My Brother's Girl

by Sienna Blake

  A fight would break out.

  It would be bad. Noah and Michael would pull the two apart, but then they, too, would have to take sides. A wedge would be driven between them. I would drive a wedge between them. Time would pass without them talking, bitterness would grow, separation would cement.

  By next Stephen’s Day, Ma’s kitchen table would look very different. No, not different. Unrecognisable. There would be no platters of bacon, no fluffy eggs, no sausage or fruit or decadent chocolate chip pancakes. There would be no champagne glasses with sparkling bubbles, no fire with merrily snapping logs, no chairs scratching on the floor as they scoot up hungry bellies to the table.

  There would be no family.

  On Stephen’s Day next year five different microwaves in five different dark, lonely apartments would all beep at the same time. And that would be as close as the O’Sullivan family would ever get again.

  If I said “no” I would curse all these beautiful, wonderful people to the family life I had a child. That was a curse no one deserved, especially not Ma, who had shown me nothing but kindness and an open heart.

  I stared at the family gathered around me, all waiting on my response to Eoin’s proposal. I could no longer see Darren’s pale face with the lines of pain across his forehead as he braced himself for the inevitable collision. All I could see was an empty table. A dark kitchen. A glaring red light on a glowing microwave flashing 0:00.

  The word came out before I even realised it. The word slipped out of my lips and I barely even heard it. The word fell from my tongue and there was nothing I could do to take it back.

  “Yes.”

  The O’Sullivans immediately burst into cheering and whistling and clapping that I didn’t hear over the ringing in my ears. I couldn’t move. Eoin, beaming from ear to ear, grabbed each side of my face and pressed a kiss to my lips. I couldn’t even lift my hand from my side as Eoin pulled the diamond ring from the box; he had to hold my hand up as he slipped it onto my finger.

  The weight of it felt like a betrayal as I turned my head to see Darren’s reaction.

  But Darren’s chair was empty.

  So was my heart.

  Darren

  I went to the garage because it was the only place I knew to go. There were only things to fix in the garage: tyres to mend, cracked pipes to seal, rusted bolts to pry loose. But I didn’t want to fix anything.

  I wanted to destroy everything.

  Throwing my motorcycle down to the concrete, I dragged it behind me, drinking in the screech of rocks against my painstakingly painted and maintained metal gas tank. My blood was boiling so hot that I couldn’t even wait for the garage door to open. I hurled my helmet at it with a furious scream and enjoyed every crunch of the shattered glass beneath my boots as I dragged my motorcycle inside the garage.

  It felt so fucking good to tip over my toolbox and watch my expensive equipment go scattering across the floor. Through my pulsing red vision I caught sight of a dust-covered sledgehammer in the corner. Within seconds I was gripping it with white knuckles.

  How much destruction would it take to destroy the image of that diamond ring on Kayleigh’s hand? How many swings of the sledgehammer would it take before it shattered the image of her dressed in white walking down the aisle toward my brother? How much glass would I have to shatter before I couldn’t hear the echo of her answer in my head: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes?

  Yes.

  My muscles shook, arms quivering. I raised the sledgehammer over my head and drove it again and again and again into my motorcycle. The hypnotic siren call of anger was too much to resist. I allowed myself to get dragged under those all-consuming waters. My world was reduced to physical pain as my arms ached beyond compare, but I couldn’t stop because the pain in my heart was immeasurably worse.

  A small hand on my sweat-soaked back snapped my trance and I was dragged, kicking and screaming, back to reality.

  “Darren, I’ve been calling your name,” Kayleigh said, her fingertips lingering on my arm as she stared up at me in concern. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  Her diamond caught the overhead lights and flashed like a lighthouse in the dark. A lighthouse means danger, for there are rocks ahead. Rocks to break your bones against. Rocks to sink you. Rocks to die upon. Rocks that promise a different kind of forever.

  She couldn’t even take off the fucking ring to come explain why she’d ripped out my heart?

  My voice shook as I pointed a hand over her shoulder and said, “Get the fuck out of here.” My grip tightened around the sledgehammer.

  Kayleigh shook her head, green eyes locked on mine. “I know you’re not going to hurt me, Darren.”

  I spit out a spiteful laugh and shook my head. “Hurt you?” I practically choked, it was so fecking funny. “Hurt you, Kayleigh? You’re family now. Why in God’s name would I hurt you?”

  To prove my point, I tossed aside the sledgehammer. I threw my hands up into the air, laughing wildly. “What kind of brother-in-law would I be if I hurt you on the day of your very exciting engagement?”

  Kayleigh’s eyes were wide as they darted back and forth between mine.

  I lowered my face toward hers and hissed, “Obviously, you didn’t return the favour today, my dear sister-in-law to be.”

  Kayleigh glanced at my destroyed motorcycle beside her. She dragged her hand through her hair, only to realise it was the hand with that cursed ring. She sighed and slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

  “Darren, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I—”

  “You didn’t mean to hurt me?” I shouted, practically tearing at my hair. “You didn’t mean to hurt me, Kayleigh?”

  I needed to get her out of there before I did something I regretted. Because I was about to lose control. I was hanging to the cliff of my sanity by the tips of my shaking fingers. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t hold on a little bit longer. The problem was that I didn’t fucking want to.

  I was tired.

  And I just wanted to let go.

  “You didn’t mean to fucking hurt me?” I repeated. “Is that really what you just said to me, Kayleigh?” Her name on my lips burned like acid. “Because you did a really good job of it. Damn, I can’t imagine what you could do to me if you were actually trying.”

  Kayleigh bit her lip. “Look, can we just talk about how to fix this?”

  I stared at her in shock. “Fix this?”

  Kayleigh nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Fix this?” I started to pace back and forth in front of her because I couldn’t stand still any longer without exploding. “Kayleigh, you’re engaged to my brother. You said yes to marrying him. There’s nothing to ‘fix’ but the date of the wedding.”

  Kayleigh shook her head. “You know I don’t want to be with Eoin.” She moved toward me, reaching out for me. I wrenched my hand away. She couldn’t touch me. She couldn’t. “I don’t want to marry Eoin. I—”

  “You said yes, Kayleigh,” I said, my voice breaking. “You said—fuck. Fuck. Why did you say yes?”

  Pain was seeping back into my heart.

  “Kayleigh, why?” I asked quietly.

  Cracks were spreading in my iron walls. Pain, terrible, terrible pain was about to come bursting in, the walls of the dam utterly destroyed.

  “Why? Why did you say yes?”

  I wanted anger back. Anger was easier. I grappled for fury as if it were a lifeline slipping through my fingers.

  “Darren, please just listen for one minute. Just listen, alright?” Kayleigh must have taken my silence for assent, because she leaned against the hood of the Mustang and stared at her fingers cupped in her lap. “Eoin asked me and I was going to say no, I mean, of course I was going to say no,” she said, shaking her head as if this was all confusing to her. “But I…I saw your whole family there and I’ve never had that before and I…I couldn’t destroy a perfect family.”

  Kayleigh’s eyes darted toward me. I glared at her, but I did not interrupt.

&n
bsp; “I just couldn’t.” Kayleigh buried her face in her hands, the silence drawing out like a canyon between us. When she finally looked up at me there was the hint of tears in her eyes. “Darren, Eoin was right,” she said. “You’re so lucky to have your family. They’re just…they’re perfect. Trust me.”

  I couldn’t bite back my tongue. “I don’t.”

  My words hit Kayleigh like a punch to the gut. She momentarily ducked her head like she was catching her breath. Her voice was soft when she finally spoke. “My father was cruel to my ma. No, not cruel. Abusive. As I child I saw it all. I couldn’t even escape beneath the covers of my bed because I still heard it. And hearing it is even worse somehow. Children have such vivid imaginations, you know?”

  No, I didn’t like this at all. This was more pain. I didn’t want more pain. I wanted Kayleigh to leave. I wanted to pick back up my sledgehammer. I wanted anger back.

  “My ma always just took it. Took it and never said a word,” Kayleigh continued. “I thought she just needed someone to stand up for her. That’s what I thought. So one day I did.”

  Kayleigh looked over at me. Through the haze of tears I saw that fire I loved so terribly about her.

  “One day I couldn’t take it anymore. I put myself right between him and my ma. I defended her, I protected her. My father left and I smiled because I thought that was it: we would be safe now, my ma and I. We would be happy now. We could finally be a family, a family like you have.” Kayleigh’s chin fell to rest on her chest. “I turned around to celebrate with my ma and I was greeted with a slap to the face.”

  I swallowed back the revolting feeling from Kayleigh’s horrifying story. I hadn’t known. Hell, I hadn’t wanted to know.

  Did you think you were the only one hiding pain in your life?

  Kayleigh’s voice grew small and meek. Any fire that had burned in her eyes was doused and stomped out and starved of oxygen. “She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and shook me and told me to never, ever do that again. She said if my father left because of me she would never, ever forgive me. She said I was always to keep quiet, to not cause a fuss, to never, ever cause another fight, no matter what.”

  Kayleigh let her head fall back as she stared up at the ceiling of the garage. I wondered if she was trying to force the tears back into her eyes, just like she had forced that childhood pain back into her soul: afraid to let it out, afraid to let someone see, afraid to let me see.

  “So when I saw a family like yours it was something precious to me, even though it wasn’t mine.” Kayleigh looked over at me again, eyes rimmed in red but dry. “Darren, your family is something precious, something beautiful, something rare and delicate and perfect. How could I come in and destroy it? How could I come in and destroy something that I love?”

  Kayleigh was looking over at me, pleading with her eyes. In that moment I had a choice: I could choose pain or I could choose anger.

  I could choose to take on more pain. I could choose to live with it, face it head on, come to terms with it like Kayleigh had shown me the night before. I could choose to feel, and in choosing to feel, I could choose to hurt, to cry, to ache. I could choose pain; I could choose Kayleigh.

  Or I could choose anger.

  Oh, how anger called out to me, her voice sweet and tempting. I could choose to let the ring on Kayleigh’s finger harden my heart, build up my walls, light a dark fire in my soul, impossible to ever put out. I could choose to feel good because, fuck, did anger feel good. I could choose my sledgehammer, I could choose destruction, I could choose no more goddamn pain.

  “Darren? Please say something.”

  Kayleigh’s broken voice broke my heart, and I hated it. It hurt. And I was sick and tired of hurting. I was sick and tired of fecking pain.

  So I chose the only thing I could: I chose anger.

  “So your answer to all of this is to follow in the steps of your mother?” My voice slashed through the space between us like a dagger so sharp, you didn’t even know you were cut till you saw the blood.

  It took what felt like a long time in the silence of the garage, surrounded by the broken pieces of my shattered motorcycle, for Kayleigh to realise the hatefulness of my words. I saw the hurt flash in her eyes, quickly masked by confusion.

  “What?” She shook her head as if she hadn’t heard me right, as if she couldn’t possibly have heard me right.

  But she had.

  “What did you say?” Her eyes narrowed at me as anger of her own darkened her irises.

  She would thank me later. She would realise I was right after all: anger felt better than pain.

  I was doing this for her, I was doing this for Kayleigh’s sake. At least that’s what I told myself. That’s the excuse I used to numb the sharp pain in my heart at the sight of betrayal on her face. That’s how I justified opening my mouth again: slamming down the guillotine on any chance she and I ever stood together.

  “Your mother didn’t cause a stir, your mother didn’t want any fighting, your mother never dared to tell the truth about what she wanted,” I said, scowling at Kayleigh with my arms crossed defensively over my chest. “I don’t see how there is any difference between her and you.”

  Kayleigh’s eyes filled with tears as she slowly shook her head.

  “Do you want me to tell you to keep your mouth shut so that you can justify agreeing to marry a man you do not love? So that you can sleep at night knowing that you threw away a real chance at love?” I was starting to shout as I gave in to my anger. Oh, how it felt good. My skin was on fire and I was plunging into a deep, dark, cool lake where I could drown in peace. “Would that make you feel better, Kayleigh? Huh?”

  Kayleigh’s voice cracked as the first tear streamed down her cheek. She whispered, “Why are you being this way?”

  I barely heard her. All I could hear was the rushing water against my ears as I was dragged down deeper and deeper and deeper.

  “Your mother was miserable and you’ll be miserable, too. Is that what you want Kayleigh? Do you want to be mis—”

  “I’m not miserable.” The stubbornness on Kayleigh’s face made me laugh.

  “You will be,” I said.

  It was now Kayleigh who laughed. “No, Darren, I don’t think I will be,” she said. “Because I’ll be with a man who is kind and gentle and sweet. A man who loves me and cares for me. A man whose heart beats a little blindly at times, but, fuck, at least it beats.”

  I stood shocked and dumbfounded. It wasn’t her words that confused me, but her face. All anger had drained away. All sadness.

  Instead she looked at me with something closer to pity.

  “I should thank you, Darren,” she said, her voice soft. “Because you’ve made me see very clearly what I almost threw away for…” Her eyes searched me as she searched for words. Finally she just sighed and shrugged sadly. “…for what?”

  She turned to leave, but her final words to me stayed with me there in the garage. I feared they might follow me wherever I went.

  “I’m going to marry Eoin and I’m going to be happy for once.”

  Darren

  Somehow the stark glare of the early afternoon sunshine made the trees dotted across the graveyard appear even more barren. The stone crosses seemed more weathered, and the dead leaves stirred up by the slight breeze more dry and brittle.

  I leaned against the bark of the oak, its long branches moaning overhead, and squinted in the rare brilliant rays. I told myself I was here because my brother was here. If I was honest with myself, I was here because there was nowhere else to go.

  Over the past few weeks I’d used every excuse to avoid participating in Eoin and Kayleigh’s wedding preparations. I’d fixed my mangled, beaten-up motorcycle as slowly and tediously as possible. I’d stayed late every night and awoken early every morning to finish every work order at the garage. I’d cleaned my apartment, cooked enough food for three weeks, and organised my office for the first time ever.

  I couldn’t go to Noah’s p
lace because Aubrey, as Kayleigh’s unofficial wedding planner, had consumed their living room with wedding design magazines, pin boards of fabric swatches and inspiration pictures, and ten different versions of possible seating charts. I couldn’t go to visit Michael because the only thing he could talk about those days was the financial impracticality of a wedding and how those funds could be put to much better use toward a deposit on a house, preferably with a 30-year fixed interest rate loan. Ma’s kitchen was constantly a mess as she tested different options to serve at the reception because she insisted on doing it all herself instead of catering it in.

  It was all too much, all too overwhelming.

  I didn’t care if the silk napkins were emerald or kelly green. I didn’t give a damn if the cake was two- or three-tiered. I didn’t want any part in deciding which candies should be served at the dessert bar. I didn’t want any part in any of it.

  That day in the graveyard I was brainstorming ways to get out of going to the wedding at all, which is difficult when you’re the brother of the groom, when I noticed a familiar car pull into the small parking lot just past the iron fence tangled with vines and ensnared dried leaves.

  “Ma’s here,” I said to Jaime.

  It took glancing down at the cold grey of his headstone to remember that he wasn’t really there with me. I’d been talking to my dead twin like we were sitting elbow-to-elbow at a bar, as if that fateful night never happened.

  “Did you know she was coming?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at his gravestone as if he’d somehow conspired against me from beyond the veil.

  In my head he zipped up his lips and tossed the key over his shoulder.

  “Some twin you are,” I grumbled as the iron gate creaked and Ma approached, her feet crunching the leaves beneath her.

  “Hey, Ma,” I said, scratching awkwardly at the back of my neck. “I didn’t know you were coming here today. Thought you were going dress shopping with Kayleigh and the girls.”