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I frown. “No, she came from money, a little tragic, but up until she lost her parents her life was good. Brandi grew up on the streets.”
My brother holds up his hands. “This isn’t a fucking competition. We’re not close, not anymore, but you didn’t know Jess. Wonder why I didn’t leave her? Because believe me I should have, long before I did.”
He pauses and I wait, staring at him. I hate this. All of it. The conversation, the fact minutes of being with Brandi are being stolen from me, and the only reason I don’t walk is they’ll be stolen up there just as much as down here, and I think down here is where I need to be right now. And fucking Tyler knows that.
“This isn’t anything on you,” he says quietly. “But you didn’t know her. You knew the version of who she wanted to be. Not who she was. Her family was dirt poor and she did what she had to get by. But it’s the old nature and nurture thing? Part of it is nature. Jessica could have changed. She got worse. Your woman? She’s a beacon shining in the darkest night. And Brandi can handle anything.”
He doesn’t say sorry about the pregnancy; he doesn’t apologize about the past. No excuses. Just truth and honesty.
I appreciate it. Not that it makes anything better.
“Do you want me to have a come to fucking Jesus moment? Or feel for Jessica, or—”
“No.” He thumps the wall next to him as he straightens. And I’m looking at a pissed-off me, and really it should be the other way around. But right now, I don’t have anything in me except things for Brandi. Every drop of emotion is hers. All my will.
Pull through, I think, and then I’ll reevaluate.
“No, Travis, I don’t want any of that. I’m just telling you they’re different people. Fucked-up past doesn’t mean a thing to who someone is now. Or will be. Jess had problems. Big ones. The worst thing is I should have left her years and years ago, but the guilt, the fact I had money and she didn’t. Big money, money she couldn’t touch.”
He shakes his head.
“No idea where she got it that big bucks would be her salvation. She had enough but it wasn’t for her. And then she got, in her words, old. In her thirties and she thought she was old. We were apart and living in the same house for years. I ignored her men; I didn’t even cheat. Not until… Until I left her, moved out, and then she went after the woman. Who stopped talking to me. So I took a job here, slapped Jessica with divorce papers, and then…”
He sucks in a breath.
“This is my fault. I knew her, what she’s like. Just didn’t think… didn’t think she’d go after you again. But when she came up to me earlier today and said you told her you wouldn’t look at her while there was breath in Brandi’s body or some such crap, and she took off, I knew she’d do something. She has meds she doesn’t take, and it’s easy for her to get all kinds of things. I knew she was on something and… Yeah, got there too late.”
I have nothing.
What the hell am I meant to say? I want to bring down wild fury on him but I can’t. I don’t have that in me either. Because I should have known, too. Known that the unhinged woman who turned up at my place might do something.
But no, I decided she’d seen the error of her ways.
I was still thinking about the damn picture in my head when Tyler called.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Not really sure. I just think you should know.”
“So you win the award of putting up with a nightmare wife you took off my hands?”
He winces.
“Shit, Travis, I loved Jessica once, and I’m not ashamed of it, if you want to know and that’s not noble; it’s not a competition. I was young and stupid and did something heinous.” He pauses. “I think in her way she loved me, or part of me. She cared enough at one point to open up and tell me everything I told you. She let me in enough and then couldn’t let me go even when it was done.”
I rub a hand over the back of my neck. Brandi’s still in surgery, another few hours they said and my phone’s on so if something happens, Brian’s under strict instructions to call.
“But look, Travis, there’s something you should know. When your wife saw me, she was mostly out of it, and I think Jessica meant to call you, she thought I was you until your wife, your bleeding out wife called me Tyler. Asked for you.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t be a fucking moron. She knew who I was. Jessica didn’t. And when she realized, she took pain pills that were in Brandi’s kitchen. I know that. I saw her with them in her hand, and then she swallowed them. Heavy shit. She had the audacity to tell me that it was my fault. My choice. I had to pick one. I chose to try and save your wife over mine. I’m gonna have to live with that.”
I start laughing, not because it’s funny, but because it’s so beyond horrific I don’t know what else to do. I hated Jessica. But I never wanted— never wanted any of this.
“I’d do it again, too,” Tyler says. “Not to win points but I know what Jessica was like and gods help me, the world’s better off. No way would she ever let us go. No way would she ever seek help. She was on her own destructive trajectory, and I just let her take it.”
“I should… should get back up there. Brandi might not make it.” My voice breaks on that. But I have to say it. I need to acknowledge it.
