by Libby Austin
“Brand,” Micah said calmly, “I understand you’re upset, but I’m not going to let you talk about Kaitlyn, or Layna for that matter, like that—”
“Like fucking what, Micah,” I spit his name at him. “Like the backstabbing bitches they are? Well, when they’re done trying to fuck up my life more than it already is, I hope they take your gullible ass down with them.” I looked around until I found Kaitlyn. “And you. You think you’ve stumbled on the big fucking break of your measly career, don’t you? Well you picked the wrong crazy person to fuck with. By the time I’m done with you, nobody will hire you to write a fucking grocery list, let alone a fucking tell-all. You may have found some of the skeletons in my closet, but a bitch as dirty as you is bound to have more than a few. So don’t think for one fucking minute of your pathetic existence that this is done.”
Everybody’s heads were snapping back and forth between Kaitlyn and me, Layna and me, Micah and Kaitlyn, Micah and me. None of the rest of them knew where the fuck to look first.
“What the fuck is he talking about, Kaitlyn?” Micah asked as he stared at her, begging with his eyes for my allegations not to be true.
“Baby, it’s not what he thinks—”
“I can fucking read.” I looked at my ‘friends’ surrounding me. “You don’t believe me? Go look on her fucking computer, file name Reft. And when you all figure out that she played us for a bunch of fools, don’t come to my fucking door, because I never want to see any of you again.” Making eye contact with Layna, I said, “You, you’ll be lucky not to go to jail for what you’ve done. There are laws and ethics that doctors are supposed to abide by. You don’t get to set them aside just because you want to, Dr. Magdalena Gwendolyn Delacroix. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I hope you burn and rot in the agony of the hell you brought upon yourself.”
As I turned and walked to the door, they all just stood there and stared at me. I yanked open the door and, with the parting shot of “FUCK ALL OF YOU,” I slammed the door and rushed to my Jeep.
I revved the engine and jerked the Jeep in gear just as Bow made it out on the steps. We made eye contact one last time, but I ignored the pleading I saw in his and gunned the engine, never looking back.
I KNEW WHO WAS THERE before I opened my eyes, but I ignored her as I lay curled up in a ball on my bed. How I made it home without killing myself or someone else, I didn’t know, but I was grateful I hadn’t taken anyone with me when I crashed this time. My mental collapse wasn’t pretty, but the worst part was Barrett wasn’t there any longer. She’d managed to steal him from me along with everything else. Knowing she was there, I spoke without opening my eyes.
“I won’t report you. I won’t do anything to hurt your career, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
“It’s not my career I’m worried about.”
“I’m not crazy. I know he’s not real, but I can hear him when he talks to me and I can feel him next to me. What’s wrong with wanting to keep that? Does it hurt anybody? Does it make me less sane to cling to the only thing I have left of the other half of me?”
“It’s not wrong, Brandon. But you have to realize it isn’t healthy.” She crossed the room to sit next to me on the bed. “I was going to tell you.”
I flinched away from her and rose to stand beside the bed, staring down at the woman I thought I knew enough about to love and trust. “Isn’t that convenient? Fill me in on the details. What was supposed to happen? Let me see if I can figure it out. Sweet girl moves in next door and after being hurt, the misguided, fucked up guy living across the hall rushes to the damsel in distress’s side. After she’s finagled her way into his life, she worms her way into his heart until she’s so firmly entrenched he can’t breathe without her. Then she completely destroys him when he figures out what a lying, conniving bitch she’s been the whole time. Sounds like a bad plot to one of those stupid romance books you read.”
“Brandon, please. I swear it wasn’t like that—”
“WHAT WAS IT FUCKING LIKE, THEN? PLEASE FUCKING ENLIGHTEN ME!” I was beyond being rational. “What, you get paid so much to be my friend? A little more for getting me out of the house? A little more to get me to talk to the band? More to get me to contact my parents and agree to go back to the hospital? A huge fucking bonus for fucking me? Tell me, Layna, how the fuck was it? Because from where I’m standing, I don’t see how I’ve missed any fucking thing.”
Tears poured from her eyes as she begged me to listen to her, but I couldn’t risk letting her get to me again. How I was able to stand, I couldn’t say.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully. If you never remember anything else I’ve said to you, I want you to remember what I’m about to say. Are you listening?”
She stood and walked toward me. I backed away from her. “I’m listening, Brandon.”
“I want you to leave and not look back. I never want to fucking see or hear from you ever again.”
All she did was nod her head, and then she left.
As I heard the door close, I fell to my knees and leaned forward until my head rested on the rug. I dug my phone from my pocket and hit the speed dial button. When the call connected, I said, “Dad, I need you,” and then cried for all that I’d lost.
My parents were there within hours. I begged them not to admit me to the hospital. I promised them I would talk to them about everything, I just wanted to get out of there and go home. I didn’t pack anything, and I didn’t take anything with me.
We got back to their house late in the evening. I went straight to the room that had been designated mine and fell into bed and slept for three days. On the fourth day, I got up, showered, and dressed, then went in search of my mom and dad. I found them in the sunroom.
“Hi,” I said as I hovered in the doorway.
“Good morning, son,” my dad said.
“Well, you look better, but you need to get some color back in your face,” my mom said. “Are you hungry?”
“A little, but I don’t think I want anything too big.”
“Chicken noodle soup,” she offered, moving toward the kitchen.
“Sounds good.” I followed her into the kitchen. Mom prepared the soup while she told me about her garden. I appreciated that she didn’t pounce on me for answers the way I knew she wanted to. She carried a steaming bowl to the table and went back to pour a couple of glasses of tea before coming to sit with me.
After a few bites of soup, I said, “Wow, this stuff is really nasty.”
Mom laughed and said, “Well, you always liked it when you were little.” Her smile turned down a little. “I guess you aren’t so little anymore. How about something else?” she asked, forcing some cheerfulness back into her voice. “There’s some leftover lasagna.”
“Perfect,” I said with a smile.
Once I’d eaten, I knew it was time.
“Ready to talk about it?” she asked in the way that moms do.
“Yeah, I’m ready. But I’d like to tell you and Dad together.”
“Let’s go back out into the sunroom with your dad.”
We both stood, and I did something I hadn’t done since I was sixteen. I pulled my mom into a hug. I’d grown since the last time. She barely hit my chest now. I didn’t remember her being so tiny. She’d always appeared larger than life.
She pulled back and said, “I’ve missed those hugs. Make sure not to wait so long next time.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and we walked back out to the sunroom.
It took me a few minutes to start talking. “First, I wanted to say I’m sorry for pulling away from the two of you all this time. It just seemed easier to ignore everything. I thought I was doing what was best to move on with my life. I realize now that I didn’t move on. I carried the same emotional baggage with me all this time and never dealt with it. In a lot of ways, I never grew past being a sixteen-year-old boy, but I’m accepting responsibility now. I know I need to do a lot more work with professionals to hel
p me deal with all that has happened. I want y’all to know I accept that before I tell you everything.
“There’ll probably be a lot for y’all to fill in, and I’ll listen, but I’d like to tell you everything, because if I stop, I’m not sure I’ll be brave enough to start again. Can you do that?”
“Sure, Brandon,” my dad said.
At the same time, my mom said, “We’ll do whatever you need.”
So I began with my story, starting with Layna and working back to Chelsea. It took hours, but Mom and Dad listened, just as they’d promised. Then I sat to listen as my parents took turns telling their story.
My mom started with the aftermath of Barrett’s shooting. “We were so scared. We were fighting to save you. Looking back, we can see all of the mistakes we made, but at the time, we were desperate. Your dad and I began to question every decision we’d made as parents. If only we’d protected you and Barrett more. All these tools at our disposal and we hadn’t used any of them because we were worried the two of you would grow up spoiled.
“We were also trying to keep you and Barrett from becoming fodder for people who wanted to do nothing more than make a name for themselves. The district attorney wanted to use what happened to Barrett as his stepping-stone to the legislature. He was all ready to start holding press conferences before they’d even arrested the boy who’d pulled the trigger. There were two families watching the lives of three young men being destroyed and all the DA cared about were votes.
“We may not have lived the wealthy lifestyle, but we had surrounded ourselves with good people, and our attorneys were immediately in on the investigation. As soon as the boy was arrested, we knew his name and who his family was, even though he was a juvenile. His family was a regular working-class family. He was a seventeen-year-old boy. I looked at him and saw you and Barrett. And the district attorney wanted to make the case that he be tried as an adult. At best, he’d spend most of his adult life in prison and at worst …” Her voice trailed off and my dad picked up the story.
“He’d been a boy who’d fallen through the cracks of the school system. He was dyslexic, and once he was in high school, he had a lot of trouble with his peers. His father had an incident at work a couple of years before in which another firefighter lost his life. There was a long investigation and his dad and mom had become very distracted by what was happening. The boy fell in with the wrong crowd. He’d gotten into some trouble before, but it was mostly petty stuff. His parents tried to intervene, but with little support, things kept going downhill.
“That night, one of his friends gave him the gun and told him he would get more respect with it, even though the clip was empty. They didn’t check the chamber. He’d never been around firearms and he didn’t want to seem weak, so he listened to his friend. You know most of what happened next. When he pulled the gun, he didn’t know it was cocked. He’d been carrying it around like that. He accidentally pulled the trigger as he was throwing his arms around. It was a misguided attempt to get Barrett to admit the truth. All because he didn’t want to look weak in front of the one group of people who’d accepted him.”
My mom began talking again. “The boy knew he’d made a mistake. His parents brought him into the police station to turn himself in. He made a full confession, which was corroborated by the investigators our attorneys hired, all the while the district attorney was twisting facts. We knew a trial wasn’t going to help you or Barrett. It seemed like the DA was interested in the truth and he didn’t care who it hurt.
“Our attorneys arranged for us to meet with the boy, his parents, and their attorney after his bail was posted by an anonymous benefactor. We met with Maria, Sam, and Jamey. The first thing they did was ask about our family and told us they were praying for us. The five of us talked for a long time, and the only thing they ever asked us for was forgiveness for their failure to help their son and prevent this tragedy.
“After we left, Peter and I sat in the hospital and talked about what was the right thing to do. The next morning, we met with our attorneys. They were shocked, but promised to fight for what we wanted. Then we asked for another meeting with the Delacroix—”
“Delacroix, that’s Layna’s last name.” Pieces began falling into place.
“Remember, you promised to listen,” my dad reminded me. “Things aren’t always as cut-and-dry as you think.”
I nodded my head for them to continue. I would keep my promise, but once they were finished telling me their version of what happened, there were going to be a hell of a lot more questions.
“We met with them and told them what we wanted to see happen. At first, they were cautious. Their attorneys were afraid we were going to turn against them once we had their trust. We laid everything out for them, and once they were convinced we weren’t trying to deceive them, they consented.
“We called for an immediate meeting with the DA, and because he thought we were going to hop on his campaign bandwagon, he came running. He was surprised, to say the least, when he found out we opposed everything he planned. The man was determined to pursue the case, so as we’d done with Jamey’s family, we laid out our information, and he folded like a cheap suit.”
“What did you say that made him change his mind?” I asked. It was hard to believe a man that determined would fold so easily.
“Pictures of him with a number of escorts from Dallas, along with some recordings of his dalliances. Money can open a lot of doors and it can close just as many. He knew we had him by the short hairs, so he agreed. And we got to go back to focusing on our family. Healing our family was much harder,” my dad explained.
“Then, when Micah came to see us this summer, we were scared of what would happen to you. You’d pulled away so much over the years, but we thought you were okay, that you had done what you needed to do to cope with everything that happened to you,” my mom said. “To find out we were wrong, called everything we’d done into question.
“You told us once you would rather be dead than go back to the hospital. I know you said that to show us how committed you were to doing what you were supposed to do to stay healthy, but the fear you meant it literally became very real. We panicked. Layna is Jamey’s younger sister. She worked her way through school and wouldn’t take anything from her parents. We tried to disguise a scholarship for her through the university, but she refused. About six months ago, she had gone to work at the hospital with the doctor who helped you, so we approached them with a plan. I’m slightly ashamed to say we traded on the guilt her family felt over everything that happened. After a lot of hesitation, Layna agreed to the plan. We also used her desire to help others as a bargaining tool. We offered to pay off her debt and to fund her private practice. We kept making the enticement bigger until she finally relented.
“She was supposed to get you to open up and help reestablish communication between us and you and the clinic. To get you to voluntarily seek help. We thought the end would justify the means.”
“You sent the sister of Barrett’s murderer to help me?” I asked in disbelief at what I was hearing. It was so farfetched that I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“Brandon, please understand that everything we did was to protect you,” my mom pleaded as she knelt in front of me, clutching my hands in hers. I nodded my head, though I didn’t understand. “Barrett isn’t dead.”
OKAY, I THOUGHT, MAYBE I’M not the only one in the family who needs psychiatric help. “Mom, I saw Barrett die,” I said gently. “He quit breathing in my arms.”
“No, he didn’t,” she said calmly. “He passed out from blood loss, but the doctors were able to save him. He made it through the next four days and regained consciousness. You were still in and out of it, and any time we tried to talk to you about Barrett, you would become agitated and violent. But then, after what happened next, we saw it as a blessing in a way.”
“What happened?” I asked, because I sure as hell knew Barrett hadn’t been around for the last thirteen years.
“What happened then?”
“He lived, but his brain was severely damaged.”
“When did he die?” It still hadn’t registered in my mind that Barrett could still be alive.
“Baby, Barrett didn’t die. That’s what we are trying to tell you,” my mom repeated.
“Then where has he been all these years?” The fact that Barrett was still alive was beginning to sink in, but I couldn’t believe it yet. To keep us apart all these years would have been cruel. I couldn’t picture my parents inflicting such a decision on the two of us.
“He’s been here with us. You’ve only been here a couple of times since you left for school. Once you began to recover, we were afraid you would revert if you were faced with the reality of what happened to Barrett. We thought this way you would be able to grieve and process everything and move on. Barrett’s health has been very touch and go at times, and we didn’t know if you could handle it if you got him back just to lose him again. And we selfishly couldn’t risk losing you, too,” my mom confessed.
“When you say his brain was damaged, do you mean he’s like in a coma or something?”
“No, Barrett is conscious, but he has the mind of a toddler and he requires ‘round-the-clock nursing care. He’s not vocal and he’s in a wheelchair because he is partially paralyzed, but he responds to people and things.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at one of the nurses’ cottages. He likes to go there because she spoils him and I think he thinks she’s pretty. He likes to touch her hair.”
“Can I see him?”
“If you want to,” my mom said.
“I want to.” I stood abruptly.