She looked back at the messenger bag. “Still, you could have called. I was desperate for answers . . . I was only in my twenties . . .”
“So was I, dammit!” His tone was sharp, his irritation flaring. “What did you expect? Did you think I was Sherlock Holmes? Or did you want me to make something up so you’d feel better?”
Annie shrank closer to the wall. Her throat started to close. “I only . . .”
“You ‘only’ what?” He was shouting now. “What did you know?”
“Stop!” she shouted back, her tears stinging, her voice cracking. “What are you talking about?”
His eyes narrowed into slits.
That’s when she felt sure he was not there out of kindness. And that she had no other choice. She stood up straight. “Get out, Simon, or Andrew, or whoever you are. Get out of my house and off my property.”
“I paid for this place.”
“I don’t give a damn. GET OUT.Now!”
Then another figure stepped into the room. Simon blocked Annie’s view; she only saw two arms: one was raised, its hand clenched in a fist; the other was holding up what looked like a gun.
“Do what the lady said.” The voice was stern. And commanding. And it was Kevin’s.
Dear God, Kevin was home.
Before she could speak, Simon spun around and grabbed Kevin’s arm, the one holding the gun. They wrestled. They struggled.
“Stop!” Annie cried. “Please! Both of you!”
Then the gun went off. Of course it did. That’s what guns did, didn’t they?
Annie screamed. Her hands flew to her face.Please, please, let it be Simon who’s been shot.
But the man who landed with a thump on the floor wasn’t Simon. It was Kevin. And bright red blood wasspurtingfrom his chest.
* * *
“He attacked me,” Simon said to John, who had come from out of nowhere, along with the EMTs who hustled around Kevin, phoning his vitals into the hospital, lifting him onto the gurney. He was unconscious. There was a makeshift pressure bandage on his wound; it was high up, closer to his shoulder than his heart. Annie had a vague memory that Simon had put it there. The same kind of vague memory that Simon had also called 911.
All she knew for sure was that there were too many people in her small bedroom. Too much commotion. And too much blood. Her brother’s blood.
“He . . . came in . . . with . . . a gun. I . . . tried to grab it from . . . him . . .” Simon was stuttering.
It looked like John was taking notes. It was hard to keep everything straight from where Annie still stood, her back glued to the wall next to her bed, the messenger bag still at her feet. She had a quick flash of Brian in the road, how he must have been bleeding. She pushed it back, way back into the recesses where dark thoughts needed to burrow.
Then she had a vision of Joe Nelson in the fire station and how, after mentioning Simon’s impending arrival, he’d said, “Here’s hoping Mr. Anderson’s visit won’t trigger any ambulance runs to your place.”
Annie wondered if she would go to hell for wishing that Simon, not Kevin, was the one strapped onto the gurney.
“Do you want to ride in the back of the ambulance with him?” It was John. Her John. The guy who once had been her friend, her lover, her fiancé. He was talking about Kevin, who was her brother, not Brian, who’d been her husband.
“Yes,” she said.
But it was hard for Annie to move. Until John handed her the sandals she’d left outside by the front door.
“Thank you,” she thought she might have added.
He put an arm around her, as if they were still a couple. Maybe he was only trying to steady her while she slipped into her sandals.
The next thing she was aware of was sitting in the back of the ambulance, holding Kevin’s limp hand, wishing, praying that the driver would go faster.
