The lilac bush where Ryland and I had first kissed taunted me with her blooms as I walked up the rickety steps. I didn’t bother knocking, and the door wasn’t locked as I swung it open with the familiar tweaking of the handle.
Brayden sat on the sofa, a beer in his hand and an incredulous expression on his face. His suspicion turned to relief when he saw my bags, and a moment later he enveloped me in the warmth of one of his hugs. But it didn’t feel warm anymore. It felt hollow and empty and filled with lies.
“I knew you’d come back,” he whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t turn your back on us.”
I pulled away from him and crossed my arms, staring up into his dark brown eyes.
“It’s time to tell me everything,” I insisted. “And I mean it, Brayden. Not a single part left out.”
***
Brayden kicked his heels up on the end table, his eyes trained on a passing cockroach as he took another puff of his cigarette. It was a disgusting habit, one he must have picked up in prison. We'd always complained as kids about how Norma-Jean refused to smoke outside, and we had to go everywhere smelling like a dirty ash-tray. But now, as the lines on his face had changed from a boy to a man, so had his demeanor.
He was rough around the edges, and a lot harder too. He was blunt with me in a way he’d never been before, and a hint of resentment lingered in his eyes every time he looked at me. I would have to ask him about it later.
“It was Frankie,” he said, crushing the roach beneath his boot. “You didn’t know him because he didn’t want you to. He said it was safer that way. That if his family ever found out he’d bred an Irish bitch they’d cut off his dick and kill Norma just for the hell of it.”
“But you knew him?” My voice sounded thin, and I hated it. I hated all these fucking secrets and lies.
Brayden didn’t care. He just shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“I was ten when he started coming around,” he said. “But we made sure to keep you out of it. He said I needed to be the man of the house and do him proud. He had a wife and kids already, and they weren’t from a filthy blood line.”
I shook my head in disgust, and Brayden sliced his hand through the air, flicking ash everywhere.
“Those were his words,” he grunted. “Not mine. But Frankie didn’t have any sons, he told me. And that’s the only reason I meant anything to him I guess. He wanted someone he could be proud of, and since I didn’t look like you or Norma, you could hardly tell there was any Irish in me.”
He glanced towards the small laminate dining table in the kitchen as though he were recalling a particular memory I wasn’t familiar with.
“As I got older, he came around more often. He didn’t want you to meet him, though. He said he couldn’t look at you without seeing Norma.”
I sucked in a harsh breath and cast my eyes to the floor. The rejection stung, even though it shouldn’t have. My father was a murderer. I knew this now. But it didn’t change the fact that I’d always wondered why he abandoned us. Or that I had longed for his love as a little girl.
“You wanted the truth,” Brayden said. “I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, Brighton. Not this time.”
I blinked away my tears and gestured for him to continue though it was the last thing I wanted him to do.
“Frankie picked me up that day,” he went on. “He said he wanted to take me on my first job. He wanted me to do my old man proud. I knew what he did for a living. Norma-Jean told me when he started lurking around here more often, making her real nervous. And I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t want it because I did. I wanted to live by his code and his honor and have all the things he promised me. He said I’d live like a king after I earned my dues. That I’d be untouchable and gain the respect of an honorable bloodline.”
I wrung my hands together and bit my lip to stay quiet. I wanted to ask Brayden what the hell he was thinking. How he could ever even remotely consider what he was talking about. But I needed to hear what he had to say first. I needed to hear it all.
“He didn’t say much else as we were driving.” Brayden flicked his cigarette butt into the tray and scrubbed a hand across his face. “I wondered why we were in such a beat up old truck. I’d only ever seen Frankie in nice cars before. After we got onto the freeway, he told me there was a family in town he needed to deal with, that the guy owed his boss some money. I should have understood then what he meant by that, but I guess I was too fucking stupid at the time.”
He stopped to light up another cigarette, cracking open a can of beer while he was at it. I frowned, and he narrowed his eyes.
“It was like clockwork,” he said. “We pulled off to the side of the road and waited. He got a call on his cell phone, and this weird expression on his face as he started the truck back up. Calm. That’s what it was. And it never changed, even when he ran them off the road.”
I clutched my stomach and rocked back and forth, images of little Sophia Lockhart burning through my brain. Of Ryland trying to comfort her during her last painful breaths. The enormity of his pain weighed heavy on my chest. I wanted to rip out my own heart and watch it bleed to pay for my father’s sins. For the heinous and unfathomable things he’d done that night.
I was crying now, but Brayden didn’t try to comfort me. I was glad. And when he continued, I just listened in between mouthfuls of air.
“He pulled a gun out of his jacket and handed it to me,” Brayden said. “He told me to finish it with one in the head for each of them.”
His voice was quiet now. Too quiet. And I didn’t know how to feel about him anymore. I waited anxiously for his next words. The words I needed to hear from him to confirm what Ryland said. That my brother was a monster, like our father.
“I went down there.” He looked me straight in the eye while he said it. “And I was going to do it. I really thought I was. I kept telling myself over and over it was about honor. Family. Blood. But when I saw the fucking mangled bodies inside, I vomited all over the place.”
“Jesus, Brayden!” My entire body shook. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He didn’t answer me. He just kept talking, in the same flat tone, staring off into the kitchen.
“I put the gun right between Jacob Lockhart’s eyes. He looked at me like he didn’t understand. He had no fucking clue why this was happening. He was bleeding all over the place, and the little girl next to him made some kind of weird gurgling noise. And I couldn’t handle it. So I shot five rounds into the forest and walked away. I figured they were going to die anyway. And if they didn’t, then I knew Frankie would kill me. But I didn’t care.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God….”
I ran to the kitchen and vomited up the meager contents of my stomach. Everything in my body burned. Everything in my world was falling apart, and it felt like it was my fault somehow. The only thing I could think of was Ryland. Of what he had gone through because of Frankie. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, but because of Brayden too.
I rinsed my mouth out and slid down onto the floor, clutching my arms around my knees as I stared at the dingy tile. Brayden kept talking, as though he needed to purge himself of the details, regardless of whether I listened or not.
“When the news reported that Michael Lockhart had lived, I never heard from Frankie again. The cops found his body a couple days later, in a dumpster in Chicago. And the evidence trail led back to me. They knew I fired the bullets they found there, but they didn’t know why. I wouldn’t tell them. So they pinned me with a drunk driving charge instead, and I never said otherwise. Neither did Michael Lockhart. I was sure Frankie’s boss would come after me. It didn’t matter what happened in court because I would die one way or another.”
“Then one day, Jacob showed up. He told me that Michael had handed himself over to Frankie’s boss, along with the money he owed to spare Jacob’s life. He wanted me dead, and he made it a point to let me know. But he told me he was going to take pleasure in destroying my life first. He said that I’d had the chance to kill him, and he would make certain I regretted that decision every day for the rest of my life. When the coroner’s report came back, and they upgraded the charges, I was fucked. I couldn’t do anything but take the fall if I wanted you and Norma to live, and Jacob knew it too.”
“That isn’t fair, Brayden,” I croaked. “Don’t make it sound like you did this for me and Norma. You did this for you. You chose to go out with Frankie that day. You chose not to call an ambulance… to let that little girl suffer. What you did was wrong, and you knew it too. You went to prison because you wanted to punish yourself.”
Brayden shot me a glare that would have withered me any other day. But I had nothing left to give anymore. Every tear had already been purged from my body, and every ounce of emotion completely dried up. All that remained was the harshness of reality.
“And what would have happened if I wasn’t there that day?” he laughed hollowly. “Your precious fucking Ryland would be dead, Brighton. But you know what, now that you mention it, I wish I wasn’t there. Because then he’d be rotting in hell where he belongs.”