “He had a troublemaking side. He would take the fun too far. And one time, with them, he did. Gave in. Tried heroin of all the fucking things, and never came back from it. He was an addict like that.” He snaps his fingers.
“We tried everything. My parents grounded him, but he’d sneak out. Not that grounding did much. My parents didn’t pay attention to where he was half the time. Eric and I stepped in, trying to draw his attention to other things, but he’d blow us off or show up high. Eric was angry and harder on him than I was. I still saw him as my baby brother. I wanted to protect him. When no one else would listen to him, I would. When no one else would give him money, I did. When he needed a ride, I’d give him one. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I enabled him. I gave him a ride that day. He said it was for a job interview, that he was working at getting clean. I stupidly believed him. Stuffed a twenty in his hand and patted him on the back as he climbed out of my car. Turns out his old dealer wasn’t selling to him anymore. He needed the ride to meet someone new. And the heroin he got was laced with who knows what. It killed him.”
My jaw almost hits the counter.Holy fuck, I did not see that coming.
“I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I helped him get there. I’ve had to live with that guilt every single day. So, I made a promise to myself that I would never let you boys become that. I know I pushed. I know I was hard on you. I know—I probably handled it all wrong. I just didn’t want you to end up like him. Couldn’t stomach the thought of that. You both have so much brightness inside you. I never want to see it dimmed. I’m sorry if I’ve been the one to do that.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us? Cautionary tales and all that?” Brent asks. I still can’t form words. I feel like I just learned about who I could have been.
“It was too hard for me to talk about and I was afraid you’d only hear about using drugs and not the dangers that could come from it. I’ve held onto the guilt for a long time. Eric has too. Of course, he feels like he was too hard on him.”
“That’s why he offered to let me stay with him—why you were so mad about that.”
My father nods. “Yes.”
“You know, we’ve spent all this time fighting you, trying to live up to standards we didn’t understand. If you’d just told us—” Brent stops short, shaking his head, somewhere between hurt and angry.
“I know. Like I said, I—I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear the thought of either of you ending up like that.” He looks at me. “Now, I wonder if I might’ve pushed you closer.”
Brent shakes his head and sits down, letting it all sink in, but I stand up, quickly step around the counter, and wrap my arms around my father.
He’s surprised, but then he squeezes me tightly.
“What I did isn’t your fault. I made my own choices.”
“But I could have—”
“We all could have done things differently. Maybe the outcome would’ve changed for me, but maybe it wouldn’t have. You might’ve gone about things wrong, but I appreciate that you wanted to protect us. I wish I would’ve known—”
