Not that his outward appearance betrayed it. He’d done all he could to distance himself from the thin, hungry, lanky boy in cheap clothes. The one I remembered most. He had filled out, a little more in the stomach than was proportional to his body. His dark hairline was receding, and there were brackets of lines around his eyes. But he was wearing high-quality pants and a sweater. The watch on his wrist was nice but not flashy. His teeth were white and straight. He looked like an upper-middle-class businessman, just like he—or more accurately, his wife—had always wanted.
“Clara’s wonderful,” he commented as I handed him a mug of tea.
I smiled, despite my nerves at having him there, at having this conversation. “She is. She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever known.” I settled on the armchair, needing physical space from my brother.
He didn’t feel like my brother. He felt like a familiar stranger I wasn’t sure I was going to like.
“And she loves you,” he added. “They both do.”
I sipped my too hot tea. “Yes.” Admitting it out loud felt odd and amazing at the same time.
“You’ve got a good life.” Jack drank some of his tea before putting it down.
“I do. Now.” My answers were short and curt. It was unfamiliar to me to be so cold, especially now that I was surrounded by warmth, even with snow on the ground outside.
“I’m sorry.” Jack looked at me with genuine anguish marring his features.
I tilted my head, surprised by the apology. I’d long accepted that I’d never get one from my brother. He was intent on having a good life, leaving his past behind. In order to do that, he had to tell himself lies about who he left behind too.
He laughed, yet the sound was sad. “For everything.” He ran his hand through his hair. “For leaving you when you were so small. Leaving you withher.”
His features darkened at the mention of my mother. He cut ties with her sooner than I did, carried deeper wounds. Maybe because he was around when she was more or less sober. When she showed him love and affection. I reasoned it was so much harder to lose something than to never have it at all, like me.
“I don’t blame you,” I replied after considering the situation, forcing myself to think of the lost, small, betrayed girl I’d been when Jack left. I’d resolved to hate him for the rest of my life. But hatred was such a hard emotion to hold, especially against someone who didn’t deserve it. “I would’ve left the second I could’ve too.”
“But I could’ve taken you with me.” His voice was wracked with guilt.
I smiled, reaching forward to squeeze his hand. “No, you couldn’t have.” I stated the truth we both knew. He had been too young. Too irresponsible, full of mistakes he was yet to make, little wreckages of his life he still had to find his way through. There was no room for me there.
“You are my brother,” I reminded him. “Not my parent. It wasn’t your job.”
“Taking care of you had to be someone’s fucking job.” The bite in his tone told me he was angry. At himself, our mother, our father. The world where situations like ours were not uncommon. “You were so small. So good. Generous. And you had no one.”
I shrugged. All of that was true. Except I didn’t have no one; I had Cole. He got me through.
“Maybe once,” I agreed. “Now I have a family of my own.” I looked at the photo displayed on the wall, of us at Clara’s birthday party, together as she blew out the candles. We weren’t even anusthen. I was upset by Beau’s behavior. He was cold and closed off, but the photo showed the two of us side by side, watching Clara with love in our eyes.
We had been a family, even then.
My eyes squared back on my brother. “Now I have a lot of people. You included. If you want.” Though I knew it wasn’t entirely that simple, sure that my sister-in-law still had a few spells cooking in her underground lair to try to make me go bald or something. There was a lot left to work out. But baby steps.
“I left her,” Jack said, as if he were reading my mind. “Kelly.”
I widened my eyes over the rim of my mug. I never thought I’d see the day. Kelly was not a nice person, but she helped give Jack the nice life he so coveted. Her family helped him into a job he wasn’t entirely qualified for, a salary he didn’t quite deserve—to keep their daughter in the lifestyle to which she was accustomed and to keep Jack forever under her thumb.
“It should’ve happened years ago.” He sounded sad, regretful. “I was focused on the wrong things.” He stared at the photo I’d been looking at. “I want a family,” he added. “A real one. Like you have.”
“Clara’s not even mine,” I told him, even though the sentence tasted like dirt in my mouth.
“Yes, she is.” Jack spoke with a certainty he shouldn’t have had after just an evening with her.
But he was right.
She was mine.
We smiled at each other, our past nowhere near reconciled, our wounds nowhere near healed. But it was a start.
twenty-nine
