I ground my teeth together, staring at my brother who was watching me carefully. He was worried—that much was clear. Because he was Elliot, and he loved differently than me. Felt differently. Had more empathy, more hope.
If our positions were switched, if Elliot’s narcissistic ex-wife had died, he’d be able to gather up some pain, some tears. I could not.
“How did it happen?” I didn’t care much about the answer, but it felt like the right question to ask.
Elliot blew out a heavy breath. “This is the part I was worried about telling you.”
My brother’s obvious nerves confused me. I wasn’t sure why or how he knew about Naomi dying before me.
“I considered lying. Overdose, car accident.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Calliope suggested not telling you at all.”
“Calliope?” I repeated.
He nodded. Curiosity trickled up my spine, wondering what in the fuck his wife had to do with this. Calliope was the one who found Naomi and dragged her to Jupiter with a black eye. Calliope was the one who got Naomi to consent to the bone marrow transplant that saved Clara’s life.
I hadn’t known all of this at the time. My brain had been swimming in dread, making preparations for death. Clara’s. For my own. I didn’t have reason to believe, to hope. And I didn’t have the energy to question why Naomi would come out of the woodwork and decide to care about her daughter without asking for anything in return.
I had been too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the transplant not to work, for Clara to be taken from me.
Then came Hannah. Bringing light and warmth into my life when there was a chance to hope for Clara being healthy, living a long life. There was a chance formeto live again.
So no, I hadn’t put much thought into where Naomi had gone.
“She wanted to tell you herself,” Elliot explained. “Well, she didn’t want to tell you at all. She’s very protective of you, you know.”
“She doesn’t have to worry about protecting me,” I grunted. “She needs to worry about herself.”
I would never get the image of Calliope’s lifeless body out of my brain or seeing my brother at her bedside, a shell of himself. I saw our family being ripped apart again, and it terrified me.
Elliot’s features sagged as if his thoughts mirrored my own. “That’s my job, though. Don’t tell her that.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I value my balls, so I’m not going to tell Calliope Derrick she needs anyone, especially not her husband, to protect her.”
Elliot took a sip of his drink. “Well, in her quest to keep everyone safe, she didn’t tell anyone—me and her family included—about the trouble she was in last year.” Elliot’s eyes still filled with dark shadows at almost losing his wife.
“It’s a long story, and I know you’re anxious to get home, so I’ll condense it and say a dangerous man was fucking with Calliope. He was the one who found Naomi in the first place.”
“He was the one who gave her the black eye.” I mindlessly wiped the counter.
Elliot bobbed his head in confirmation. “And he was the one who killed her. In an effort to threaten Calliope.” The words were tight, coiled.
I was digesting this. It was all a lot for me. I was a simple fucking man, wanted to live a quiet life with my daughter. I was ignorant of the kind of world Calliope must’ve lived in. And Naomi had gotten tangled in that world. Killed.
Elliot had known this for a while. And it had been haunting him. I knew my brother. The believer in all things good, the man with a strong moral compass. It had probably been eating him alive.
“Okay,” I said after a long silence.
He stared at me. They remained silent, waiting. “Okay?” he eventually asked. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“I mourned the person I thought Naomi was a long time ago,” I told Elliot. “And I mourned the kind of mother Clara would never get.”
“You don’t think that she could’ve changed?” Elliot had probably been running that over in his head, too. Hope that Naomi might’ve reformed, come to her senses, come back to Clara.
“No,” I stated with certainty. “She never would’ve changed.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Let go of that weight you’ve been carrying. I know now. I appreciate you telling me. I’ve got to get home.”
Elliot was gaping at me. He’d obviously been nervous to tell me. I was unpredictable at the best of times. Usually a grumpy bastard. Had been my whole life. Elliot might’ve been expecting a fight.
My days of fighting over Naomi were long gone.
