Page 36

S adie stood in the center of the living room. “Now what?”

Don frowned as he wandered through the apartment. “He told me that he would be here,” he said, looking back at her, “so he must be on his way.”

She nodded and didn’t say anything, not sure that she was looking forward to meeting Darren as it was. Everything she had learned about him so far didn’t exactly endear her to him. After ten minutes of Don just pacing, she finally intervened. “Do you want to text him and ask where he is?”

He looked at her, startled, then pulled out his phone, checked for any messages, and shrugged. “He doesn’t like it if I bug him.”

Her breath came out with a whoosh . “I guess you don’t do anything that upsets him, huh ?”

“No, I don’t. It’s generally not worth it.”

She snorted. “And that,” she whispered, “is the problem.”

“No matter what you say to me, he’s still my brother,” he stated, and he flashed her a hard look. “And yours too.”

“I get that, but did you ever wonder if something was wrong in our family?”

“Like maybe something is seriously wrong with all of us?” He glared at her. “I’m not listening to that talk,” he muttered. “Besides, if there is, it’s too damn bad. The world didn’t treat us nice, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“And yet,” she replied, looking at him. “there is quite a lot we could do about it.”

He immediately shook his head again. “Time to stop talking,” he said in a less-than-cheerful tone.

She immediately shut up but stared at him because he was so mercurial. His moods shifted from one to the other, and she didn’t have any warning as to when he would flip. It made him uncomfortable to be around.

All the times she was thinking about having contact with her brother, it never once occurred to her that she would be in danger or that he would ever try to hurt her.

Why? She just wanted to get to know him.

And, if he didn’t want that, theoretically that would be okay too.

But this , whatever it was, scared her. She sat here very quietly, contemplating her options, when Don suddenly flopped himself down on the couch across from her.

“He should be here soon.”

She just nodded and didn’t say anything.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he snapped.

She looked at him cautiously. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” she clarified. “I’ve just never really met him, so I don’t know him at all. I don’t know what he’s like.”

“He’s mean,” he said suddenly. “He’s chaotic, and he’s often out of control.”

She winced. “You’re not making me want to get to know him either.”

He snorted. “As if you think you’ll get an option? He’s family, and you do right by family.”

“And if you don’t do right by family?”

“Then you take family out.”

He said it with such certainty that her heart froze. And right then and there, for the first time, she realized that she could be looking at some serious mental illness in the family. She swallowed. “You didn’t do that though, did you?”

He looked at her. “Do what?”

“You were talking about taking family out.”

“No, I didn’t,” he argued, his tone scruffy. “You were asking what to do with family that’s no good, weren’t you? You take them out because what else will you do?”

“Why?”

“You can’t deal with them. They’re batshit crazy at times,” he said, with a shrug. “So, what’s the option?”

She just nodded and watched.

He smiled. “You’re afraid I’ll take you out, aren’t you?” he asked, with sudden insight.

“It certainly occurred me,” she muttered. “I mean, it’s not as if you’re giving me any reason to doubt it.”

“Maybe, yet you don’t have any reason to doubt me.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “I’m glad that you’re feeling better. The hospital must have been hard on you.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling better, and the cops didn’t really give me much of a fight. But then again, it’s not as if they ever do.”

“Because you used energy on them?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at her. “It’s pretty easy really, but I wasn’t sure how it would work in a courthouse with a lot of people around.

If I could get judged by a jury alone, then maybe, but, with everybody there, it’s really hard,” he admitted.

“And I’m not all that good with it anyway, which is why Darren used to get so mad at me. ”

“I’m sorry he got mad at you. As much as you love your brother, I’m sure he’s not been easy to deal with.”

“He’s not my brother. He’s our brother,” he stated, glaring at her.

“Sorry, it’s just such a new thing to even understand for me. Pardon me for messing it up all the time.” She felt as if she was walking on eggshells around Don, and he was so different now from the frightened boy she had met in the hospital that she didn’t know what to say. “Did you go to school?”

“Sure, I went to school. It’s not as if you have a choice. I went for a while, at least.”

“But you didn’t graduate?”

He looked at her, and his eyebrows shot up. “No, I got into gangs, and my brother got me out of gangs,” he stated. “So, that was one good thing Darren did for me.”

“That is a good thing,” she agreed immediately. “I’ve heard they can be pretty hard on the people trying to get out.”

“That’s true. I think Darren killed one of them.” Don stated it in such a matter-of-fact and informative way that it took her breath back.

“Oh,” she replied in a small voice.

He looked up and laughed. “You see? Our worlds are just so different. To me, that’s not even hardly worth mentioning, but, to you, it’s the shock of a lifetime.”

“And yet it shouldn’t be,” she noted, with a small smile in his direction. “After all, you guys killed what, four people in the heists by now?”

He looked at her, then pondered it for a moment and replied in a casual tone, “Yeah, I think so.”

“And you have no remorse over it?”

“It’s not as if I wanted to or if I enjoyed it,” he clarified. “I guess they were just not supposed to go to work that day.”

“Oh, so just like that, they’re not supposed to go to work, and, if they did, well, you guys are justified to kill them?”

He just looked at her as if she were being obtuse, and, to a certain extent, she was. She just didn’t get it.

She didn’t understand what was going on here.

She shifted on the couch, getting a little more comfortable and yet still felt edgy, still wondering if she should make a dash for the door.

And yet she wasn’t sure what he would do if she did, or what she would do, depending on his reaction.

Would she fight him? And, if that gun came back out again, then what?

The thought of being in a gunfight with the twin brother she had spent months trying to get close to, imagining that dream life of building a great relationship with him, well,… it was looking mighty foolish right now. “I guess I was really na?ve, wasn’t I?” she murmured.

He looked at her. “I don’t know, were you? What does that even mean?”

“It’s just that I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what your life was like.”

“How would you? It’s not as if you ever had the chance to see our life, so how would you know?”

Again, that same calm matter-of-fact demeanor. “When did you get into drugs?” she asked him.

“Decades ago,” he said, with a laugh, and then he shrugged.

“So, maybe not decades but definitely a long time ago,” he clarified.

“It was just the light stuff for a while, but it very quickly gets a hold of you, and then you go downhill after that. Once you’re into drugs, and you don’t have a regular job, then you’ve got to keep feeding the habit, and that means you head into a life of crime.

” He stared off in the distance, as if looking back over his life.

“And it’s pretty hard, once you’re into the criminal crap, to ever get out again. ”

“Yet you got out of the gangs.”

“I did,” he confirmed, looking at her. “But again that took help from my brother.” Then he stopped, looked at her, and smiled. “ Our brother was already a criminal.”

She laughed. “No, you’re right, our brother,” she said, with a nod.

“You shouldn’t forget it, you know? It’ll upset him if you do.”

“Ah, well, I’m not trying to. The last thing I want to do is upset him.”

“No, but see, trying not to, even if you keep trying, doesn’t mean that you get off with it,” he explained. “If you have to keep trying, it means it’s not a priority. It means he’s not a priority. I’m just telling you that he won’t like it if you continue to not make him a priority.”

“Okay,” she said agreeably, still unsure how to handle Don’s moods.

His upbringing had been so different from what she’d been through that none of it made any sense to her, and yet it wasn’t Don’s fault.

So, how could she blame him for it? And it’s not that she wanted to blame anybody, but she really, really wanted this whole scenario to go away.

When his phone rang, he looked down at it and shut it off.

“Not anybody you want to talk to?” she asked.

“No, sure not,” he said, as he glared at the door.

“How long do we wait?”

He replied, “As long as it takes.”

“Okay.” She wasn’t sure what to say to that either. She settled in for a longer wait, considering that they’d already been here for a while. “Do you have any coffee?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t drink coffee.”

“I would really like a cup.”

“Too bad. I don’t have any.”

“Okay. Do you have any games you want to play?”

He stared at her.

“We’re just sitting here, and you don’t want to talk, but I don’t want to sit here and do nothing. It’ll just help the time go by.”

“Where did you go to school?” he asked suddenly.

She named the place, and he nodded. “Did you go to high school?”

“I did, and I went to college,” she added.

“Of course you did,” he muttered, with an eye roll for emphasis. “But I’ve still probably made more money than you have.”

“Possibly. I gave up making money in order to look after Mom.”

“She wasn’t Mom ,” he yelled, almost spitting with rage. “Mom’s dead.”