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The command from my brain short-circuits before it reaches my finger.
Darren is either in the hospital or he’s not. Whether I call to ask if he’s there or I don’t won’t change that.
My screen goes dark. My finger remains frozen.
Press call.
A text lights up my screen. Annette Martina has texted me three times—ever. Once, after the rabbit-freeing incident at Mrs.Lemmings’s, to let me know she was keeping my secret for my mother’s sake. Onceafter I started dating her daughter—to confirm we’d be using the stretch limo at prom. And once after I left town to add a PS to the voice mail she’d left.
This text makes four.
Your brother was spotted at the cemetery. I convinced the caretaker to wait an hour before calling the cops. I told you I take care of Kingsette’s own.
Her next message pings on my screen before I can respond:Have you considered my offer?
Twenty minutes later, I park beside a beat-up Honda Civic. The hood is more rust colored than red now, and the dent in the rear bumper is new, but it’s unmistakably the same car Darren received for his sixteenth birthday.
“You look like shit, little brother,” Darren says, barely looking in my direction as I approach. He’s sprawled out on a ratty blanket, a half-eaten burger and mostly full carton of fries by his feet. Our father’s stone stands like a moss-colored sentry in the center of Darren’s downward spiral.
“You don’t look much better.” Dark circles frame his eyes. The cut on his lip is still swollen, possibly infected.
“Always a competition with you, huh?” He rips off a piece of bun and tosses it at a tree that was a sapling when Dad’s stone was placed. Now the pool of shade it casts covers Dad’s grave and six others that weren’t there a decade ago.
“The Inn’s in trouble. I think ... something shady is going on,” I say, shielding my eyes from the sun’s glare to peer into the tree. A flock of dark birds peer back. “It’s been keeping me up.”
Darren breathes a sardonic laugh. “And you’re here to confront your number one suspect?”
“I’m here to make sure you’re okay. I got a text from Annette.”
He hurls another piece of bread at the tree. This time, a handful of birds scatter. “Mission accomplished, little brother.”
“Have you been sleeping here?” The sleeping bag amid the crumpled bags of chips and crushed cans of beer answers my question.
“Are you asking because you want me to come stay with you?”
“Do you have to answer every question with a question?”
“Do you?” He stands and dusts off his pants. Dirt clouds around him, and for a moment, time folds in on itself. Darren’s fifteen years younger, stumbling around, kicking up dirt, with a bottle of gin in his hand, ranting about the universe and Mom and the “fucking Inn.” The pressure of filling Dad’s shoes and being trapped.
I drove us home that night—my first time illegally behind the wheel. I put him to bed and then completed the chores Mom had asked him to handle.
It was that day that I realized if I didn’t get away, I’d end up like Darren—or Dad. Buried under the pressure of being the man of the house or just buried.
“I didn’t steal money from the Inn,” Darren says, maintaining eye contact as he places a small stone on our father’s grave.
A pain strikes the back of my throat as I count six stones. Two sons, one wife, and seventeen years gone—only six stones to show for it.
“I know,” I say, taking the three stones he extends—out of habit or lingering brotherly affection—toward me. I place the largest of them beside his and drop the others into my pocket, vowing to myself that I’ll visit again.
He snorts. “But you weren’t sure.”
“Do you know why Mom left? Did she seem okay to you?”
“Mom gave up on me a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t actually answer my question.”
He raises an eyebrow at my tone, which I belatedly recognize. Ten years away from this town and I can still channel my mother without a thought. “Sorry,” I murmur.
