Murder_ A Sinful Secrets Romance - Ella James Page 0,90

I can see Mom’s hair in that braid over her left shoulder. The nurse, Odessa, showed me how to do it one day. I’m sitting there by Mom carving a squirrel. Just turned sixteen or about to. Regardless, spending all my days driving Mom to appointments. Except in this memory she’s not going anywhere. The bandages are still around her upper torso, and her skin is angel pale. I sit the squirrel and my knife down and lay my head there on her mattress, just beside her hip. I remember a sharp ache in my chest when her hand didn’t come to rest in my hair. Then Lyon and Kellan are coming through the doorway. A nurse—Charlene—is smiling when I lift my head. My stomach flips because they’ve never seen Mom this way. Until a day or two ago, she hadn’t been unconscious like this. Charlene shrugs and smiles. Lyon pulls a plastic dinosaur from his pocket.

“Look Barrett! I got a dinosaur for you!”

“Cool. Where’d you get that, buddy?”

He comes over to me. Kellan too. “Lisa took us to Target!”

Kellan looks from me to Mom as Ly hands me the dinosaur. Lyon blinks his blue eyes. “I have one too.” He pulls his own brown dinosaur from another pocket. “Mine is triceratops.” His little eyes peer up at me. “Barrett, are you sad?”

My heart misses a beat. “No. Why?” My jaw tightens and I want to look at Lisa, though I don’t. What has she told them?

“Mommy told me if you’re sad that we should cheer you up.”

“When did she say that?”

Kellan tilts his face up to me. “A couple days ago.”

As I drive, I hear their voices. Nine, ten, and eleven. The year Mom died. The two that followed, when I watched them half as much as Lisa did. I used to make them breakfast. Dinner. I could never drive them places. After I nearly failed tenth grade for missing class with Mom, I was on Dad’s shit list. I don’t think he wanted me around the boys. Of course, he worked all day and night, so what could he do?

I remember that big, leather couch. We would all three sit up there and play Playstation and I’d wrestle them and tousle their blond hair and help them with division.

I know I shouldn’t, but I think about them then and can’t believe Lyon is dead. My little brother only lived to be eighteen years old. I didn’t even see him buried. Tears blur the road ahead of me. I pull over on the shoulder, find a napkin in the glove box.

“I’m sorry, buddy. I’m so sorry.”

My hands feel hot and shaky on the wheel as I hurry to Forward Street. I’ve got five days. It’s a long fucking time. Instead of going out to Breck’s with Dove and Blue and him, I can spend all of it here at the cabin with my brother. I remember how they used to cry after she died. It will feel so good to hug him. My throat thickens just thinking about it.

The shoulders that run along the back roads leading to Forward Street are caked with the last snow. It’s hard and slightly brown. I drive slowly, looking for our family’s cabin. When I spot it, I park in front of the garage and step out onto the cold ground. My throat burns and tightens. I swallow and look around. This is the last lot on the road. If I recall, it’s got about a dozen acres.

I walk slowly up the steps onto the small porch and knock. Three times. Then, a minute later, four. I hear footfall right behind the door. My stomach flips, my throat knots up. My whole head feels infused with heat.

I think frantically about what I’ll say, but all I have is I’m sorry. That I wasn’t here. That I didn’t come while they were sick and missed Lyon’s funeral. That instead of coming after the funeral, I went to Syria, and then Iraq. When did I get so fucking selfish, I wonder as I press my finger to the doorbell.

We spent the last six weeks orbiting Maliki: an important mission but non-urgent. I waited until after Christmas to fly home.

I hear more footsteps, then nothing.

“Kelly?” I shout at the door. “It’s Barrett.”

It feels strange to say my name when I’m so used to being Bear. I knock some more. And then I hear it. Faintly. “Go away!”

“K?”

I press myself against the screen door, wrap my hand