Page 155 of String Boys

“Okay. Brace yourself. He doesn’t look….”

“Like Matty?”

“Like human. I’m not kidding, Seth. It’s bad.”

It was and it wasn’t. Matty’s meat-sack was about finished—Seth wasn’t blind. The pathetic fringe of hair around his crown looked mangy and almost infectious, and his yellow pallor and bloating were sickly in the extreme.

But for the first time in years, his eyes weren’t full of hate, and he smiled as Seth walked in, gently, like he used to when they were kids.

“Hey, Seth.”

“Hey, Matty. What’s doin’?”

“Heh heh. Or is that what’sdyin’?”

Seth groaned and took a seat near the bed. The hospice nurse was sitting in her corner, reading her phone, and she looked up and smiled absently. A middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair and a formidable bosom, she looked sort of like Seth would expect someone who watched people die for a living looked. Like she could be pleasant and kind on command, but like she saved her deeper involvement for her own family.

“Yeah,” Seth said, giving Xavier to Kelly reluctantly. “Sorry about that. Sucks.”

Matty paused to look at the way Seth held the baby, bussing him on the top of the little head as he handed him over.

“It does for me,” he admitted. “Where you goin’, Kel?”

“Walmart.” Kelly rolled his eyes fondly at Seth. “He got on a plane with a tiny suitcase full of dirty clothes. And he’s so skinny at this point that when they come out of the wash, they’llstillfall off his ass. Can you believe that?”

Matty nodded, a slow smile on his face. “Some things don’t change,” he rasped, and then coughed into a bloody wad of tissues in his hand. “Some things do.” He grimaced at Kelly. “I’ll be done in an hour. Will you be home by then?”

Kelly shrugged. “Hour and a half—gonna get some groceries too. Want something, Seth?”

Seth regarded him blankly, and Kelly and Matty laughed together.

“Good one, Kel!” Matty said, coughing again. “But seriously, bring him some ice cream or something, just for me, would you?”

Then Kelly did something unexpected and tender, something that mended so much in Seth’s heart he almost couldn’t think or breathe. He bent over and kissed his brother’s forehead.

“Don’t die until after Thanksgiving. Deal?”

“You want me to die on your birthday? Wow, I must be a real bastard.”

Kelly laughed grimly and then kissed Seth’s cheek before taking Xavier away with him, still laughing.

Seth was left in the room with Matty and an indifferent nurse, but he was okay. Kelly loved his brother again.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, wishing for something to do with his hands.

“For making your life fucking miserable for eight years? Sure.”

“No. For coming back and making him okay. He missed you.”

Matty looked directly at him, apparently too weak for bullshit or evasion. “I fucking ruined your lives, Seth. And part of it was being high, and part of it was being confused, and a lot of it was being scared of Castor Durant, because he threatened me every fucking day until he died. But after that, it was jealousy, pure and simple. Do you know why?”

Seth shook his head helplessly. “No.”

“Because my life was shit, and you and Kelly—you kept that… that innocence from when we were kids. Every time I saw you, I’d expect you to be grown-up Mr. Businessman Musician, like a rock star, using your talent for a buck. But when I did see you, it was through the eyes of my family, where you were a saint and Kelly was living in my father’s footsteps, and I’d killed my father and I had nowhere to go but down. You were both still… kind. Still family. And still in love. And I… I mean, I’m an addict. And a drunk. I didn’t have many saving graces as it was. But the things I said to you, about being a psycho, a pervert, belonging in a cage—those things… they weren’t true. And I knew they weren’t true when I said them.”

Seth’s chest hurt. And his ears and his throat and his head.

And his heart.