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Wait. That was completely different from what I’d been told. “What? I thought she was—”
“Was what?”
I gulped. Shit, I’d been caught. “Um, well, Kieran might have mentioned a few things to me. About your parents.”
His feet came to a sudden halt, stopping us in front of King’s Chapel, its famous cemetery eerily dark and silent in the heart of the city. “Kieran?”
“She’s your friend, right? She was there the night you and I met. Well, she’s the director of—”
“FLS. Yeah, I know.”
Brandon didn’t move, standing as still and tall as the Corinthian columns holding up the front of the church. His arm around my shoulders now felt like a vise. I continued in a rush, hoping to diffuse the awkwardness.
“Kieran just said that you grew up together, that’s all. In the same building, and that you were friends. And that your mom is—”
“Dead.” The word fell between us like a stone.
“Um...yes,” I confirmed with a shaky nod. “And she mentioned that your dad—”
“Is finishing up his second ten-year sentence.” His arm fell from my shoulders, and he shoved both of his hands deep into his coat pockets. His eyes were made of steel. “For beating up his last girlfriend with a wrench.”
I said nothing, but my stomach dropped at his icy tone.
“Oh, she didn’t tell you that part?”
“Brandon, I’m sorry. Kieran just—”
“Has a way of butting in where she shouldn’t.” He pressed his lips together so hard that they nearly disappeared, then exhaled a long breath toward the sky. “What else did she say?”
“Um, well, she also said that your mom was a—had some issues with drugs.”
Brandon pulled his hands out of his pockets and threaded them through his hair.
“Anything else?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, not really.”
He darted a suspicious blue glance at me. “You sure?”
“Brandon, yes, I’m sure.”
I took a step toward him, hoping he might pull me back into the nook between his arm and his solid body. But instead, he took another step away.
“Well, I guess it’s for the best,” he said, his tone resigned. “You should know what I really come from.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like a full minute, and it felt like the busy downtown street was completely silent. His eyes were hooded yet direct; I begged him to see openness in mine. I wanted the truth, whatever it was. So, I waited.
“She’s dead,” he finally said again. “A year after she was released after serving time for felony possession. I was fifteen. She wanted to regain guardianship, but the judge asked me what I wanted.” He shrugged, as if testifying against his own mother weren’t a massive deal. Only the rising accent indicated otherwise. “Life with the Petersens was good. I was about to graduate high school, something neither of my folks ever did, and they had already offered to send me to MIT if I could get in. I had enough to eat, and no one was coming home wasted or beating the shit out of me on a daily basis.”
I couldn’t imagine someone as tall and strong as Brandon being beaten by anyone. A vision of one of the kids from the clinic immediately rose to mind. A woman and her daughter had both came in today with bruises all over their arms; the little girl had a nasty cut over her right eye.
Suddenly I was choked up, imagining Brandon as a blond-haired little boy, with the same kind of bruises and cuts. Brandon started to walk toward the Common without checking that I was with him. I had to trot to keep up, but I was there while he strode the last three blocks past the Granary cemetery and the Park Street Church. It wasn’t until we were well inside the Common, in the relative peace of the bare-branched trees and lights linings the pathways, that he finally slowed down to finish his story.
“So, I chose Ray and Susan,” he said, quietly enough that I had to strain to hear him. “And two days after the judge maintained their guardianship, she was dead. Heroin overdose. You wanted the truth, and this is it: I killed my mother.”
“Oh God,” I breathed out, more to myself than to him. A few tears fell down my cheeks before I could stop them. “Oh God, Brandon. That’s...not true.”
As if finally realizing that I was still there, Brandon stopped and turned to look at me in surprise. With both hands, he cradled my face and forced me to look into his fathomless blue eyes while his thumbs wiped away the remnants of my tears.
