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“Brian!You’re keeping tabs on the kid?”
He shrugs like it’s nothing.I know I’m not going to get more out of him tonight on this topic, and maybe not ever.I lean back in my seat, stealing quick glances at him when I think he’s not paying attention.Parts of Brian are changing.It isn’t just with me.
Despite his impulsive darkness and the death he dealt to others tonight—the death we both dealt—something is changing.
But it’s an additive process.I don’t think he’ll ever wake up one morning and decide to do something normal and boring with the rest of his life.He’s never going to attend a City Council meeting to discuss the value of preserving the old historic trees on Main Street or volunteer to read to toddlers at the library—unless it’s necessary for recon.He’ll always be a killer.But he’s becoming something a little bit more.And yet… I worry that the fate that may hang over us will snatch this new Brian away from me before he can take full form.
He turns the heat up until it feels like springtime in the car.I didn’t even have to say I was cold.It’s these small considerate gestures that get me the most, that make me think he is so much more than what he appears to be.
Finally he sighs and says, “Do you remember back in September when you woke up to the murder wall, and I admitted I’d killed someone without you?”
“Yeah?”I say it so cautiously, so quietly as though he’s a deer I don’t want to spook.I know if I push him he won’t talk about this.I can tell it makes him feel vulnerable to admit whatever this is—even to me.
“It was Aidan’s aunt.She was hurting him.”
I don’t know what to say to this that won’t just re-trigger his own childhood traumas, so I just say, “Is he safe now?”
“Yeah, I think so.He thinks he’s got an angel watching over him.”
“Well, you kind of are.”I’m still so shocked at the level of interest Brian has taken in this kid, going so far as to leave him a gift from Santa.It’s surreal.
“No, you,” Brian says.“He thinks you’re his guardian angel.He told me when I was playing Santa.”
I did see the kid, which was why I slipped away to another part of the store for fear he might recognize me.I wasn’t worried for Brian with the fake white beard covering up so much of his face.
It takes everything in me not to make the kind of noise you make at the discovery of a cute puppy.But I keep it together.We’re silent the rest of the way home.I don’t know which fact is causing the puppy reaction in me.That Aidan thought I was an angel?That he told Brian?That Brian patiently listened to him tell his secrets?A combination of all of it?
When we get home we shower together, but we don’t go run on the treadmill.It’s far too late at night for that and everyone will be up bright and early for Christmas.Phyllis goes all out with the food for the holidays.And I wonder if Benjamin Barker has family who are about to have Christmas ruined for them for the rest of their lives.
I lie in bed in the darkness, the tarot cards and Benjamin’s warning playing over and over in technicolor in my head.I want to brush it off as Brian does, but I guess I do believe in fate.And I feel that surely, given who we are and what we do—what we’vedone—that mine and Brian’s can’t be good.
EPILOGUE
AIDAN
Thirteen years later.
“Your father killed your mother.”
It’s the whisper of an almost forgotten memory.I wonder if it was even real—if she ever really said those words.I have only the vaguest memory of my Aunt Eliza.I was young, almost six at the time.I remember she was mean—to both me and the dog—but then one day she was gone, and Baxter and I were going to live with Uncle Martin and nobody ever told me why.
Baxter died two years ago.He lived a long happy life, but he was already three when I got him, and fourteen is ancient for a golden retriever.I cried for two weeks over that dog, though I would never admit this to a living soul.
I’d wanted to live with my uncle to begin with, but the system doesn’t care what a kid wants.They think they know best.But if I’d gotten what I’d wanted without the detour to my aunt’s house, I never would have had that dog.
That whisper in my mind lives with me.It haunts me.It goes to sleep with me.It wakes with me, and I wonder if it’s true.Even though I have so few memories now, I loved my dad.But what if he killed her?How could I love him if he killed her?
I wonder if I inherited something dark and twisted that will make me do the same some day.All the men in my family are criminals.And although I haven’t been formally inducted into the family business yet, I’ve done my share of bad things already.
I got my trust fund early—six months ago—so I could live on my own.I’m supposed to take over the business when I turn twenty-five.That’s still six years away.I feel like I’m in limbo, just waiting for my life to begin.And I wonder if this bit of early financial freedom isn’t really isolation and a trap.Maybe Uncle Martin isn’t ready to hand over the reigns of power just yet.Maybe he hopes I’ll fuck up, land in prison, and then he can keep the whole thing running.I can’t inherit anything from a jail cell.
I’ve already had some close calls with the law—problems that just mysteriously disappeared as though someone watches over me.I glance at the dresser to the framed pen and ink drawing, signed with a mysterious Q.
My guardian angel.I would have forgotten what she looked like—and probably that she’d even existed by now without the drawing.I got it for Christmas that same year from… Santa Claus.I mean, I know it wasn’t actually a jolly magic old guy who flies through the sky.But I’ve turned it all over in my head a thousand times now and still can’t make sense of it.
My uncle took me to see Santa at a local department store soon after I went to live with him, and I saw the angel who protected me the night my dad was killed.I thought of her as an angel.Somehow my little kid brain re-imagined her as some kind of magical being who was watching over me and protecting me from the monster with the gun that night.
The day I went to go live with my uncle, I remember getting on the bus after my aunt threw a vase at me.It hit the wall instead.I sat there praying as the bus pulled away to be able to get away from her.I asked the angel in my head.
