Page 153 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“Shut up, Jinx. Listen to me. We can say—we can—It was Andrew, all right?” He finally looked at their brother, dying only a few feet away. “We’ll tell them it was all Andrew.”

Jane concentrated on the pain from his fingers gouging into her skin.

“He forged my signature on the reports,” Jasper decided. “He’s done it before. He forged Father’s signature on school forms, checks, credit card slips. There’s a long history we can document. I know Father kept everything in his safe. I’m sure they—”

“No,” Jane said, firmly enough to be heard. “I’m not going to let you do that to Andrew.”

“He’s dying, Jinx. What does it matter?”

“His legacy matters. His reputation.”

“Are you fucking nuts?” Jasper shook her so hard her teeth clicked together. “Andrew’s legacy is just like the rest of them—he was a faggot, and he’s dying a faggot’s death.”

Jane tried to pull away, but Jasper held her in his grip.

“Do you know how many times I rescued him from yet another fag in the Tenderloin? How much cash I gave him so he could pay off whatever twink was threatening to go to Father?”

“Ellis-Anne—”

“Doesn’t have AIDS because Andy could never get it up to screw her.” Jasper finally let her go. He put his hand to his forehead. “Christ, Jinx, you never wondered why Nick would stick his tongue down your throat or grab your ass whenever Andrew was around? He was taunting him. We all saw it, even Mother.”

Jane saw it now – more signs that she had missed. She laced her fingers through Andrew’s again. She looked at his ravaged face. She had never noticed before, but his forehead had premature lines from his constant worrying.

Why had he never told Jane?

She wouldn’t have stopped loving him. Maybe she would have loved him more, because suddenly, his lifetime of self-hatred and torture made sense.

She told Jasper, “It doesn’t matter. I won’t dishonor his death.”

“Andy’s the one who dishonored his death,” Jasper said. “Don’t you see he’s getting exactly what he deserves? With any luck, all of them will.”

Jane felt ice shoot through her veins. “How can you say that? He’s still our brother.”

“Think for a minute.” Jasper had collected himself. He was back to trying to control everything. “Andy can finally be useful to both of us. You can tell the cops that he and Nick kidnapped you. Look at you—your nose is probably broken. Somebody tried to strangle the life out of you. Andy let it happen. He helped murder our father. He didn’t care that people were going to die. He didn’t try to stop it.”

“We can’t—”

“What’s happening to him now is a Correction.” Jasper invoked Martin Queller’s theory as if it was suddenly gospel. “We have to accept that our brother is an abomination. He defied the natural order. He fell in love with Nick. He brought him into our house. You should’ve let Andy rot in the street. I should’ve let him hang in the basement. None of this would have happened without his disgusting perversion.”

Jane could barely look at this man she had admired her entire life. She’d contorted herself to defend him. She had fought with Andrew to keep him out of harm’s way.

Jasper said, “Save yourself, Jinx. Save me. We can still pull this family’s name out of the gutter. In six months, maybe a year, we can take the company public. It won’t be easy, but it will work if we stick together. Andrew’s nothing more than a pus we have to drain from the Queller line.”

Jane sank down onto Andrew’s bed, her hand resting on his leg. She silently repeated Jasper’s words, because in the future, if she ever wavered about never talking to her brother again, she wanted to remember in detail everything he had said.

She told him, “I have the paperwork, Jasper. All of it. I’ll testify in front of any judge that it’s your signature. I’ll tell them that you knew about Oslo, and I’ll tell them that you wanted to frame Andrew for everything.”

Jasper stared at her. “How can you choose him over me?”

Jane was sick of men thinking they could give her ultimatums. “I’ve been standing here listening to you try to justify your crimes and talk about Andrew as if he’s an aberration, but it’s you I’m most ashamed of.”

He huffed a disgusted laugh. “You’re judging me?”

“You went along with Oslo because you wanted power and money and the private jets and another Porsche and the only way you could take control was to get Father out of the way. That makes you worse than all of us combined. At least we did it because it was something that we believed in. You did it for greed.”

Jasper walked toward the door. Jane thought he was going to leave, but instead he closed the curtain across the glass. The cop lifted his chin to make sure everything was okay. Jasper waved him off again.

He turned around. He smoothed down his tie. He told Jane, “You don’t understand how this works.”