“Are you calling my brother evil?” Now Luke sounded angry that Dana had insulted Liam.
Dana threw her hands up. “I’m the one who has said more than once that you can’t condemn him without hearing his side of the story. What he did was horrible, but I’m guessing he has an explanation for why he did it.”
Luke slapped his hand against the bathroom door. “He left. He doesn’t get to have a side. Actions speak louder than words, and his actions are shitty.”
“Yeah, well you have done one or two shitty things in your life,” she said wearily. “I try not to judge you on them.” Dana crossed her own arms in imitation of his stance.
“I didn’t walk out on my family.”
Dana sighed. “Once he was stupid enough to volunteer for the military, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t walking out as much as the military sending him wherever they wanted to. You know that.”
“And not writing?”
Luke had a point there. Maybe Liam had had good intentions when he’d left, but it was pretty clear that any desire to help the family had vanished when someone had dangled an officer position in front of him. He had probably worked his fingers to the bone, but saying that Luke’s big brother cared about being an officer more than being a brother would gut Luke. So instead she said, “What should he have written? What’s he supposed to say? Hey, sorry I blew you off. I’m at the front now? You were young when he left the planet. You didn’t need to hear stories about the front.”
“He could have written us or asked how we were!” Some of the energy drained out of him. “He could have written Mom.”
“You’re right. He should have,” Dana said gently. “And that’s on him, but it sure seems like he’s trying to make amends.”
Luke wrapped his hand around the bathroom knob and squeezed it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “We found out he was on Earth from watching the news. He didn’t even visit. Part of me is happy Mom is gone because this would have killed her,” he whispered, his voice full of misery.
“If he came here, that mutant turtle would have followed. Did you want to have a family fight in front of that thing? And you saw that vid where the reporter got close to the big alien. I can see you yelling at Liam and that alien backhanding you into the middle of next week. There are all sorts of practical and even kind reasons why Liam would have stayed away. I mean, if he came here, reporters would have descended on us. What would happen if we lost one of our jobs or if we even lost a week of work because the reporters were interfering too much? Don’t assume he doesn’t care.”
“He didn’t even call. He didn’t leave one word for me.” Luke’s voice broke, and then he fell silent.
Dana said softly, “He gave you the money. He’s still thinking about you.”
“Or he feels guilty.”
“If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t feel guilty.”
Luke rubbed his hand over his face. “I hate it when you’re logical.”
“You worship logic,” Dana said. “And given that those turtles measure success through trade and profit, Liam’s willingness to give you part of his salary says a lot about how he feels.”
Luke stared at the wall over Dana’s shoulder. He stood silent for a long time before he threw out one last pathetic excuse. “Or he has more than he needs and doesn’t care about it.”
“Oh please. Who gives money away because they have enough? That’s not what people do.”
“I need to...” Luke was unable to finish his thought. He stood framed by the bathroom door, one hand fluttering like a broken scarecrow in the wind. Then he gathered his resolve, and he headed for the door. “I’ll be back.” He fled.
Dana was left alone in the tiny apartment. She sighed. So much fucking drama. If she ever pinned Liam down, she would give him several pieces of her mind, because Luke deserved better than he’d gotten from his family. And Liam might have been avoiding them because he knew that lecture was coming.
The vid-set still lay on the desk, the yellow pause button flashing. She picked it up and slipped it over her head. It was Luke’s set and the eyepiece was too low for her smaller head, but she could still see a distorted version of the documents the bank had forwarded. The first showed the automatic transfer. Damn. That money was every two weeks. Between the specialist pay and the officer pay, Liam was making a killing. For that much money, Dana might consider enlisting.
She flipped past a few more pages of legalese describing who the pay would go to if Luke refused it. Dana had grown up around the Munsons, but she didn’t know most of the names in the paperwork. She only recognized the other Munson siblings on one of the last pages. When the younger siblings reached their majority, Luke would share his percentage with them.
As guilt money went, it wasn’t bad. And as far as Dana was concerned, Liam owed his brother something for walking away without a word. Luke had suffered deeply. She hadn’t been close to Luke back then, but her brother had been friends with Liam.
She remembered Luke coming over every day. He would ask if Chak had gotten a vid or a letter from Liam. Luke had been so sure his big brother would send some sort of word home, to his best friend if not his family. Liam and Chak had been close once, but something had happened. Chak never explained what, but Chak had taken over where Liam had left off. He’d been the best brother he could be to Luke, but he couldn’t invent letters or vids that never came. Liam had cut everyone off.
Dana had asked Chak about it once. Her brother had suggested that things were harder for Liam than anyone knew. And Dana got it. Being poor and brilliant and stuck in a shitty school with all the responsibility for helping with little brothers and sisters—it was a lot. And Liam had been young, but no younger than Luke was now, and Luke never would have put himself ahead of his family. Sure, Luke was trying to claw his way to the top like everyone else, but he wanted to stay on Earth to make sure he could help his siblings when they aged out of the foster system. Hell, he’d have taken them now if the state allowed it.
Dana had gotten the better Munson brother. Maybe Liam’s slightly mercenary bent worked better when it came to making treaties with those aliens of his, but she would much rather have Luke, even with his occasionally overdeveloped sense of honor. There were more important things in the world than money, and Liam had missed out on that.
One day he might live to regret it.
