I know he can’t.
I know he’ll never trust me again.
I wish I could say I’m sorry, but I can’t. Even though I can’t bring myself to land my brother in the shit, I can’t bring myself to confess all this either.
Jack’s glaring right at me as I hear Michael’s car pull onto the drive. I want the ground to swallow me up and never spit me out again, but I’m standing right here with nowhere to run and no one to turn to.
Michael doesn’t even notice the destruction as he steps through the door. He sees me before Jack but he’s already got questions of his own.
“Kevin Baker was asking directions to your house in town earlier, why?”
He has to crunch on glass before he comes to his senses. I watch his eyes widen in horror.
“Kevin Baker?” Jack asks. “Who the fuck is Kevin Baker?”
I have no idea who Kevin Baker is. No idea at all.
“He was on my books a few years back,” Michael says. “From a broken family in Gloucester, a nasty piece of work. Violent.”
Jack looks at me but I can’t meet his eyes.
“What was he doing asking for you, Carrie? Do you know him?”
I shrug, because I know I’m going to have to say something. “Never heard of him.”
He looks so confused. “Was he here? Is that what happened to the place? It’s not the first time he’s resorted to breaking and entering. His criminal record is a mile fucking long.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” I repeat again, and I haven’t. I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.
He doesn’t believe me, I can see it in his eyes, and I’m so fucking angry that these people want to see the best in me, even when I’m lying to them. Even when all the evidence is stacked and I’m standing right in the middle of the home they think I destroyed today.
“Well, are you sure?” Mike tries again. “He’s tall, stocky, wears a hoodie with a dragon on the sleeve. He has a tattoo under his right ear, of a–”
“A snake,” I say, and I don’t understand. “But that’s not Kevin Baker.”
He tips his head, smiles just a little. “That’s definitely Kevin Baker, Carrie. I’d recognise him a mile off. I saw him skulking back along the lane a few minutes ago. I’d a good mind to pull over and demand to know what the fuck he’s doing round these parts.” He pauses. “But I think I know now. I think it’s pretty obvious. So why don’t you just tell me how you know him and we can get this mess straightened out?”
Even now his eyes are so kind and calm.
“Tell us what the fuck’s going on!” Jack barks, and it brings me to my senses.
I look from one to the other and know there’s no running from this.
“That’s not Kevin Baker,” I whisper. “That’s my brother, Eli. The first brother I remember.”
Jack’s eyes widen but not as wide as Michael’s.
“How long have you known him as Eli?”
“He is Eli!” I yell.
“How long, Carrie?”
I shake my head, trying to block out everything. All of this. “Since I was fourteen,” I admit. “He found me, came looking for me. Said he was still my brother.”
“Carrie,” Michael says and his voice is so calm. “That’s not Eli, I swear. I have Kevin’s case file, and I have Eli’s too. He came for help with socialisation skills nearly a decade ago. I knew you used to live with his parents, I saw it in your file when you first arrived. He’s at law school now, in Birmingham.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Yes,” he says. “I swear I wouldn’t lie to you, Carrie. However Kevin knows you, it’s not because he was your brother.”
“What the fuck?!” Jack snaps, and his eyes soften. “Did he hurt you? Is that sonofabitch the one who bruised your wrists?”
Michael’s eyes go straight there and I can’t pull my cuffs down quickly enough.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” Michael asks. “It was Kevin, all those times they thought it was you, it was Kevin.”
“Eli,” I whisper. “It was Eli.”
But Eli isn’t Eli and I know that now.
I think back to how we met.
I think back to bumming a smoke from a guy in an alleyway, and he looked so similar, so fucking similar.
And that’s when he told me he’d been looking for me. That’s when he told me he knew me and offered me inside.
I knew he was Eli, I just knew it. I called him Eli and he said it was him.
He said he was my brother, and I believed him.
I believed everything he said.
Because I wanted to.