AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You know, the whole Matthews family is coming to town for Keegan’s funeral,” Chris says a few minutes later, right as I’m starting to fall asleep. “All of them.”
His words sink in, and I groan. “You’re kidding me. There’s no way Bria’s going to be okay with Casey Matthews being home. He broke her heart.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Chris mutters darkly. “She’s my little sister, Avery. I was there, holding her every night after he left.”
“Shit’s about to get real, that’s for sure.”
5
CARTER
No amount of scrubbing my skin under burning hot water will take away the red that stains my skin or the feeling of my brother’s blood. That doesn’t stop me from trying though.
Soft knocking on the door cuts through the melancholy, at least momentarily. “Get out of the bathroom, Carter.”
Casey sounds just like the rest of us. Broken.
“Mom said we need to bethereby noon.”
There.
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Where we’ll say goodbye to Keegan. Even thinking about it steals my breath and makes it hard for me to concentrate.
I look down at the uniform I put on that morning in a haze.
“Fuck,” I whisper. The telltale hitch in my voice makes it clear I won’t get through anything today without crying.
I wipe my eyes without looking back in the mirror. Instead, I straighten the collar to my blues and stand up straight.
“You can do this.”
I open the door to my brother’s pale face. Red-rimmed eyes are the only sign of color, and I know I am not alone in my pain.
I do my best to push back the misery. “Don’t you have your own house to stay in?”
He quirks an eyebrow at me, rising to the bait I’ve laid out perfectly.
“Yeah,” Casey snaps. “But my wife is currently living in it and she had the locks changed. I have to call a locksmith.”
Unable to help myself, I snort. “I can’t believe you never divorced her like she asked. Repeatedly. You’ve been gone for ten years.”
Casey, who looks exactly like I do, only a few years older, shrugs like his life isn’t the topic of discussion. “She could have filed for a contested divorce anytime she wanted. She didn’t.”
Now isn’t the time to bring up Casey’s failing marriage. Although, technically it had already failed years ago.
“You married her, joined the military, and then left her here. Alone. For a decade.” Okay, so I’ve never been smart when it comes to keeping my mouth shut.
But we all need something else to think about rather than the fact that we are about to bury our brother.
Casey leads the way to his lifted Ford and doesn’t say anything until we are pulling out of the dirt lane that leads to my house.
I watch him squeeze the wheel, before coughing. “Keegan said the same thing. The day he… The day he died. He called me to tell me that he saw Bria out with some guy. And he told me I’d lost her. That I needed to pull my head out of my ass and get her back. Before it was too late.”
Tears sting my eyes again, and I can’t catch my breath. The sharp ache in my chest makes it almost impossible to think, let alone breathe. I rub my chest, trying to get the pain to ease up, just a little.
“Fuck.” I manage. That one word holds all the emotion I want to share with my brother.
“Yeah,” he replies.
