Jolene’s face lit up as I talked about my brother. She laughed when I told her how Greg had stolen our dad’s truck once when he was fifteen because he wanted to pull a buck out of a sinkhole, only he ended up falling in himself as he tried to get a rope around its antlers.
“He had to call home for Dad to get him out. Our dad was so mad, and Greg didn’t even care how long he was grounded, because they pulled the buck out, too.”
“How longwashe grounded?” she asked.
“It was supposed to be a month, but I think my parents let him off after a week. He was hard to stay mad at.” My smile slipped, but I kept talking.
Jolene watched me break apart piece by piece from the inside as I told her about the best person who’d ever lived. I heard the step squeak as she stood and moved toward me. My heart didn’t race like it normally would have when she slipped her arms around my waist and rested her head against my chest; it slowed and steadied.
Later, I’d care that she saw me like that.
Later, I’d care that she was pressed that close to me.
Later.
“The last one, a wolf-bear-hybrid-looking dog that Greg dubbed Fozzie, took such a big chunk out of his leg that my parents had to take him to the ER. Nobody but my brother could have convinced them—while he was bleeding and limping across the kitchen—that Fozzie just needed a little TLC instead of a call to animal control. To this day, I don’t know how he did it, but when they got home from the hospital, Mom was carrying a chew toy and Dad had a bag of dog food in his arms.”
Jolene looked up at me and smiled, but her expression held a twinge of sadness.
“The compromise was that Fozzie had to be tethered to the oak tree in the yard and Greg wasn’t allowed to sleep outside with him until his leg healed. Daniel said he’d stay over with the dog, but something happened with his mom and he never showed.”
There was a pause before Jolene said, “I’m guessing your brother didn’t sleep inside.”
I shook my head and felt my chin quiver.
“Adam.” Jolene’s voice was soft, drawing my gaze back when I tried to look away.
“We don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe Greg untied the dog, or he got loose on his own. Greg was blind to anything but the animal in front of him. He’d belly crawled across frozen ponds before, climbed trees so high that I got dizzy watching him to save them—he wouldn’t have blinked at following a dog down a dark stretch of road at night.”
My chest felt like it was on fire. I’d never done this, never said these words out loud before.
“The driver who hit my brother wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t speeding or driving recklessly. He said he narrowly missed a dark shape darting in front of his car, and Greg was about half a second behind.”
Half a second between not a scratch and killed instantly.
Jolene tightened her arms around me, and I sucked in a breath, holding myself away from the comfort she was trying to give me so that I could get it all out.
“Two years later, and the pallets and empty cages are still in our barn. Everything in Greg’s room is the same.” My voice broke when I said, “My mom still changes his sheets once a week.”
Her arms tightened further, but I kept talking, like I had this compulsion to share everything with her.
My mom wasn’t in denial about Greg’s death so much as she was engrained in a habit she couldn’t bring herself to break. That, and she lived for those moments when she’d see his things exactly as he’d left them and the lie that he was still alive would almost fit, like an old coat. For a second or two.
Sometimes I had those moments, too. When my heart would surface and float along a memory before that suffocating, can’t-breathe-can’t-move-can’t-anything, gaping maw drowned me all over again.
It wasn’t a trade-off I sought. Dad and I were alike in that. He’d resorted to using the back stairs so that he wouldn’t have to walk by Greg’s room. Whenever Mom accidentally—right?—set an extra plate at the table, he’d get up and leave. All night sometimes.
Sometimes even when she set the right number of plates.
Jeremy was the only one who seemed surprised when those all-night absences stretched to two nights, then three, then... Yeah.
“It was better and worse when my dad moved out,” I told her. “Better in that there was one less emotional bomb to circumvent. Worse in that, with him gone, Mom started vacuuming Greg’s room twice a week.”
I felt Jolene flinch.
Greg would have known what to say to Mom, how to find her smile. Jeremy simply took up Dad’s practice of leaving the room whenever she did something uncomfortable, like bake Greg a birthday cake.
Or nearly drown herself after passing out in the bathtub with an empty bottle of brandy later that night.
