Page 59 of Take Your Breath Away

Speaking of which, Jayne had told Andrew what she had whispered into Tyler’s ear a couple of hours earlier. The news that she was pregnant.

Man, what a shit show.

Tyler could only begin to imagine how fucked up his sister must be feeling. It was one bombshell after another. And Tyler was wondering just how he should feel. What, if anything, should he be doing about this?

The thing was, he’d never had much problem making his sister feel guilty about never really being there for him when he was growing up. But he also knew, in his heart, that it really wasn’t her fault. She was already starting high school when he was born. By the time he reached that level of education, she was already out of college and had a job. Jayne couldn’t help it that their parents made something of a miscalculation the night he was conceived, probably thinking pregnancy was no longer in the offing for them, maybe getting a bit careless about taking precautions.

Tyler really did love his sister, had always looked up to her. From afar much of the time. And he knew she’d taken a chance, bringing him into this home, running the risk of ruining this good thing she had going with Andrew. Well, until today, that is. Everything was looking a little shaky today.

And Tyler had to admit that Andrew didn’t seem like that bad a guy. Tyler knew he’d been kind of a dick in his dealings with his sister’s boyfriend. It was almost like he didn’t want to be friends with him. Tyler was pretty good at pushing people away these days, even before his dad died shoveling snow.

That was supposed to be my job.

No sense getting close to people, Tyler reasoned, because it was inevitable that you were going to disappoint them.

Tyler acknowledged, to himself, that he might need to work on his attitude. Jayne wasn’t kidding when she said this place was his second chance.

He’d fucked things up big-time when he went to live with Aunt Clara after his father’s death. All that anger he was feeling, all that guilt, it was only a matter of time before he lost it. Clara, always trying to get him to talk about his feelings. Always asking how he was. Did he want to talk about losing his father? How are you today? Any better than yesterday? You know I’m here for you if there’s anything you want to talk about? They say that time heals all wounds. Did you know that? Things that hurt us only make us stronger.

He was listening to what he thought of as “Claratherapy” when he just couldn’t take it anymore. “Shut up! Just shut up and leave me alone!” he’d shouted at her. And then he took the drinking glass in his hand and slammed it down so hard on the table that it shattered. Right in his fucking hand. Got a nasty cut on his palm.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

One tiny little shard went flying. Right into Aunt Clara’s left eye.

She threw a hand over her eye and screamed.

“Oh shit!” Tyler said, and, wrapping a dish towel around his palm to stanch the blood flow, got his aunt to open her eye so that he could have a look. Thinking maybe he could get the glass out himself.

“Don’t touch it!” she shouted.

So Tyler ordered up an Uber and rushed her to the hospital. The staff in the emergency room wouldn’t stop asking questions about how Clara had been injured. The fact that she wouldn’t say led them to think the worst, and they called the police.

“I never threw it at her,” Tyler told the investigating officer. “I wasn’t aiming for her. It was a fluke.”

Clara didn’t lose her sight, but she had a bandage over that eye for the better part of three weeks. Clara, bless her, didn’t want her nephew hauled off to juvenile court or anything, but the authorities pressured Tyler to go for a period of counseling, some anger management shit, and he was pretty sure there remained a file on him back in Providence.

If he screwed up again, someone would dig up that file. If he screwed up again, even his sister might decide he was too much of a handful for her, the way Aunt Clara had.

And then where would he end up?

There’d be no Jayne. There’d be no Andrew. He’d end up spending the rest of his teen years the way his sister’s boyfriend had, living with strangers who really didn’t give a shit about him.

Tyler didn’t know how this was going to play out, but he knew how he wanted things to go. He wanted this mystery woman to be the real Brie. Tyler didn’t have a clue how that could possibly be, but if it did turn out that way, then the police, and everyone else, would know Andrew wasn’t a killer.

But he also wanted this Brie to decide she no longer wanted to make a life with Andrew. That’d mean Andrew would stay with his sister.

And when the baby came, Andrew would be there for her.

Me, too, Tyler thought. It’d be cool to become an uncle.

But if this woman was Brie, and she did want to go back to being Andrew’s wife, well, shit, what the hell was going to happen then?

Twenty-Two

Andrew

Detective Hardy backed her car up a few feet so that it blocked the end of the driveway. I guess she thought I was going to jump into my Explorer and make a run for it, which seemed kind of ridiculous, given that I’d never tried to escape from her in the past when things were looking pretty goddamn grim.