Page 103 of Legally Ours

Kieran nodded. "A social worker diagnosed him with an anxiety disorder, and several of the homes he stayed in drugged him pretty intensely at night to force him to sleep. That allowed some of the kids to torment him there, too. One kid even tried to suffocate him. Did you know that?"

My mouth fell open. "No...I had no idea."

Kieran pressed her lips together. "It's why he's so against any kind of medication or therapy. And if you tell him I told you that, I'll demote you to the mail room."

I held up my hands in mock-surrender, although the news reeled through my head. Brandon's adamancy against "being fixed" now took on new meaning. "My lips are sealed. How did you know?"

She gave me a look, like I should have figured it out. "Whose house do you think he was at when his mom was out on the streets looking for her next fix? I lived right across the hall. Sometimes we could hear him dreaming through the hallway, and we could definitely hear it when his dad was home. That fucker..." Kieran trailed off, shaking her head, visibly angry. "Well, anyway. No use thinking about that guy anymore."

I gulped. "Was it...what causes them, do you know? Is it PTSD?" It was the only thing I could think of that matched his symptoms, which I had Googled extensively.

Kieran twisted her mouth, like she knew she wasn't supposed to be telling me any of this, but also knew she had to.

"Look, I'm no psychologist. I think PTSD is probably the closest thing to it, combined with the anxiety disorder. The fact that the nightmares started during the years of trauma probably complicates things a bit, but who knows?" She paused, tapping a finger over the red slash of her mouth. "I know his social worker told my mother it was likely triggered by neglect, which was, of course, the catalyst for all the shit he went through, plus a healthy dollop of survivor's guilt."

"Survivor's guilt?" I asked. "For what?"

"For his mom," Kieran said, as if I should have already pieced that together myself. "After she died. Maybe even before. He found her smashed out of her mind more than once. Probably thought she was dead when she wasn't."

I shook my head, considering. He didn't speak a lot about his birth parents––he'd really only mentioned his mother a few times, episodes of his past he carried with him everywhere. After taking me to meet Ray, he had shared the conditions of his permanent housing with the Petersens when, at age fifteen, the courts had given him the choice between them and his mother, who had tried to regain custody. He had chosen the Petersens, and his mother had died the following week of a drug overdose.

"I killed my mother," he had told me, and my heart broke for him even as I said over and over again that it wasn't true.

I knew that Brandon had gone through extensive counseling after that––it was a condition of being allowed to stay with the Petersens and attend MIT as a sixteen-year-old math whiz. Those years had been difficult, and eventually led to his unhappy marriage, but he'd also been able to reinvent himself as one of Boston's greatest success stories. He didn't need to be fixed, as he told me––he'd already fixed himself.

Except that clearly he hadn't. Some things had resurfaced, and I wasn't entirely sure why.

"I have a theory," Kieran said casually as she stood up. "I think it's the hospitals that started it again."

I looked up, torn out of my thoughts. "Hospitals?"

Kieran twisted her lips, as if she was meditating on the idea for a moment.

"I think about the worst things that have happened to Brandon," she says. "And he always ended up in a hospital. Riding with his mom in an ambulance one too many times. A social worker finding him after his dad broke his leg."

I cringed. I hadn't known about that either.

"His mother dying there," Kieran continued. She looked pointedly at me. "Your dad. Yeah, he told me about that. And then you, of course."

I stared at her with my mouth open as I followed her epiphany.

"Those days you were out in the hospital, he was...not good," Kieran said. Then she shrugged. "It's just a theory. But one thing's for sure––the nightmares didn't stop until he was out of a stressful environment and seeing a good therapist. Once he was around people he knew weren't going anywhere anytime soon." She looked straight at me, her dark, prickly gaze piercing through me the way only Kieran's could. "Do you remember what I said about him all those months ago?"

I nodded. Kieran had been one of the first people to support me and Brandon, but she was also the first to warn me, too. He's complicated, she'd said, back when we'd first gotten involved. He doesn't need more of that in his life.

Except I'd brought plenty more of that. Between my father's criminal problems, and the fact that up until just recently, I'd technically been an extramarital affair, I had been nothing but one big complication for Brandon. The thought made me wilt.

"Skylar." Kieran's voice was sharp.

I looked up.

"I can see you wallowing," she said. "But what's going on with Brandon right now? Not your fault."

"But––"

"Everyone has complicated lives," she said as she crossed her arms. "I wasn't trying to imply that yours were inordinately bad. The reality is, Brandon has a tendency to make things even more complicated than they have to be. No one forced him to run for mayor, for Christ's sake, just like no one forced him to own two companies instead of one, stay married to Miranda for fifteen years, or make payments to a weird gangster. He does this to himself. You don't have to blame yourself."

I tapped my pencil on the desktop, but didn't answer. She had a point, although I still thought it was a bit unfair to Brandon.

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