“She knew that. She understood.”
“She wasn’t mine anymore.”
There was a long silence before Greg spoke. “She knew that, too.”
Patrick turned and slapped the concrete wall with his open hand and it stung, reverberating through his wrist and arm. There was so much he had never processed. “I don’t know where that comes from. My anger. There’s a well, deep inside me. Most of the time I’m not even aware that it’s there. But then it comes bubbling up . . .”
“Remember the house in New Hampshire?” Greg asked.
“Our house? That new construction? Barely. We only lived there, what, a year?”
“Do you remember why?”
“Dad got transferred back to Connecticut.”
“No. It was the well. They dug and they dug and they dug and could never find enough water. Every night we shared an inch of bathwater, the three of us. I don’t know what Mom and Dad did. Spritz themselves in the sink. We had like the second deepest well in New Hampshire. There was a cabin I think on Mount Washington that had one deeper, but only because they were digging into a mountain.” Greg cracked his knuckles, a habit that drove Patrick mad. “Eventually Dad and some others in the development took them to court and the builder was forced to buy the homes back.”
Patrick looked out into the shady courtyard. Too many trees. It was preventing the residents from getting sun.
“How am I the only one to remember this? I was the baby.” Greg stood behind Patrick and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Your well is in a mountain,” he said.
Patrick broke, his eyes filled with tears. Already Greg understood grief better than he did. This fucking place. What were they teaching? Maybe he should call Clara for real and then check himself in here, too. He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it and smoothing it to one side again. “Dad probably made that up. Like the Siamese twins who were drafted.”
“Only one twin was drafted and that was real.”
“HOW DOES EVERYONE KNOW THIS BUT ME?” Patrick felt his mouth twitch and the corners of his lips spread into the widest smile. It was like his face was putty and someone was pulling his skin out and then up, stretching it against his will until it was so wide it might snap. Greg smiled, too, which set Patrick off further. “Stop.”
“What?” Greg was honestly bewildered.
“Just don’t.” Patrick put both hands to his face and pushed it back into a neutral expression.
“Oh, good lord. Are you worried about the lines on your face? Just smile once in a while and enjoy it. Earthquakes happen, Patrick. It’s not your fault. You should probably bolt your shit to the wall, but it’s not your fault. What’s more, I don’t buy that you think it is. I think this is all because you’re in spitting distance of sending them home. Of my taking them back to Connecticut. And you don’t know what your life is going to look like after they leave.”
Patrick stacked a few magazines before fanning them across the table in a perfect display of healthy living.
“So, come back with them. With us.”
Patrick put his finger over a headline that read “Take Down the Flu, Naturally.” “To Connecticut? Oh, hell no.”
“Why not?”
“It’s cold. You call yourself nutmeggers. You want me to go on?”
“I’m going to need a sober companion.”
“Pass.”
“Don’t you even want to hear what it entails?”
“Does it entail being sober?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Pass.”
Greg turned away. He knew they were joking, but the sting of rejection was real. “Do you think this is fun for me? Locked up here alone with my thoughts? Awake at night because they won’t give me anything to sleep? Do you know how dark it is? I’ve never seen more stars and been so lost. It’s awful. I’m confronted with my every failure. I was taking her pills, Patrick. At the end. Her pills. That’s how bad it was. That’s how small I am.”
Patrick was always surprised how quickly rage traveled through his body. After the accident that took Joe, he was given morphine. He remembered how it flushed cold through his veins, from limbs to fingertips, into each miniscule capillary, not an inch of him left unrewarded. One instant, pain; the next, blessed relief. This was that but in reverse. Molten anger all the way into his toenails. He started to sweat and his hands clenched into fists.
“It wasn’t at her expense, I swear. Refills were easy to come by. There was always more than enough in the house. She never went without.”