“So you can what? Prepare?”
“So I can be ready.”
“Ready for what? For the call?” Dustin rose, his shoulder screaming at the sudden movement, but he barely felt it. “Ready for someone to ring you up and tell you your other son finally?—”
“Don't.”
“Can you not even pretend to care? Just—can you just pretend you're not thinking it should have been me?”
Complete silence followed Dustin's words.
He regretted them as soon as they'd rolled off his tongue. This wasn't fair to either of them. It certainly wasn't fair to his brother's memory, but…
Dustin had never really been able to shake the thought. And if he was thinking it, surely his mother must be thinking it too.
If she didn't, she wouldn't be acting this way. All distanced and aloof and?—
“Don't you ever,” Cathy said sharply. Finally some emotion had entered her voice. “Is this why you're jumping? You're crying for attention?”
The words hit Dustin somewhere below the ribs.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you doing it because you want me to scream? You want me to beg?” Her voice was climbing. “Would that make it better? Would thatprove something?”
“That's not?—”
“Because I have spent every single day since your brother died trying to—” Her voice cracked. She pulled it back together, barely. “I can't fall apart on your schedule, Dustin. I can't do that.”
The line was very quiet.
Dustin's hand was shaking. His pulse was loud in his ears and his shoulder was throbbing and he couldn't form a clear thought.
“It's late,” Cathy said. “Get some sleep.”
She hung up.
Dustin stared at the phone's dark screen and his own reflection stared back at him.
Without thinking, he flung the phone across the room. It hit the far wall with a sharp crack and landed face-down on the carpet.
She thought he was jumping for her.
She thought the stunts, the streams, the Devil's Needle—she thought he was doing it to make her react. To force her hand. To crack through whatever she'd built around herself and find out if there was still a mother underneath.
Was he?
No.
Or was he?
No.
The mattress creaked and then Greg was standing next to him.
“Dustin?” That was all Greg said, looking at him with those eyes that didn't know how to hide a single emotion. There was worry, care—hurt, somehow, as if watching Dustin hurt was doing something to him too.
That didn't make sense. None of this was Greg's problem. None of this had anything to do with him. And yethere he was. Standing too close. Saying Dustin's name like that.
