But I wasn't as strong as Shannon.
"Hey," Nick said. I set the book down and glanced up at him. "Get out of your head."
There were tears in my eyes now, and I blinked rapidly to clear them before meeting his gaze. I sniffled and smiled, shaking my head as if to say,No, I'm fine and I'm not going to lose my shit tonight.
"What are you eating?" I asked, eager for a topic that didn't involve my sister or my father.
He held up the dish for my viewing. "Lauren made beef stew," he said. "I might've allowed her to believe that I'm one of those guys who only has mustard, old take-out, and beer in my fridge, and she always sends me home with leftovers. She and Matt don't cook too often, but when they do, it's really good."
"How are Lauren and Matt?"
"They're doing well," he said. "His knee is still fucked up but he thinks it will magically heal, she's excited about some new second grade teachers she's trying to hire for next year, and Riley's still miserable."
I pinched the compass pendant at my neck between my fingers, murmuring in acknowledgement. "Do they have any idea?" I asked.
"About what?" he asked after swallowing a spoonful of stew. "At any given moment, every one of your siblings is sheltering seven different secrets."
"Seven seems like a low number," I said, mostly to myself. "There's no single reason for it. I mean, we were raised by a despot who found sport in brutally shaming us for any hint of weakness or whichever random thing he wanted to exploit"—like young girls—"and we covered all that shit up. No one outside of our home knew, and if they did, they looked the other way. None of that leads to heart-to-heart chats or open dialogues about feelings and emotions. Not when the goal is not getting your ass tossed down a flight of stairs."
"Really glad I pulled the plug on that bastard," Nick murmured around his spoon.
"It was a lot like the French Revolution. We were the angry revolutionaries plotting the overthrow of the tone-deaf tyrant. We even have our own version of the Bastille that we've stormed and reclaimed. But a side effect of winning a war is that you're not quite sure how to feel about any of it, or anything at all. That's why we keep some secrets, and only come out with them when they're old and moldy," I said, but while those words were forming on my lips, Nick's comment was sinking in. "Wait.Wait. You…you were there? With Angus? When he had the stroke?"
He nodded, and set his spoon down. "Yeah, I took him off life support," he said. "And I was there at the end, too. I signed the death certificate."
"Did he suffer?" I asked.
Nick squinted at me for a moment. "What do you want to hear?"
I ran my fingers through my hair. "I don't know," I admitted, feeling a bit snarly. "The last time I saw him, it was after I'd decided he'd molested me one time too many. I got a baseball bat and went into his room in the middle of the night, and I don't remember many of the pertinent details of that exchange, but I do remember Riley telling me that Angus would die a miserable death all on his own, and I shouldn't waste any energy on advancing that."
Nick didn't say anything, but I could see the muscles in his jaw ticking.
"So I'd like to know whether Riley was right," I continued. I was past snarky, and veering into straight up glib. "I want to know whether I was right to stop short of cracking his perverted fucking head open."
He looked down, his lips folded while he shook his head. "He suffered an ischemic stroke—"
"I'm aware of that," I snapped.
There was no reason to take out any of my bottomless Angus rage on Nick, especially not when he was offering up the details about Angus's last moments. When Matt contacted me with the news, I'd thrown some clothes and my computer in a bag, and hopped the next flight to the Canary Islands. El Hierro was the least explored of the Canaries, and its massive shield volcano offered zero internet access and all of the distraction I needed. I didn't want to know anything about Angus then, and I wasn't certain that I wanted to know now but I did want to stop wondering about it. It was the monster under the bed, the one I could either wish away or look in the eye.
"We weren't able to intervene or reverse the stroke in any way, and it appeared his brain had been deprived of oxygen for a significant period of time. He later experienced seizures, and increased intracranial pressure. We treated that by removing part of his skull while repairing a blown blood vessel. Two days later he failed all brain function and reflex criteria," Nick said. "He was brain dead. He couldn't feel anything when he was taken off life support. Your family said goodbye, and his heart stopped about twelve hours later. No further interventions were attempted."
I tapped my fingertips against my lips, silently absorbing this. Angus threw me out of the house after the incident with the baseball bat, but he made sure to get in some parting shots about me being a dumb whore like my mother. I didn't have a good response at the time, and I was still amassing them now, even after his death. But hearing about his final moments, it was like sunlight shining through a thick carpet of clouds. The simple reminder that Angus was gone, really fucking gone, was enough to push out the memories of everything he'd done to me and Shannon.
And I didn't need those venomous comebacks anymore.
"As a surgeon, I hate the idea of a patient suffering in death," he started, dragging his thumb along his jaw. "But as your husband, I hate that I can't say he got back any of the pain he'd caused you."
Tears filled my eyes but I squeezed them shut, not wanting to shed a single one. I smiled, shaking my head. "No, it's okay, Nick. You said everything I need," I said. "All right, moving on. What's the appropriate gift for eloping in the Hamptons?"
* * *
To: Shannon Walsh
From: Erin Walsh
Date: January 29
