Page 139 of Five Brothers
I turn around, taking inventory of the shadows beneath his eyes, getting darker every day, but I pause, noticing the sallow color to his cheeks. There was anger in his voice, but his expression falters, like he’s just trying hard to be angry. Like it’s the last emotion he can muster, and I’m the only one who’s left.
I blink, glancing at the bottle and then back to him. “That shit isn’t doing you a bit of good.”
He sneers. “Every single brother of mine you’ve fucked drinks.”
“They drink for fun. You don’t.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” He backs off me and drops into a chair at the table, still fisting the bottle. “Right now, I’m hungry for food,” he tells me. “I want to eat, and that feels really good.”
I listen. He’s talking, and I want him to talk.
“Little things please me,” he says, his voice gravelly. “The scent coming in through the windows. The cooler temperature tonight. The slight humidity weighing on my skin.” He swallows, and I watch the lump move down his throat. “The sound of the wind outside, and how it always felt like this house grew out of the land just like the trees.”
I grip the edge of the sink behind me.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.” He almost smiles. “In this chair on this floor that’s still stained with coffee grounds caked in the cracks from when Liv broke the pot when she was four while wrestling with Army.”
He drops his eyes, his long jean-clad legs spread in front of him as he leans back in his seat.
“Next to the stove my father cooked at,” he whispers, “and always made sure I watched and learned, because he knew I’d need to know someday.”
He goes on. “I’m not worried about the Bay and how a year from now Trace will be a fucking greenskeeper at the country club they’ll build on the land his ancestors settled. Army will be living in a trailer. We’ll never see Dallas again, and Iron will be perpetually in and out of prison for the rest of his life, because no matter what I did”—he pauses, and I hear the strain in his voice—“I failed at making any kind of a difference.”
My eyes sting.
None of that will happen. It can’t.
“I love them a little more tonight, and dislike you a little less.” He raises the bottle, takes a swig, and sets it back on the table, letting his eyes fall down my body. “And maybe I can almost see what they like about you.”
The heat of his gaze warms my skin.
“And where will you be?” I ask him.
He meets my eyes again.
“You said Army will be in a trailer,” I remind him. “Iron in prison. Dallas will leave … Where are you during all of this?”
He goes still, like a statue. Then he picks up the bottle again. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll stick around here much longer, either.”
My stomach knots. If he leaves, everything will end.
He rises, heading out of the kitchen, and I stand there as hisfootfalls hit the stairs. There’s a moment of silence, and then his bedroom door finally closes.
I lock my jaw, closing my eyes.What the hell did that mean?
What does he mean?
I walk, drifting up the stairs, and stop, taking a look at the pictures on the wall. Family photos, not one of them professionally done or in a studio.
In the swamp. On boats. At the beach. In the living room. First cars. Birthday parties.
Not one of them taken in the past eight years, though. None of them with Liv or Trace as teenagers. Dallas had long hair at about ten years old, it looks like.
Macon and Army are in so many, because they were completely raised by their parents, who took pictures.
Army with his beautiful green eyes.
Macon with his mother’s brown ones.