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“He showed you a picture of me?” Suddenly, he sounded hopeful. As young as the boy in the photo, and trying not to care.
“No. I…snooped in his closet.”
Alexis, hanging up my cheerleading uniforms, raised her eyebrows at me.
“Awright!” His voice warmed. Patrick’s little brother was obviously the school troublemaker. “What else did you find? Come on, talk.”
I prickled, suddenly uncomfortable. Alexis folded a shirt into a neat roll. Holding the phone away from my face, I touched her arm.
“You don’t have to clean up,” I whispered.
She let out a sniffling, coughing laugh and wiped her nose. “Girl, I want to. It’s therapeutic.”
“So he didn’t tell you anything about us,” said Patrick’s younger brother in my ear.
“I mean, I know your names. You’re Nick, and your younger brother is Eddie. That’s all.”
“Typical. So fucking typical. Doesn’t even drop a few crumbs for his girlfriend.”
I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and straightened my sheets with a snap. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Then what are you?” he demanded. “I think I’ve seen your picture too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Or maybe a whole pad full of pictures of you.”
“Heshowedyou?” I gripped the phone. “Please, no.”
There was a silence. “Nope. ‘Course not. Not my brother the gentleman. But I’m no gentleman.” He coughed. “Apologies.”
Smoothing out my comforter savagely, I stared at the ripped nude portrait over my desk. Alexis, shuffling around my room, was avoiding it.
“Hey,” Nick exclaimed, full of false bravado, “if it makes you feel better, he waspissed.Anyway! That’s not the point.Point is, he needs to stop ignoring my fucking phone calls. He needs to decide if we’re gonna see our mom. Just because he hasn’t gotten over finding her doesn’t mean he can take it out on all of us.”
“Finding her?” I swallowed. “What happened with your mom?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“He hasn’t said anything to you at all?”
That did it. All the strain of the past week crashed over me in a tidal wave.
“I know jackshit!” I bawled at this utter stranger. Maybe it was because he sounded like Patrick. “And I’m sick of it! My secrets areexplodingall over the place, but Patrick won’t tell me a damn thing!”
“Our mom left four years ago.” Nick said abruptly. “Patrick blames himself, and you know what? He’s right.”
The picture I’d found flashed in front of my eyes: his mom, standing with the family. Absent-minded, faraway. Elsewhere. I felt Patrick’s ring pressing into my skin, tracing my breasts, rubbing against my folds, and heard the chill in his voice when he said it had been his dad’s.
He’d given away the watch, but he’d kept the ring.
“Why would he blame himself?” I was walking into a minefield, and I couldn’t stop.
“Well, a good brother would keep his mouth shut, but I’m no good brother, so…” There was drunken satisfaction in Nick’s voice. “She was running around on our dad. Patrick came home early one day and walked in on them. That would mess most guys up, knowing their mom was — you know. But he freaked the fuck out and told us. All of us. At dinner. He kept saying the truth needed to come out. Mom was begging,begginghim to stop. Eddie, our kid brother — he was eleven, for Christ’s sake!”
“God,” I whispered. Alexis shot me a worried look. “I’m sorry.”
