When she looked at me, unshed tears shining in her eyes, my gut churned. I went to her, grasped her hand.
“You’re in trouble? Who is it? Tell me, and I’ll take care of it.”
I meant it, too. I would destroy anyone who harmed her. Anyone.
She shook her head, dropped her arm to her side, disentangling us. Then she met my eyes again. “I can imagine how you’ll take care of trouble,” she said.
There was no censure, no judgment, but the words sliced through me like a knife. Whatever she’d thought of me, whatever she’d believed, had changed. For better wasn’t an option. The only question was how much for the worse.
I grabbed her hand again, squeezed it and then waited for her to pull away, knowing that when she did, it might shatter me.
She didn’t, though. She stayed still, her hand, small, fragile-feeling but possessed with a strength I’d seen in action, laying in mine. It should have been enough that she didn’t push me away. But she didn’t return the squeeze, acted as if I wasn’t touching her at all, as sure a sign of distance as any.
“Lily…” I started, stopped when she blinked and a faint shimmer of tears wet her eyes.
“The thing is, I am the trouble, Anton,” she said finally, her face clouding even further.
“Tell me,” I said, squeezing her hand again. Her somber expression, the tears that threatened to spill, told me that I needed to somehow prepare myself, but I didn’t know for what, or how. So I waited, not knowing what she was going to say, but knowing without a doubt I would never be the same.
“I have a brother,” she said.
I nodded, though I was confused. Her family, who Lily was, intrigued me, but the revelation of a brother didn’t warrant the somberness and tension of this moment. “Okay.”
She didn’t seem to hear me as she continued. “His name is Braden. He’s in a permanent vegetative state.”
“I’m sorry,” I said and then went quiet again.
She stayed quiet too, didn’t speak for so long that my patience started to fray. But rather than yelling at her to hurry, I nodded again, sensing that she needed to do this in her own time.
“I never told anyone how he got there,” she said.
“So tell me,” I said simply, wanting to give her what she needed, and in this moment it seemed she needed someone to listen. Whatever she was about to tell me was important to her, which made it important to me.
“It was just us, you know, and he was the best brother, took care of me. But he had his own life, his own secrets that I didn’t know anything about. That seems clear now, but back then I never thought about where the money came from, how he took care of us. I just assumed…” She trailed off, glanced up at me after she’d looked away.
“Christoph Senior did that to him,” she said.
As she spoke, it was like she transformed; the person that I knew, that I loved, wasn’t even present. Instead of Lily, I saw pain and rage so acute that it made me want to step back.
“Why do you think Christoph Senior was involved?” I asked instead.
“I left that morning, like every other morning. He said good-bye, talked about something we had planned for the weekend, I can’t even remember what now.”
I frowned, and I didn’t doubt that she sensed my impatience, but she continued.
“He wasn’t home when I got back, though that wasn’t unusual. But when he wasn’t there the next morning, I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know where to look, or even how to look, but I did what I could. I told myself we would laugh about this after he yelled at me for going through his stuff. But I did it anyway, needed to find him.”
She swiped at her face, seemed almost angry at the tears that fell.
“I didn’t find him. But I found a number. By then it was night, and I was desperate. So I called. Christoph Senior answered the phone. Asked who it was. I was scared, too scared to even speak. And he told me, he said, ‘Don’t ever call this number again.’ Then he hung up.”
She shivered, and I could tell she was lost in the memory. And as crazy as it was, I wanted to comfort her, promise her that it would all be better. But I could sense that this story had just begun.
“How did you know it was Christoph Senior?”
“I didn’t. Not for a long time.”
“Tell me,” I said flatly.
“Braden never came home. I went to the police station the next morning. I expected them to blow me off, say that he was out partying or had decided that he didn’t want to be responsible for a teenage girl anymore. But they didn’t. After I gave his name and description, the officer looked solemn, and that scared me more than anything else.”