There weren’t many people here, but I guess I should’ve expected it. There weren’t that many people in our lives, either, or I would’ve hoped something would’ve turned out differently.
Matt stood beside me, his hulking physicality a comforting presence. It would’ve been even better if I could’ve leaned into him, let him do my standing and my mourning for me, and he would’ve. He was that kind of person, my brother. He’d breathe for me if I asked him to.
But I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, let alone touch him. I couldn’t even touch myself, my arms held stiffly out at my sides, the droning of a preacher I’d never seen before in my life washing over me. I wondered idly if the funeral home rented them. When I’d called Matt with the news, too horrified to feel anything but numb, he’d left New York City instantly, boarding a bus even as he continued to push me for details I couldn’t give him.
He was a good brother—the best. He’d been mostly responsible for making the arrangements. It was his nature, as the older brother, to speak up for me when words stuck in my throat, to explain me to people who asked me questions over and over again when I failed to summon the voice to answer.
“They were pretty close, Mom and Meagan,” Matt would say, crossing his arms over his chest. “Meagan was the one who found her. I think you can find some sympathy inside of yourself and ask me the hard questions instead of her. Don’t you think she’s been through enough?”
That was what he’d said to the cops, anyway, who found it hard to believe that theirs wasn’t the first number I’d called when I found her, lifeless, in her bed.
And yet for all of his strengths, my brother’s biggest weakness was that he didn’t have a clue what I’d been through. He didn’t have a clue what had happened to our mother. To me.
I flinched violently when Matt took my elbow.
“Easy,” he said, his tone light, reasonable. “Funeral’s over, Meagan. Unless you want to stay here longer.”
The preacher had long since completed his droning and wandered off across the graveyard to his battered compact car, and a piece of heavy machinery loomed a few yards away, ready to shove a pile of dirt over my mom’s coffin. I didn’t want to be here, but I was here all the same. I’d done everything in my power to avoid this day, and yet here I was.
And there was my mom in the ground.
“Meagan?”
“This is all my fault,” I muttered, my throat thick with the tears I wanted to shed but couldn’t. I was too sick. This couldn’t really be happening.
“Don’t say that,” Matt commanded. “Mom was sick. She’d been sick for a long time. She’s in a better place now.”
The heavy machinery chugged to life, heaving toward the dirt pile at the edge of the open grave. My brother, still gripping my elbow, steered me away, seemingly certain that I shouldn’t watch.
She hadn’t raised us with religion, but I was certain of one thing—my mom really was in a better place. Anything was better than the place she’d been in…the place I’d been in, as well.
I thought about going back to that silent house, smelling of bleach and sickness, and my knees gave way.
“Meagan!”
My brother caught me before I could fall, swinging me toward a cement bench erected beside a grave by some other grieving family.
“Don’t make me go back there,” I babbled, terrified at the idea of the ghosts that would be there, waiting for me in that house. “Please. I can’t go back there.”
“Go back where?” My brother’s face was pinched with concern, and I hated being so weak in front of him. He had his own concerns, and he hadn’t understood what it had been like in the house. He couldn’t know because I’d never told anyone.
“Just take me with you,” I begged. I knew I sounded desperate, and I hated it, but it was the most honest I could’ve been. I was desperate to get out of that house, out of this town, out of my life.
“Meagan, you know that I’m still trying to get on my feet,” Matt said, looking chagrined. “I’m sorry that you were the one who found Mom like that. You don’t want to go back to the house, and I understand that, but you have to.”
“I won’t be any trouble,” I promised him, shaking my head back and forth violently. No. I couldn’t go back to the house. I wouldn’t. I was going to escape. This was the only chance I’d get. “You know that I’ve always wanted to live in New York City. I would be able to help you with your rent. I’d get a job anywhere to start, and I’d be so good that I’d start climbing the corporate ladder, or whatever. You just have to give me a chance.”
“I know you’re going to be great at whatever you choose to do,” he said, his face sad, “but I’m living in a hole in the wall with three other guys. I can’t bring my sister into that kind of living situation, understand? I don’t trust them.”
“I’ll sleep with a baseball bat,” I said, the words rushing out of my mouth. “I can handle myself.”
Matt snorted. “You’re from Nowhere, New York, Meagan. This is New York City we’re talking about. You have no idea about the kinds of things that can happen there.”
With that statement, I knew I was much more worldly than my big brother. It was a moment that should’ve upset me more. I’d always felt that he was the one who was going to whisk me away from all of this pain and suffering and torment. He was going to be the one who was going to save me.
But he couldn’t save me. He hadn’t. And he wouldn’t.
I hadn’t been able to save myself, either. Or my mom.
“Meagan, you know I don’t want to leave you here, alone in that house,” he said, “but you have to give me a chance to establish myself in New York City before I can just bring you there to live with me. I have to pay my dues.”
He continued talking, and I let his words wash over me, unfeeling. He was promising to move me to the city in a year’s time, after he could determine how some job prospect was going to pan out. Matt sounded hopeful, determined, and that was all well and fine, but I knew I couldn’t trust my big brother to save me anymore. He didn’t have a clue about what could happen to a girl left on her own.
“So, what do you think?” he was saying, rubbing his hands together against a cold wind that had just started blowing. The unseasonable warmth was just starting to turn, and part of me was glad, hoping it would really turn nasty now, wishing for winter to freeze my impotent rage and self-loathing.
“What do I think about what?”
“Give me a year,” he said. “I have a really good feeling about this job I applied to. I’m supposed to have an interview next week. Give me a year to save up—and you start saving up, too—and then I’ll come back for you.”
I shuddered helplessly, and it wasn’t the wind. Someone else had said that to me, and it had been more of a promise than what my brother was telling me now.
“It’s all my fault,” I repeated.
“What did I say?” Matt demanded, his face stone. “I don’t want you saying that. Mom dying wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. She was sick, Meagan. You have to accept that.”
“You don’t understand.” I locked eyes with my brother. “You don’t have a fucking clue. Mom’s dead because of me. I killed her.”
Chapter 7
My brother stared at me like there was something wrong with me. There was something wrong with me—lots of things, in fact. He didn't know the extent of it. But I couldn’t blame the way he was staring at me now. I’d just told him, at our mother’s burial, that I was the reason she’d died.
That I’d killed her.
“Meagan, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, finally breaking the silence. The weather had taken a nasty turn, transforming an unseasonably beautiful day into something a little more appropriate for a funeral. The coat I’d worn wasn’t thick enough, but I welcomed the bite of the north wind. It hurt, and I deserved to hurt. The physical pain was such a nice distraction from the emotional guilt.
“You
don’t know what you’re saying,” I said. “I was there. You weren’t. The fact that she died—that’s my fault, Matt.”
My brother put his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry, Meagan. If this is you trying to impress upon me that it wasn’t fair for me to leave you here, then you’re right. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t understand how bad it was with Mom. I know that it wasn’t easy to see her gradually fade away.”
I violently shook my head back and forth. That wasn’t how it had happened. That wasn’t it at all, and Matt didn’t know how truly bad it had been—our mother’s death wasn’t even the half of it.
I didn’t know if everything that happened would’ve still happened if my brother were there. It was hard to know—impossible, even, to guess. And it was painful to imagine—not to mention unfair—that I would be angry with him over his presence. He was trying to earn a living to bring more money home, to make sure our mother had the funds she needed to battle her illness.
That had all been in vain.
I wasn’t so sure she’d been sick anymore. That was how warped my reality was. Someone with enough knowledge of medicine, who had access to the right or wrong drugs, could simulate anything, more or less.
I was painfully aware of that. I just didn’t know how to tell my brother. He’d already dismissed the worst truth I’d tried to offer him.
I loved my brother, as much as I could love a person anymore, but his practical nature sometimes got in the way. He thought everything had an explanation—that if he just asked the right questions and thought about it long enough, he’d be able to divine anything.
He was the older one, but it was apparent I was going to have to protect him from this awful truth. Sometimes, brother dear, shitty things just happened. There weren’t reasons for them. There wasn’t an easy explanation, one that tied the narrative up in a neat little bow and left you satisfied.
There were real monsters out there, and one of them had been living with us.
Another one was me.
“I understand why you weren’t here,” I said finally, “and I don’t blame you for it. You were trying to help the family.”
“I didn’t do enough,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “I couldn’t protect you from seeing Mom deteriorate. And I couldn’t earn enough money to get her better treatment.”
How had I worked myself into this position? My brother had been overprotective of me for my entire life. How could I protect him from his own guilt when mine was trying to swallow me whole?
“Mom was just really sick, Matt,” I said. “It mystified the doctors.”
“She should’ve had better doctors.” Poor, practical Matt.
“It’s better that she’s at rest.” I couldn’t believe the words I was finding to say. Of course our mother wasn’t better off dead, not when I wasn’t entirely convinced she’d been sick in the first place. “She suffered a lot.” That statement was true, but not at the hands of some arbitrary illness. There was a name I could give her tormenter, but I didn’t trust my brother with that knowledge.
I didn’t want him to think I was crazy on top of everything else. I could imagine him weeping as he locked me away in some institution and threw away the key. He’d never believe anything I’d tell him, and it would destroy our relationship. Right now, I needed him to get me out of this town. I couldn’t sacrifice our bond over something as awful as the truth.
“You know better than I did what happened,” he said, sighing. If he could admit that, why couldn’t he believe me when I told him I was at fault in her death? Was it that painful to believe? It would give him the explanation he craved, the easy bow that would help him sleep easy at night.
Only it wouldn’t be an easy sleep. My brother would never forgive himself, and then I’d have one more life on my hands.
The heavy equipment roared behind us, shoving the dirt on top of our mother’s casket. Each heavy thump of the earth falling on top of her made us both flinch.
I suddenly wished I were crazy enough for my brother to lock away. If I were removed from reality, I wouldn’t have to deal with this. I couldn’t deal with this. My anxiety flared mightily, and it felt like the heavy equipment behind us was piling dirt on top of me, load after load, keeping me from breathing.
“There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” my brother said, though I could barely hear him above the roar in my own ears, the harbinger that I was about to lose my composure.
“What don’t you understand?” I asked, my voice faint. I could tell him lots of things he wouldn’t understand, lots of things I still didn’t understand myself.
“I don’t understand why Carl didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.”
It was at that statement I started vomiting.
Chapter 8
Levi’s townhouse had become something of a playground for me. I loved to while away an afternoon by lurking through the sumptuous rooms, not having to pretend very hard that they belonged to me.
Each time I decided on a room that was my favorite, the designation lasted for all but a handful of minutes until I revised it, settling on something different. I would love the foyer for its rich wooden floors, the way my shoes sounded when I walked across it, the curve of the staircase up to the second floor, the high ceiling and its dangling chandelier. It was the room that set the tone for the rest of the house, and it did not disappoint.
But then I would remember everything about the master bedroom—the enormous four-poster bed with long, maroon curtains, the shaggy alabaster rug that shielded my bare feet from the cold floor, the way the lights could dim and fade and brighten according to whatever mood needed to be lit, and, of course, the amazing sex I was having in there. It was perhaps the room I spent the most time in—though that didn’t stop Levi and me from christening other parts of the townhouse with our coupling.
He hadn’t been joking when he’d told me several weeks ago that he thought he was getting addicted to me. We had sex at least twice every day, his appetite just as rampant as mine. I was always after that light at the end, the physical release that would temporarily calm my inner turmoil. Sex with Levi was better than sex with anyone I’d ever experienced it with, and my view on my own sexuality was shifting.
Sex was something I’d binged on back in my hometown. I’d seduce any man without knowing him, knowing that if I could manage to get off at the end, the orgasm would remove me from my cares—if only for a few brief moments. That relief would be enough for me to throw myself at whoever came by, whatever they looked like, with no regard for my personal safety or their personalities.
I hated myself for my weakness and lack of resolve. I hated the fact that I used sex as a coping mechanism for the very real horror I’d undergone—the one that continued to torment me, even though it was in the past. And I especially hated that my anxiety about my sexual proclivities just continued to pile on top of all the other anxieties I already had.
It was a cycle I couldn’t break.
Then Levi had come along, out of the blue, to see what he could do to save me. My brother, in death, had pushed the exact person I needed in my direction, and I had seized upon him with no intention of letting him out of my grasp.
With Levi, sex was a sure thing. Our bodies were in tune with each other from the start, and we never said no to each other. We never wanted to say no. That’s how good it always was. We never failed to bring each other to completion, to make each other feel desired and cherished. Levi once missed an entire week of work simply because neither of us wanted to get out of bed or put clothes on. It was like a fever dream of pure carnal ecstasy.
His hands roamed every inch of my body; his tongue followed the paths his fingers decided on.
Our lips locked so that we had to breathe for each other, taking in air that was exhaled in moans, the only language we needed for the entire week.
Our fingers threaded together, my arms pushed up over my head, gripping his hands as he pumped again, and again, and aga
in.
The way my whole body ached when it wasn’t being touched, making me press myself up to him, torso to torso, belly to belly, my legs against his, wishing that I could simply sink into him and never resurface as only myself.
If we weren’t already addicted to each other, that was the week when it happened, barely stopping to eat or drink, continuing our affections in the shower whenever one of us decided it was time to take one.
I cringed to think of what the staff members at the house thought of us. We were neither discreet nor quiet, not bothering to cover up when we’d go for a bottle of water down in the kitchen, or a quick bite of something to eat from the refrigerator—perhaps bringing back up to the bedroom a bottle of chocolate syrup for a little fun.
I hoped that, after the first day, the staff members had just decided to make themselves scarce.
It was a novelty, realizing that I was living in a place that came with its own staff. The townhouse, itself, wasn’t that much bigger than my old house had been. It was two stories, but it came with a butler, a cleaning army of two, and a full-time chef.
For someone used to getting her primary nutrition at a gas station in my walking rambles around my hometown, the chef was a real novelty—as were the meals she made whether I requested them or not.
Full breakfasts magically appeared on a table by the bed: crispy bacon, succulent sausages, eggs fluffy, over easy, poached, hardboiled, pancakes as light as air, thin crepes encasing fresh berries and cream, oatmeal in all incarnations, omelets stuffed with mushrooms and crisp peppers, and muffins I’d prefer even over cookies and cakes.
There wasn’t a food item that was off the menu during lunch. I could wander down to the kitchen and request something from the chef or just give her free rein over what I’d be eating, which was what I did most often. I liked to watch her bustle over the stove. No matter what a person did, if they loved it, it was always apparent while they were doing it. She watched each pot and pan boil and simmer, stirring and tossing its contents, never burning or undercooking a single item. It was a glorious sight to behold, and I always felt that the food tasted even better after I’d watched her make it.
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