“Mercy Navarro. I texted you her date of birth, too. Can you look up the autopsy report and also get me her case file from the police?”
“I’m on it. Give me a few hours.”
“Let me know when you’ve got something.”
When Jericho rolled out of bed at seven or so, he carried out his normal morning routine with a dopey half smile that just refused to go away. Atticus had been a pleasant and surprising distraction from the shit sandwich of his day. Jericho had never really thought pizza and mutual orgasms would be enough to shove aside the images he’d seen in that morgue but, somehow, focusing on Atticus had done just that.
For a time.
As soon as he opened his bedroom door, reality punched him square in the diaphragm. A sulky Felix sat curled on the couch in a pair of flowy black pants and a sheer floral robe, his eyes red and face wet with tears as he looked at Jericho’s laptop.
“What are you doing, little brother?” Jericho asked, following the scent of coffee to the kitchen.
When he turned to face Felix, coffee in hand, he found his mouth was in a hard line as he glowered at him with narrowed eyes. “I’ve been planning our sister’s funeral, unlike you, who decided to get laid…again.” When Jericho didn’t dignify his brother’s dig with a response, he continued. “Thatwasyour boyfriend you walked out of here at two in the morning, wasn’t it?”
Jericho took a deep breath and let it out, reminding himself that Felix was just lashing out because he was hurting. “He’s not my boyfriend and yeah, that was him. What did you want me to do? Sit around wallowing about something we suspected for years? You were downstairs drinking and playing video games. Did I judge you? No. I know your default setting is judgey, but dial it down a bit. She was my sister, too.”
Felix rolled his eyes, taking a delicate sip of what Jericho was certain was green tea. “Point of order. I was downstairs playing video games because your boyfriend is really loud in bed. I couldn’t listen to him moaning, ‘Oh, God. Oh, fuck,’ anymore. You certainly couldn’t be worthy of all that.”
Jericho couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face, which only made Felix roll his eyes as he snorted with derision. Atticus had been a little bit loud. It had been hot as fuck. He really had done anything Jericho asked, had begged for it, had given in so easily. He’d wanted Jericho to take charge—had needed it to take that pressure off him. Jericho suspected that trying to cure the sick while seeking vengeance on the living was likely exhausting for somebody like Atticus. He’d needed to be able to turn his brain off and not think.
That was fine with Jericho. He would happily let Atticus play pillow princess if that made him happy. He found Atticus’s response to him almost as hot as his touch. Besides, gay or not, Atticus had seemed to love Jericho inside him, and if he got to experience Atticus coming from inside his body, that was more than enough for him.
“Gross. You’re thinking about banging him right now, aren’t you? Dude, what is wrong with you?”
Jericho pulled himself from his dirty thoughts. “Shut up.”
As far as comebacks went, it wasn’t great, but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d never let anybody occupy this much real estate in his head before. Everything about Atticus seemed to demand Jericho’s full attention. He’d never been anybody’s first anything. Any other day, he would’ve run screaming in the opposite direction. He didn’t deflower virgins, even if it was only of the gay sex variety. He didn’t want to be anybody’s experiment.
But last night, Jericho hadn’t been thinking clearly. At least, that was what he’d told himself. He took his coffee and sat beside Felix on the couch. His younger brother instantly gravitated closer.
“What are you looking at?”
Felix’s voice caught on a sob. “Caskets.”
Jericho’s heart shredded into a million pieces. “Felix… Mercy didn’t want to be buried. She wanted to be cremated, remember? We all talked about it that one really bad night. The night we took you with us to that super depressing movie and then we ate burgers and you puked in the bushes? And you were moping because you wanted to go to the water tower but we said you were too little but you whined until we agreed?”
“I didn’t whine.”
“While we were up there, she said she wanted us to spread her ashes right there because it would piss off Ma and Papi? Remember?”
Jericho didn’t know if that was still true. In Jericho’s head, she was still seventeen years old. She still wore her jeans too low and tank tops with skulls and knives to piss off their father and dyed her gorgeous dark brown hair black to irritate Ma. But that wasn’t true. She’d lived eight whole years somewhere else. Eight years she’d been in the same city but never came to see him and Felix, never called. Part of him was furious, but that anger was eclipsed by the fact that she was dead. She had died and been thrown away like trash.
“Shouldn’t people have a chance to say goodbye?” Felix asked, a tear rolling down his cheek.
“What people,dìdi? It’s you, me, and Ma, and she doesn’t know who we are most days. The best thing we can do for her is just do what she wanted when we last knew her and put our efforts into figuring out where the fuck she’s been for the last eight years. I want to know how she ended up where she did. Don’t you?”
Felix deflated, tucking himself under Jericho’s arm. His baby brother was all extremes. Sweet or salty, furious or exhilarated, deliriously happy or inconsolable. He was a constantly swinging pendulum knocking down anything in his way, a pent up ball of homicidal rage one moment and a big, sucking hole of neediness the next.
Jericho blamed their parents. They had put all their pressure on him as the oldest, and then Mercy, constantly reminding them not to squander the opportunities given to them by immigrating to this country. But they’d spoiled Felix. By the time he was born, they’d decided they could loosen the reins a bit.
Then everything fell apart in such rapid succession. Mercy disappeared. Their father learned he had bone cancer, and then their mother was assaulted. Attacked in broad daylight in front of her own store, her head struck violently enough to cause a bleed that left her catastrophically injured.
Jericho had already taken over his father’s business by the time his mother was injured, and he’d done the best he could to raise a teen when he was barely an adult himself. He’d tried to hold onto hope that Mercy would return, that his mother’s brain would somehow fix itself, even though the doctor’s said there was no going back and that her level of traumatic brain injury would require constant around the clock supervision.
“How are you going to do that?” Felix asked around a sniffle.
Jericho didn’t know how to tell Felix just enough to keep him from digging too deep. While he knew about Atticus being at the cabin and that he was rich, he didn’t know it was a family operation. “My…friend has connections. People who might be able to help.”
