Thicker Than Water

by Brigid Kemmerer

  My grandmother is sitting in my bedroom armchair, hands flying as she works on the baby blanket.

  As much as she annoys me, I’m glad I’m not waking up alone.

  My phone is blinking with a text message, so I press a button to wake the screen. For a fractured instant, I’m worried that something from Thomas will be sitting there, taunting me, but it’s not. There’s a message from Nicole.

  NK: Can’t believe it. Be over as soon as I get off work. LMK if you need anything. XOXOXO

  My grandmother’s knitting needles continue clicking. “Thanks for sitting with me,” I say. My voice sounds rough.

  She doesn’t break the rhythm. “You don’t need to thank me for that, dear.”

  I touch my neck, hoping for a moment that the time with Thomas had all been a dream, just like the time I spent in Lilly’s body.

  My neck aches as my fingers find the scratches that the nurses at the hospital cleaned and bandaged. My arms are still sore from struggling against him.

  That wasn’t a dream.

  I feel so weak. So stupid. They all warned me. My grandmother shouldn’t be kind—she should be doing her usual pursed-lips-berate-Charlotte-for-living routine. Right now I actually deserve it.

  In my sleep, I was judging Lilly. Now that I’m awake, I realize I was no different. Thomas wasn’t a stranger from the Internet. He was worse. He was a real boy, and his crimes were splashed across the front page last week.

  Tears burn my eyes, and I try to sniff them back. “How could I be so stupid?”

  “Mistakes are a part of life, Charlotte. You should count your blessings that this one didn’t come with a higher cost.”

  The words are harsh, but her voice isn’t. It might be the first time I’ve heard my grandmother speak to me with something close to kindness.

  “Does everyone hate me?” I whisper.

  Her hands go still, and she looks at me. “Hate you? You dear child, we love you.”

  I can’t remember my grandmother ever saying she loved me. Fresh emotion wells in my chest, and I burst into tears.

  True to form, she doesn’t comfort me. She resumes her knitting. “I can see how it would be exciting, spending time with a dangerous young man. You girls today can’t seem to separate your fact from your fiction. Life is not a movie.”

  Her practicality causes my tears to dry up. “That wasn’t it.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. He was different. I thought he was different.”

  She sighs. “Of course you did.”

  “I don’t understand it. He never hurt me. He never treated me badly. He had plenty of opportunities to hurt me, but he didn’t.” The corner of my sheet makes a good makeshift handkerchief. I wish I could stop crying.

  “He had plenty of opportunities to hurt his mother, too, I’d bet. We can’t understand the motivations of people who are emotionally disturbed.”

  I think about that pencil drawing of Thomas’s mother. He loved her. Respected her. There was no rage there. No anger. Had something changed? Had he given me clues that I blindly ignored?

  He’d been unable to draw her after the murder. Was he afraid he’d give himself away?

  My grandmother lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Your father and your brothers warned you to keep your distance from that one. You should have listened.”

  “I know, I know. All the men in the family know what’s best for poor, defenseless Charlotte.”

  “Obviously.”

  Obviously. I flop back against my pillow.

  Lilly thought she had everything under control, and look what that got her.

  Have I been just as stupid?

  Knuckles rap on my doorframe, and I look up to find Ben there in the doorway. He must have just gotten off work because he’s still in uniform. He glances at Grandma, then back at me. “I thought maybe I could take the next shift.”

  I want to launch myself at him and scream, YES, BEN. SAVE ME FROM THIS TORTURE.

  Instead, I’m more subtle. I clutch my hands together in prayer and mouth it.

  My grandmother stashes her knitting in her bag. “I’m not blind, Charlotte.”

  “Sorry,” I say, but I’m not really sorry. She’s leaving, and Ben is coming in, and that’s all that really matters.

  He sits on the bed, and I scoot over, giving him room. He takes the invitation and sits up against the headboard beside me.

  After a moment, he puts out his hand, and I hold it.

  “You look like you’ve been crying,” he says quietly.

  “Grandma said she loved me.”

  “And you cried? I’m surprised you didn’t faint from shock.”

  I bump him with my shoulder.

  Then emotion overtakes me, and I’m crying again. I lean against his shoulder, and he puts an arm around me. I can’t believe he didn’t take time to change out of his uniform.

  “Why didn’t I listen to you?” Tears burn my eyes, and I try to sniff them back. “How could I be so stupid?”

  “You’re not stupid.” He pulls my hands down and brushes the tears away. “You’re not stupid at all.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re still feeling sorry for me. Trust me, tomorrow you’ll be thinking I’m stupid. I got the memo from Grandma, loud and clear.”

  “Nah. I’ll leave that to her and Danny.”

  I smile through my tears. “I can’t even be mad at him. You know I’m screwed up when I’m not mad at Danny.”

  His bedroom door must be open, because he yells down the hall, “I love you too, Char.”

  I laugh under my breath and swipe my eyes. Danny carried me downstairs last night. He rode in the ambulance with me. He held my hand at the hospital and told the doctor that I needed to be attended by a female physician.

  When Dad demanded answers for everything I’d done with Thomas, Danny told him to back off and give me some space to breathe.

  I was glad for that. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone about the trip to Crisfield, so they don’t know anything about Thomas’s brother. I’m already in enough trouble. I don’t need them knowing I was halfway across the county.

  And it’s not like we found anything.

  In the hospital, when I could finally speak without crying, I thanked Danny for being so kind.

  He leaned down close to me and said, “If I stop holding your hand, I’m going to go shoot that motherfucker in the head.”

  And for the first time, I’d appreciated his white-hot temper, because I understood that it underscored a deep protectiveness for his family.

  Ben swipes more tears off my cheeks. “Matt is fit to be tied. He says you told him you were seeing someone. He thinks he should have paid closer attention to what you were saying. He wished he’d stayed the night.”

  “I wish I hadn’t lied to him.”

  “He thinks he should have figured it out.”

  “I think I should have figured it out.” Again, I wrack my brain, trying to think of some sign I missed, some obvious comment or action that should have told me I’d find Thomas in my bed in the middle of the night, trying to strangle me. The whole thing seemed like such a dream. Even now, all I remember are his eyes, boring into mine, and the feel of his hips grinding into me.

  I flush, remembering it. Up until the end, I wasn’t even fighting him.

  I can’t reconcile it with the boy who was scared to draw a picture of his mother.

  “You didn’t need to figure it out, Char.” Ben’s expression is serious. “It was already figured out.”

  “No, Ben. It wasn’t.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still defending him!” Ben shifts to face me, and he seizes my shoulders to give me a little shake. “Do you understand that he tried to kill you? He could have killed the girls! They were right here, Charlotte! What if he had strangled them first? What if—”

  “Stop it!” Emotion chokes me, and I almost can’t speak for the images his words are putting in my brain. “Stop it, Ben.”

&nbs
p; Danny appears in the doorway. “Dude. She’s been through enough. Leave her alone.”

  “She’s still defending him.”

  “I’m not,” I cry. “I’m not defending him. I just . . . I can’t wrap my brain around it.”

  “You shouldn’t be able to wrap your brain around it,” says Danny. “You think I want to wrap my brain around why he slugged me at the funeral? No. I just put his ass where it belongs.”

  Ben snorts. “Too bad we can’t force him to stay there.”

  Danny meets his eyes, and Ben nods.

  “What?” I demand. “You guys always think you’re being sneaky, but I’m not stupid.”

  “Oh really?” says Ben.

  I hit him in the shoulder, too hard to be sisterly. “You don’t think I feel bad enough?”

  “You don’t think I want to lock you in here so he can’t get to you again?”

  “Why do you need to lock me anywhere? Isn’t he in jail?”

  They exchange glances again.

  “What?”

  Danny clears his throat. “I’m assuming that mofo isn’t in jail anymore.”

  All of my bravado evaporates in a heartbeat. I touch a hand to my neck, feeling the bandages there. “He’s free?”

  “He made bail,” says Ben.

  I glance between them. “Stan bailed him out?”

  “No. A bail bondsman.” He pauses. “Dad talked to Stan. He’s in rough shape. He feels guilty for sticking up for the kid. He feels partially responsible for this happening to you. He wouldn’t have bailed him out.”

  “So you don’t know where Thomas is?”

  “No,” says Ben. “He could be anywhere.”

  “Doing anything,” says Danny.

  “So you see,” Ben says, sitting back up against the headboard. “We’re not leaving you alone for a minute.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THOMAS

  JB is driving again. He got a call on his cell phone and said we had to go. He won’t tell me where we’re headed, but when I refused to go, he threatened to invite more people over to his apartment to see how I liked that.

  I got in his car in a real hurry.

  He’s singing along with the radio again, sunglasses in place. I fidget because I’m not sure what else to do. I can’t get comfortable. I don’t know him at all—but where else would I go? What else would I do?

  Stan probably wouldn’t throw his door open wide and welcome me in with a hug. Part of me wants to call him, if for no other reason than to get access to my things.

  I clear my throat and look at JB. If I sit here in silence too much longer, my brain is going to revisit his comment about knowing that I killed my mother. I can’t process that right now. Everything else, as weird as it is, seems safer.

  “You’ve got questions,” he says. “Ask them.”

  I wonder if I’m that transparent or if he can feel it somehow. “Doesn’t that ever make you feel . . . wrong?”

  He keeps his eyes on the road. “What?”

  “The pizza guy. Compelling someone to do something like . . . that.”

  “Like what?”

  I flush. Two days ago, I was laughing at Charlotte because she couldn’t say the word sex, and now I’m feeling just as shy. “Forcing someone to do something sexual.”

  “Sexual? Did something happen that I couldn’t see?”

  I refuse to let myself back down. “I know you know what I mean.”

  “I needed to do something extreme so you’d get the point. That said, I can’t compel someone to do something they don’t genuinely want to do. There has to be something to work with.” He glances over. “Like believing me. You’re not there yet. I can’t make you believe me.”

  I swallow. “So it works on me, too? Even though I’m . . . what you are?”

  “An empath.” He emphasizes the word like I need help pronouncing it. “It’s even easier with you. You’re completely unguarded. You amplify every emotion around you without realizing it, but you’re not doing anything to protect yourself.” He pauses, his jaw set. “Honestly, you’re lucky someone else didn’t find you first.”

  I roll that around in my head for a moment. “So there are more like you?” I pause. “Like us?”

  “Yes.” He glances over. “And we’re not all good.”

  I think about that one memory I can’t ever seem to let go of. Dad in the street, the man looming over me. The promise to get ice cream. “And Dad was like this too?”

  “Yep.” JB finally looks away from the road and studies me over the rim of his sunglasses. “Haven’t you ever had problems at hospitals and funerals?”

  “I’ve never been in the hospital.” I swallow. “And I’ve only ever been to one funeral.”

  “Yeah, and look at what happened.”

  I study him, not tracking. “What happened?”

  “If you hadn’t been thrown in a patrol car, you would have been in a real mess. Couldn’t you feel how you were drawing them all to you?”

  I try to remember the morning of the funeral. I was a real mess that morning. I couldn’t tie my tie. I remember wanting to rage at them all for treating Mom’s death like an excuse for a party. Even the memory has me clenching my fists.

  JB tsks under his breath. “You remember.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I can’t,” he says equably.

  “I still don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

  “Oh, so pretty girls walk up and try to comfort you at the drop of a hat?” He whistles through his teeth. “Wow, Tommy, you are one lucky guy. Teach me your secrets, little brother.”

  I glare at him. “So you’re saying she only came over because I wanted her to?”

  “Yes. But she was a little curious, too. You were mad at everyone else, so they were mad at you.” He reaches out to tap my forehead. “That’s what I mean about amplifying everyone around you.”

  “And I’m supposed to be able to avoid this somehow?”

  “Yes. You need to figure out how to build a wall around that mind of yours. Right now, you’re like a feeding trough for all the weaker-minded.”

  I purse my lips and look out the window. Build a wall. How do you put a wall around your thoughts? One part of my mind feels like I’ve been left behind, like I never learned to recognize my numbers and colors, but I’ve just been dropped in a paint-by-numbers class.

  Another part of me wants to roll my eyes at this whole thing. I just met this guy.

  I look back at him, feeling my eyes narrow. I don’t even have proof he’s my real brother.

  “February thirteenth,” he says.

  I jump. “What?”

  He glances over. “Your birthday. February thirteenth?”

  “Oooh, did you just pull that out of the air?” I say sourly. “That’s on my driver’s license, and probably my court records.”

  He smiles, a little. “Your mom was so disappointed that you couldn’t wait one more day. She’d bought this ridiculous newborn cupid outfit. She dressed you in it anyway. Dad said it made you look a little creepy. Who puts wings on a kid who can’t hold his head up?”

  I stop breathing. I’ve heard this story. Mom used to shake me good-naturedly every February. “You couldn’t hold out one more day, could you, Tommy?”

  And I’ve seen my newborn picture. Mom used to keep it on the bookcase. Big red velvet diaper, a plush bow-and-arrow, and bizarre sparkly wings. I do look creepy. I used to turn it around when friends came over.

  Right now it’s taped inside a box in Stan’s garage.

  Breath finally whispers into my lungs. “How—how did you know what I was thinking about?”

  “You don’t need to be psychic to feel the skepticism in this car, Tommy.”

  I’m stuck on another part of what he said. “Mom used to say we had to hide from Dad. What did he do to her?”

  “He didn’t do anything to her.”

  I swing my head around to look at JB. He’s watching the road, but his forear
ms are tense. If I’m supposed to be able to figure out his emotional state, I’ve got nothing.

  Then again, he’s the only person—literally the only person—who might be able to unravel the mysteries about my mother and father and what happened to her.

  Without wanting them, images of her death flock to my mind. Like before, they’re not just images of what I found afterward.

  They’re rapid-fire images of the act. She’s fighting. Trying to draw breath to scream. Her neck is rubbed raw from her struggles.

  She’s screaming my name.

  I clamp my hands over my ears, like it’s happening here in the car. It doesn’t help.

  “Stop it!” I cry. “Stop it!”

  The images come faster, until it’s a filmstrip on a reel, flickering with light and terror and death.

  “Tommy.” His voice is whisper soft. His hands close around my wrists. “Tommy. Look at me.”

  The car is on the shoulder. We rock with the force of passing vehicles. I’m practically whimpering.

  The images, the sounds—they’ve stopped. The car is quiet, aside from my panicked breathing.

  Any mockery and good humor is gone from my brother’s face. “You all right?”

  I jerk my hands free from his and slam my fists into his chest. “Why would you do that? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I’m crying and I don’t care. “I don’t want to see it? Okay? I don’t want to see it.”

  “I didn’t make you see it,” he says softly.

  “You did!”

  “I didn’t. Tommy, I didn’t.”

  Just this once, Tommy.

  I press my fists to my eyes. My shoulders are shaking. “Stop calling me that.”

  He inhales like he’s going to say something, but he must think better of it, because he shifts back into his seat and lets the breath out. After a moment, he puts the car back into gear and we merge into traffic.

  I can’t look at him. I wish I’d jumped out of the car when we were stopped.

  “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” he finally says. His voice is gravelly.

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  He’s quiet for a few miles. The radio is silent now. I wrap my arms around myself and stare out the window. I watch concrete barriers fly past. Trees. Clouds. Anything but him.