Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,95
say this. To her mind the differences between the two men were obvious. Francesco’s mouth was wider and firmer and his chin more squarely resolute. His brother’s features were probably more regular, and to her seemed softer and less aggressively masculine.
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea …’
When Francesco turned his head and looked at her the emptiness in his eyes frightened her. Her heart aching with empathy, she reached across and laid her hand over his.
‘We looked alike, but that was on the surface. We weren’t really alike at all.’ He took the photo from her fingers and looked at it. ‘Rafe was the imaginative, sensitive one. I’ll show you some of his paintings some time if you like. He was very talented.’
‘He was an artist?’
‘He did a lot of things; he was … restless. I think our parents thought that marriage would make him settle down.’ ‘He was married?’
Francesco, his expression darkening, nodded. ‘He was, but it was not a success. Rafe spent four years trying to cling to her, desperately trying to change himself into the sort of man she wanted him to be.’
It had destroyed him.
It was obvious from the tension in Francesco’s manner that he didn’t enjoy speaking about his brother. Erin hesitated before gently asking, ‘How did he die?’
‘He killed himself.’
A short static silence followed his abrupt and shocking words. A tiny gasp escaped Erin’s parted lips. ‘He took an overdose.’
She lifted a hand to her mouth and her blue eyes filled with tears of sympathy.
‘When I found him he looked as if he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful,’ Francesco recalled.
Erin’s eyes widened with horror. Not only had his twin killed himself, Francesco had found the body! She ached to comfort him, but what, she wondered, could you say that didn’t sound like a pathetic platitude?
‘He came to see me, you know, earlier that week asking for my advice.’
That in itself had not been unusual. His twin had always turned up when he’d had a problem; admittedly sometimes Francesco had had trouble recognising the things Rafe had lost sleep over as problems. And if he was brutally honest with himself the dramatic spin his brother had put on relatively trivial incidents had frequently annoyed him.
It seemed to him that Rafe had lurched from one drama to another. Rafe didn’t meet a beautiful woman, he met a goddess!
Francesco had never met a goddess and he had definitely never felt the desire to place a woman on a pedestal. When Rafe had only half-jokingly accused him of having no soul he had not disagreed.
‘You want to know what I told him? What I told my suicidal brother?’ Erin shook her head and felt totally inadequate in the face of the anguish that was written in every line of his face. ‘I said, “Pull yourself together, Rafe.” I told him that people don’t die of broken hearts, but it turned out they do.’
The official verdict, of course, had been different.
It had emerged at the inquest that Rafe had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had convinced his doctors he had been taking his medication for the condition. His family, Francesco included, had known nothing about his disorder and this, they had concluded, had been the main factor that had led to his tragic suicide.
But Francesco knew different; he could have changed things. He should have changed things.
Horror-stricken, Erin could only sit and listen as the words spilled from him. She had the impression he had forgotten she was even there; it made her wonder how long he’d had these feelings locked inside.
‘My brother needed me and all I could come up with was worthless platitudes.’ His voice shook with self-loathing. ‘He loved that woman more than life itself and I said, “Don’t sit there moping. Be tough—go and get her.” So he did and she told him that she loved someone else and he killed himself.’
As he closed his eyes Francesco’s head fell forward. She watched his shoulders heave. ‘You stupid idiot, Rafe! Dio, what a waste. What a total bloody waste!’ he raged.
Unable to bear his pain any longer, Erin got to her knees on the bed and came up behind him, pressing her body up against the curve of his spine and, resting her head against his neck, linked her hands across his chest.
It was little enough but the physical contact seemed to help him regain some degree of control over his emotions because the shudders that racked his body gradually stopped.