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“I see.”
“And he’s my husband.”
“We both know it’s not real.”
I might be falling for him. Oh my god, it might even have started a long time ago.
“Did he chase you outside?” Kitty asks.
“He’s totally incapacitated. He did tell me to go for a walk, but I wouldn’t do it.”
Kitty scrubs both her hands over her face. I want to do the same, but I don’t move. “He’s more than just…Everyone sees the pain. That’s all they see. He never lets anyone know, so they think he’s this huge heartless grump, but I’ve never met anyone with more love and kindness to give. He saved my mom and me. That was the price of us leaving.”
My heart feels like it’s being squeezed in some unholy kind of fist. “What was?”
“He was. And he chose to stay so that we’d be safe. My father—if you can use that term for a man like him—beat the shit out of him. When he was old enough, he’d fight back to keep my mom and me safe, but our father liked that even more. He wanted to beat the goodness and the life and the weakness out of my brother. What’s going on in there…that’s the result of it.”
“But there…there must be painkillers. Or prescription medication. Something. Someone has to be able to do something. He can’t just…just live like that.”
“He doesn’t like them. He told me all the painkillers carry a risk of dependency, and he doesn’t want that.”
“Prescriptions probably wouldn’t.”
Kitty’s lips compress, and she looks off toward the lake. “He told me he doesn’t want them. I don’t really know why. Honestly, I think it has more to do with the tests they’d have to do to give him a prescription. I don’t think he wants to know for sure what’s going on. He’s afraid of the damage, and he thinks that living the way he is now is better than living with the knowledge that his brain may be one hit away from being completely obliterated. I looked up concussions. They’re scary, and you can’t really do anything for them. It would only be managing the headaches. He could talk to a doctor just for that, but he won’t go. He’s so, so stubborn.
“More than that, our father made him feel like any weakness was intolerable. It’s been literally beaten into him that he cannot let his guard down for a second.” Kitty’s voice is so, so sad. She’s unearthly beautiful with her long dark hair and features that are so much like Leon’s yet so different too. She’s dainty where he’s all hard angles. She looks like she was made from feathers and flowers, whereas he’s hewn from stone and pain and darkness.
“It’s not a weakness! Nothing about this is weak!”
“I know that. You know that. The logical part of the whole world knows it, but he can’t see it. He lives with that pain because anything less is unacceptable to him.”
“But that’s not…nothing is going to happen if he needs a sick day or if he’s in his own space, sleeping to get better.”
“I don’t think my brother has ever slept properly in his entire life. Not really. Not truly. I know he’s safe, that we’re all safe now, but he just can’t do it. He can’t let his guard down.”
“He slept all night and day here before he got up. He looked even worse after it.”
Kitty’s mouth drops open. “He slept? Like really slept?”
“Yeah. I kept checking on him to make sure he was okay because it had been so long. He said something about not sleeping for three days, and I thought it was the stress of the wedding and the deportation. He did say he wasn’t feeling well last night, and I was worried.”
“Ugh, there isn’t any chance of staving it off, apparently. I’m shocked, though. If he slept, like the sleep of the dead, it means he trusts you. I don’t even know if he would do that with me.”
My head spins. “The deportation.” I latch onto that because I can’t say that her brother trusts me. It still warms me to think that he might, and it gives me hope that maybe, on the other side of this, I can help him somehow. My foolish, hopeful heart won’t take no for an answer. “That’s why he doesn’t want to go back? To Ireland?”
Kitty makes a choked, low noise in her throat and won’t look at me. “I think it would kill him.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” We’re both quiet for a long time. The moon is so pretty above the lake, so serene and peaceful, and the water makes soothing sounds. But neither of us is going to be soothed until Leon is better. We’re both wound up tight with worry for him. “He’d be so upset if he knew that I told you this.”
“I know,” I whisper. “And that makes me upset. I’m heartbroken for him.”
That earns me a wild look. “Heartbroken?”
“Who wouldn’t be?” I’m not backtracking now.
“Anyway, back to that night. The only reason I know about any of this was that it happened— the puking—and then he was writhing on the floor, out of his skull, which freaked me out. I majorly freaked out. It was bad. He would never tell me, but I’m guessing it was one of the worst ones ever. I called an ambulance. I just did it. I thought he was going to die. I went with him to the hospital, and they sedated him and gave him painkillers. The doctor came out and talked to me. They wanted to run tests, but I knew my brother, and he would never have forgiven me, so I said no. They did take his blood, which I agreed to, and they didn’t find anything off medically, so that helped me relax. The doctor did say he figured it was a migraine. He wanted to pull medical records from Ireland, but I flat out refused. There was…there was an accident—”
