This is wrong. Of course it is. But I am no saint myself, and I felt no fear when he came to me, even if I perhaps should have. I feelwarm, cared for, and oddly, safe. I fall asleep as I hear the front door of my apartment close.
Leo
It feels like my head is clear for the first time in weeks. The grief is still there, but the release I had with that curvy woman with her cute little tattoos and her rebellious attitude that melted whenever I applied firm pressure has reinvigorated me. Fucking Ella Chick was a tonic I intend to take more than once.
I decide to go back to the family home afterward. There has been tension in the ranks as a result of our collective inability to discover our brother’s killer. Luke, especially, has been careening off the rails at great speed.
I walk in the front door, and discover my eldest brother in the foyer, giving me an accusatory look.
“Where were you?”
Sometimes, Aiden’s questions make me think he should be standing there in a pink dressing gown and hair rollers when he asks them. What does he mean, demanding to know my location at all hours of the day and night? The man spent too many years mothering us, that’s the problem. He needs a break.
He also needs to go to bed.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. Why would I ask otherwise?”
I take a breath before this turns into a spat. “I mean, what did you need?”
“Luke’s been sick all over the place. I had to call the doctor. They took him to a facility.”
Ah, hell. Luke’s been in and out of those things a couple of times now, and every time Aiden acts like it’s his personal failing, as if he had just done things differently, he could keep Luke all stitched together. But that’s not how this works. This is not how any of this works.
“It’s his journey,” I remind my brother. “He’ll get there when he gets there. Losing Teddy is enough to make anybody lose their mind.”
“Is it?” Aiden’s eyes flash at me. “You seem to be handling it well enough.”
“I always seem to handle everything well,” I remind him.
He gives me a flat smile. “I still want to know where you were.”
“Why? Would it make you feel less anxious to keep tabs on me? Do you need my location?”
He gives me a cool look. “Sometimes I worry more about you than I do Ted… I mean Luke.”
“You are more than a caretaker for us, Aiden,” I remind him. “You don’t have to fall back into old patterns because Teddy died. And you don’t have to worry about what an independent man in his thirties is doing. My life is well in hand.”
“Falling back into old patterns. That’s what we are all doing, isn’t it? Luke got high after years of sobriety. I am clucking around after the two of you like a mother hen, and you,” he says, givingme a knowing look. “What do you do when stress and misery come to your door?”
“I haven’t done… that,” I tell him.
“Good. Because if bodies are going to start dropping, I want them to be the right ones.”
Aiden quite literally knows where the bodies are buried, and we are not speaking in metaphor. Everybody has a bad habit, a quirk. Some people shop too much, others turn to substances. When I need an outlet, I kill people. Deserving ones. Over the years it’s become more of a skilled job than a passionate hobby. We’re all mellowing with age.
“I’ll go see Luke,” I tell Aiden.
“I don’t want you to see him. I want you to watch him. I am worried that whoever came for Theodore will be able to get to Luke in this state. He needs to be fucking clean. This is not the time for us to fall apart.”
Aiden’s right. If we are under siege, it’s a very slow one, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. In the world our family inhabits, some people move over time with devastating precision. An accident here, an unfortunate killing there. Entire bloodlines can be ended that way.
“Leo?”
“Yeah?”
Aiden looks at me with a blank expression that I know heralds danger. “Did you continue to follow that young woman, Ella? Find out anything more about her?”
