by JL Bryan
Logan wasn’t listening. He was curled up in a little ball on one side of the sofa, his shoulders rising and falling slowly. Very slowly. A knit navy toboggan covered the tops of his ears and most of his eyes. His bare neck looked pale and graceful in its fragility; I resisted the urge to stroke it. Abigail lay sprawled against as much of him as she could reach, every orange and fluffy inch of her radiating watchful protectiveness. She head-butted me as I leaned over my brother, touching his face, reassuring myself that yes, he was breathing, he was alive.
But he was icy cold to the touch, and the skin under his eyes, even in sleep, looked sunken and hollow. The bones of his face were so sharp, so prominent; it struck me how much weight he’d lost over the last few months. He covered himself in the baggiest clothes these days, so I hadn’t really noticed. Or maybe I was just that unobservant. I was failing at this, at taking care of him…
A blurry orange vibration nudged at my hand. I blinked away tears yet again as I petted the purring cat that meowed quietly for my attention. “You’re right, Abby,” I whispered, pulling an old fleece throw over my sleeping brother. “We’d better not wake him. I’ll put a note on the door for Amberlyn, warning her.” Abigail flicked her tail in agreement before resuming her position as guardian of Logan’s fleece-covered back.
I lingered a moment longer. I knew I had to hurry, that work was waiting, that Amberlyn would come trooping in at any moment like a pack of wild wolves. In the slanted half-light pouring in through our front window blinds, my brother looked like something newborn and delicate, something so vulnerable that the very act of observation might be enough to take him away. I thought of baby rabbits trembling in my hands, of snowflakes melting on coat sleeves, of lightning bugs in mason jars living only until morning. I watched him, hardly daring to breathe, willing myself to memorize this moment when my brother’s shoulders brushed too slowly against the fuzzy orange of Abigail the cat.
You’re going to lose him soon, a voice whispered deep within my mind. He’s too fragile for this world now. Winter will take him. I clenched my fists against the truth of it.
“No,” I whispered through locked teeth. “I will fight for him. He’s all I have left.” I let myself feel the fear, give in to it completely, for the space of several deep, long breaths. Then, because I had no other choice, I let it go.
Under the bay window overlooking Old Town Square stood an antique mahogany roll top desk that used to belong to my father. We kept our parent’s wedding bands, important papers like birth certificates and insurance mumbo jumbo, keepsakes, art, and photographs in it. On the top of its dark surface stood the last picture of the four of us together, surrounded by candles, dried flowers, and whatever odds and ends happened to catch our eye. It was a shrine of sorts, I suppose, although both Logan and I would deny it, if pressed. I went to this picture and lit a half-melted candle.
I wish you could make him better, I thought at the picture, reaching out to touch my parent’s smiling faces with two fingers. I wish… I wish you could help us. There’s only me, and I’m not enough. It was the closest I had come to praying since they died.
I saved my tears for the shower, where they finally took me in great heaving waves, muffled by music and pounding hot water that washed them down the drain.
***
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