“My brother. He’ll miss me, though I never call him, rarely see him. Don’t ever check in.”
“That’s so sad.”
Huh. He’d never thought of his life as sad before.
“Used to fish with him. And Dad. Only time Dad paid much attention to us, really. There’s this island off the coast of California. San Elias. It’s right next to this deep-sea platform. Dad’s spot. Hot summers, he’d drop us on the island and fish off the boat.”
“Sounds nice.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Dad didn’t like dealing with us. Couple times he brought camping gear and put us on the island to fend for ourselves while he fished. Probably got wasted, too, but I wasn’t aware of that in those days.” He sucked in a dry breath, filled with nothing but Angel. “Drank himself to death. But that’s not the point. The point is that Eric was a kid, too, but he was more of a man than Dad. Dad taught us to fish, to clean what we caught, but he’d pass out before we cooked them. So Eric, at probably ten or eleven, would light a fire and make sure I ate. After the second or third trip like that, he started bringing other food, too. So we wouldn’t have to eat fish for the three days it took for our dad to finish whatever booze he’d brought.”
“Oh, Ford. I’m sorry, that’s—”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. Shit happens to everyone. It was nice. Peaceful. I had Eric. I was lucky.” He sighed, letting the backs of his gloved knuckles rub her rib cage and wishing there was room—time—for more. “I remember these…sensations. My feet in the warm mud. Sitting with my brother by the fire, leaning against him shoulder to shoulder. We didn’t have to talk, which was nice.” Behind his closed lids, winking lights appeared. “The stars. I remember watching them with him and wondering if—”
Shit. He couldn’t finish, couldn’t voice the childish hopes or wishes or whatever those had been. Wanting his mom back, begging the night sky for another chance. Shooting stars and their false, empty hope.
She nodded and that movement, the tight rub of her cheek to his chest, made something twist hard inside of him.
“Eric’s my hero,” he said into the top of her head with a weak smile. “Wanted to kill me when I joined up.”
“The army?”
He hummed his assent against her.
“Yeah. Why’d you do that?”
“Piss my dad off, maybe. Though it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad was a scientist—petroleum geologist.”
“Hm. What’s that?” Angel sounded tired, but present. Exactly the way he felt. Like if they went to sleep, they might never wake up again. Like this might be it for them.
“Worked for the oil companies—it was how he knew about that island, from the time he’d spent out there, planning on where to place rigs. They have geologists on staff who locate oil and gas deposits.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. So, I was kinda following in his footsteps. Majored in geology when I first went to college, but about halfway through my third semester, something happened. An oil spill, right off the coast. It was a mess for months. Animals dying, people sick. Filthy water. I got so pissed that my dad had a part in that. See, while he fished, pulling animals from the water, Eric and I spent our summers on that island, getting to know the wildlife, becoming a part of it. Like, we created our own little oasis. Guess that island made me care. About nature. The world. The oil spill made me realize we were destroying it.”
He smiled, remembering how enraged Dad and Eric had been when he’d gone to basic training. Dad because Coop had quit school and wouldn’t become his mini-me, Eric because he knew how bad life was on the front lines. Eric had joined the navy right out of school and eventually gone on to BUD/S training and become a SEAL, also to piss Dad off.
What a way to live a life, between the three of them—as a series of aggressive maneuvers. Would they have been that way if Mom had been around?
He blinked in the dark sleeping bag, shook himself free of his memories, and focused on Angel’s breathing. “My brother had all this easy confidence and swagger. I was the quiet one. Just wanted to be alone.”
Although not now, strangely. Now he was happy to have her here. Well, nothappy, because he didn’t want this for her. Didn’t want to see her suffer, witness all that magnificent life draining away.
He swallowed back a fresh wash of pain, skating on the perma-layer of hunger.
Why was he even talking about this stuff? Man, his brain was scrambled. But the images wouldn’t stop, and the words kept coming.
“Eric knew I was different from him. Couldn’t take crowds or noise. People, heat…all the shit I had to deal with in the army.”
“I just thought you were a jerk.”
He shook with an unexpected burst of laughter. “I know.” He squeezed her tight, trying to figure out how to keep her alive. “I know.”
