by Caias Ward
‘He knew that he was sick and that he might not live all that long. Even if he did live through everything, he didn’t want the money. He had enough from his work, and anyway, it just reminded him of how messed up he felt. What he didn’t have was a brother he could understand, or who understood him. So he tried to find a way to make it up to you. Make up for the money and time. Well, the money at any rate.’
Damn.
‘You two were different, really. Except for the caring about people part.’ Buzz shuffled through more papers. ‘That you both did, in your own way. I see William every time I look at you, Andrew.’
DAMN!
Buzz let me run off to the bathroom. He didn’t knock on the door to see if I was OK when I threw up in the sink. He didn’t try to open the door when I sat on the floor and cried so loud you could hear me in the hall.
I know why Buzz was a good friend to my brother. Buzz knew when you needed him, and when you needed to be alone. Right then, I needed to be alone.
I came out of the bathroom after about twenty minutes. Buzz was sitting in the same spot where I’d left him, waiting to speak when I was ready to listen. I sat back down across from him, slumped.
‘Your parents know about the trust, but not how much is in it. They shouldn’t have a problem with the will, though. He always talked to them about how bad he felt, and how he could and would make things better for you.’
Back in the bathroom, back to throwing up.
And he tied up all that money for me rather than spend it on his medical bills. Tied it all up so only I would have it, in a trust that meant no one else could take the money. Not the olds, not anyone.
But why had the olds gone along with it?
Because they didn’t want to take money intended for me? Because that would have been them always giving to William and taking from me?
Damn…
Will had cared, then. He’d never said it, never showed it. Or maybe I just couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. He’d never told me ‘hey, I’m leaving you a fortune, sorry about everything’. It was like we were speaking two different languages and screaming at each other when we were together, just because we didn’t make any effort to understand each other.
Damn.
What’s past is past.
Now, and for all time, I know that I had – have – a brother who did care.
We certified the will the following week. My parents didn’t freak out over the details of the will, no questioning of the amounts or the trust. I figure that they must have been involved in drafting it. Damn. They’d known all along. If only they’d told me. But I can imagine that Will had sworn them to secrecy. The trust was mine with some law firm overseeing it.
My parents and I never talked about the money after that. It was there for when I needed it. That was going to be for school expenses and planning ahead, figuring out where to go to university. It was a lot of money for the future. Maybe a house, maybe start a business after university. See how things go with Caroline if I stay here.
And maybe find a way to show Will that I cared about him, too.
CHAPTER 10
A million lumen life
It was clear glass, six inches thick and translucent, three feet tall. I had to arrange special permission to use glass rather than granite, but we all fought for it. The design was mine, with a company on the west coast of the United States carving and shipping it all the way over here. I set up a series of solar-powered LED lights to shine on the glass, a perfect display for day or night.
The logo was simple, a silhouette of a man standing in a super-trouper spotlight, shining down from a theatre lighting gantry. The man held his arms up triumphantly; the spotlight bore a cross. Over the top of the spotlight it said ‘William Simmons’ in elegant text. Under the logo of the man in the spotlight, it read ‘A Million Lumen Life’, and to me, to all of us, that represents the brilliance of the light that Will’s life had brought to the world. To either side read his date of birth and date of death.
I ran my hand over the words, first William’s name and then the words underneath. I used my sleeve to wipe away the tiniest of smudges, polishing and brushing away errant fall leaves from a nearby tree.
‘How much did it cost, Andrew?’
I turned back and looked over my shoulder at Sara, who had flown over to visit for her holiday break. She shivered a bit in the cold, brushing dark hair from her face and bundling up again. She stared at my work, finally seeing face to face the design that had struck me in the middle of the night and had kept me up until sunrise working on it.
‘Just the right amount for what it is,’ I said, avoiding mention of the actual price. ‘Hang the cost.’
I stepped back and looked over the lone pillar of glass in a sea of granite and marble. It stood out, just like William. Different, strange, not quite fitting in with the rest. But still having its place, still reminding people that it was there and special and important.
Just like William.
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It got me into Pratt Institute,’ I said. ‘The admissions board said it was ‘a unique tribute that showed remarkable potential’. Guess it’s another gift from William.’
‘How did your parents handle it? I mean, the tombstone?’
‘They both cried,’ I said slowly. ‘We all did. Dad loved the lights, said William would have taken them apart and put them back together. They probably wouldn’t have worked afterwards, but Will would have just wired up a new set of lights ten times as bright.’ I smiled, making a shadow puppet on the glass for a brief moment.
I remembered Will making shadow puppets pretending to eat my head when I was younger; big shadows on the wall biting my shadow-head. I’d forgotten about it a long time ago, but it popped back into my mind as the big shadow dog I’d made chomped on the little man in the spotlight. It’s good to remember these things now, stuff I’d blocked out when I focused on all the bad things.
‘What about school?’
‘They said I had to do what was right for me. Mum cried, again, but Dad was pleased I’d found something that could make me money and make me happy.’
Sara put her hand on my shoulder. I put my hand over hers.
‘They thought the same thing about Will doing lighting design. “How are you going to make a living lighting up people on stage wearing too much make-up?”’ I said in my best imitation of my dad’s voice. ‘He showed Dad to be wrong, so I at least get a chance to show that I can make my own way now.’
‘Yeah,’ Sara said, kneeling down behind me and wrapping her arms around me. We just looked at the tombstone for a few minutes before she spoke again.
‘Lots of people are going to miss you here, Andrew.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Trevor wants to visit, said he wants to go to Las Vegas.’
‘Las Vegas is thousands of miles away from New York…’
‘I know that,’ I laughed. ‘But he’s seen the commercials and thinks they don’t have cops there for some reason.’
‘Glad you have enough money to bail him out,’ she said. ‘And Caroline?’
‘Well, not everything works out. She didn’t take my leaving England all that well, even though it’s months and months away. At least we had a good couple of months together, and she and I will at least try to stay friends. I’ll see how that goes.’
I’d been over this with Sara already. I guess she was hoping that Caroline had changed her mind and was going to stick it out with me. I wish Caroline had changed her mind, too. In an earlier time, rejection like this would have broken me. Now, it’s just part of life. Good things happen, bad things happen, but life just goes on.
‘I think she’s making a mistake,’ Sara reassured me.
‘Well, I know she is,’ I agreed. ‘She doesn’t think so, though. Trevor even yelled at her. But what are you going to do?’
‘Keep you for myself?’
We both stood up, still holding on to each other.
It was goi
ng to be a good year. Finish school, then spend more than half the summer in New York City before classes start up at Pratt. Enough time with Sara to see what happens, enough money not to worry about money…
And a wide, wide horizon ahead of me.
‘We should get going,’ Sara said. ‘Your parents want to take us out to dinner, remember?’
It was getting late, the lights aimed at the tombstone flooded the glass with brightness. In the matter of an hour, a single dim glow would stand out in the dark cemetery, just one of the ways I’d thought of to show that I had cared too, and still did.
CHAPTER 11
A letter unsent but well meant
Dear William,
I would hope that this letter finds you well, but since you are dead I can’t know. Part of me hopes that there is something beyond what we have here and now, and that you see the world from where you are. If not, then at least I can get all this off my chest. I thought it might be a good idea to write out how I feel.
I imagine myself talking to you as I write, actually getting in a word edgewise, finally able to interrupt your nonstop talking. Finally able to say all the things I wanted to say but never got a chance to tell you. You would never shut up. Wish I could hear you now, but it still doesn’t mean that you never did shut up.
We didn’t get along, you and I. I didn’t think that the world suddenly changed things between us when you died. I didn’t think you were some kind of saint. I didn’t gloss over the things you did wrong. Maybe it was because I was so detached from things, so isolated, that I didn’t have this big hole in my life when you died. Or maybe I did, and took out all my anger on the world. With you gone, I couldn’t keep on making excuses about why Dad and Mum paid so little attention to me.
I had to stand up and make a mark. I couldn’t keep on blaming you for stuff. Yeah, Dad and Mum did get along better with you. But that’s just how it was. Doesn’t mean they didn’t like me, or that they hated me, which in my screwed-up mind I sometimes imagined. It just means that some people get along better, and some don’t. I wish it wasn’t like that. I wish things could have been better between us, at least.
I never thought for a moment that you cared about me. Everyone insisted that you did, that you loved me, that you were this wonderful person. I never believed it because all I saw was Dad and Mum going out of their way to make your life better. Meanwhile, it seemed to me that they felt I didn’t need so much, so I was left to fall by the wayside.
They could see that I didn’t need as much from them as you, so they gave you what you needed. I should have told them that I needed more from them too.
But the thing is, deep down, I knew that you needed a lot of help; and all because some doctor screwed up delivering you. That wasn’t your fault. I know that I had lots of decent breaks in life, just because I was born healthy. I should have been more understanding. I see that now. But I was just a kid.
Still, even with the screwed-up birth and people making fun of you, you still made something of yourself. You did better than lots of people who are perfectly healthy. You made more of a difference to the people you met than most of the smart kids, the school team players and the in-crowds. You made people forget all the bad things about you once they came to know you. And they forgave your faults. That shows how much you came to mean to them.
For some reason, I couldn’t forgive you. It seemed that I did all the right things and still ended up being compared to you. And I never seemed to come out of those comparisons well. I hated it, hated that I couldn’t stand out no matter what I did. I’d get ace grades but it was just expected of me. You stood out simply by beating the odds.
I never thought you cared. I keep coming back to that, but it’s something that I know moulded my personality. If you’re still floating around, as it were, you probably got a kick out of watching me throw up when Buzz showed me the trust fund. A last laugh for you, proving me wrong after all this time. I thought you didn’t give a damn about me. I’d just thought it was you, Dad and Mum as one big family, while I was the odd one out. I’d always thought that you were shutting me out, pushing me aside, all of you.
And then I find out you cared about me more than you could have ever explained. You were never good with words. I figure that Buzz helped you write half your papers at university – although maybe that’s being uncharitable. You weren’t too good with actions, either. I mean, Christmas… that last Christmas you were here, you had nothing good to say about anything I did. Was it simply me being good at what I did that got you so mad that you had to lash out at me?
I don’t know… maybe I just saw it that way and didn’t listen. Maybe we both should take some blame for that.
All I know is that you made up for it big time. You took nearly everything you had and made it mine, and all to make up for all the stuff you thought I’d lost out on. The money they spent on your medical bills, on your schooling, on everything… I didn’t ask for it and it wasn’t given. It goes both ways. Maybe I could have pushed more, maybe I could have tried to be more a part of the family with everyone. Maybe I could have tried to remember more of the good stuff instead of focusing on all the bad things.
I can’t really say that I loved you, Will. You were my brother, and it bothers me that you got a raw deal out of life. But I can’t say that I loved you. I just didn’t feel that connection to you. I didn’t hate you though, and I genuinely wish that things could have been different for you. I wish we could have been brothers like my friend Trevor and his brother. But we weren’t. We were just Andrew and William Simmons, always butting heads, always arguing.
It really is a shame that it took your dying for me finally to be part of the family. For a while, I thought that with you gone, I was going to be the only brother left. But it turned out that I was still going to have to compete with your memory, your ghost. Some day, I would even be the older brother. I’d be twenty-four years old and getting older while you didn’t age a day. Forever twenty-four and always Dad and Mum’s beautiful boy while I continued to age.
But in my heart, you are always going to be my older brother now, even though you don’t age a day. I’m going to take what you gave me and make the best of it. You showed your true feelings by taking a big part of what belonged to you and giving it to me when you didn’t have to. Now, it’s my turn to do the same. You have a nice tombstone now, and I’m going to see about setting up a scholarship in your name. I’m sure I’ll think of other things, or Buzz and Sara and other people will give me ideas.
At the very least, I can find ways to show how much I care about you and what you’ve done for me.
Take care, my only brother, wherever you may be…
Andrew
About the Author
Caias Ward is a professional writer, editor and game designer, based in New Jersey, USA, and has drawn from events in his own life to tell the poignant story of The Only Brother.
IN THE SAME SERIES
Bone Song
SHERRYL CLARK
Breaking Dawn
DONNA SHELTON
Don’t Even Think It
HELEN ORME
Gun Dog
PETER LANCETT
Marty’s Diary
FRANCES CROSS
Seeing Red
PETER LANCETT
See You on the Backlot
THOMAS NEALEIGH
Stained
JOANNE HICHENS
The Finer Points of Becoming Machine
EMILY ANDREWS
The Questions Within
TERESA SCHAEFFER
Copyright
The Only Brother
CAIAS WARD
Series Editor: Peter Lancett
Published by Ransom Publishing Ltd.
Radley House, 8 St. Cross Road, Winchester, Hampshire, SO23 9HX, UK
www.ransom.co.uk
ISBN 978 178127 167 4
First published in 2009
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyrigh
t © 2009 Ransom Publishing Ltd.
Cover by Flame Design, Cape Town, South Africa
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
The right of Caias Ward to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.