Conn shoved out of his chair so suddenly it toppled back to the ground. “It’s processed. My half brother just fucked my sister of sorts, who, by the way, happens to be his half sister. Drag John in here, and let’s have the name.”
When Conn looked around the room, I assumed waiting for Chance or Chase or even Mr. Harper to go get John right that minute, he didn’t find any willing volunteers. I wanted to know the name more than Conn did, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength to stand, let alone carry out everything it would take to get John in here.
“Okay, fine, I’ll drag him in here myself.” Conn marched for the door and shoved it open.
That was when we heard the sound—the same sound we’d all been dreading—of an ambulance siren blaring closer.
Chase and Chance shoved out of their chairs, exchanging a look.
“Dad,” Chase said, already running for the door Conn had beat him out of.
“Oh, dear God, no,” Mr. Harper said to himself, giving me one last smile of apology before Chance pulled me up and led me toward the door.
If the sirens were there, that meant the end was close. It had been close for days, but this was it. John was hours, maybe even minutes, from leaving this world, and his departure was taking the secret he was the last living person to know.
Chance had to help stabilize me once I was up because my knees seemed to have forgotten their function. With one strong arm around me, he led me out of the room.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, his voice trembling almost as badly as mine had. “No matter what, I’ll be here to see you through this.”
I managed a nod, but I couldn’t conceive of anything Chance could say or do to get me through the reality of him being my half brother after what we’d done last night and the intimate feelings I had for him.
By the time we made it to the stairs, Mr. Harper had opened the front door to let the paramedics inside. They were carrying a stretcher. That wasn’t a good sign. Chance held me off to the side to let them pass.
“He’s in the room at the very end of the hall on the right,” he said as the men heaved themselves and the stretcher up the stairs.
We followed them, though at a much slower pace thanks to me practically needing to be carried up by an already damaged Chance. By the time we reached the top step, the paramedics had already disappeared inside John’s room. Even at the end, John had refused to move his room to the first floor. The prideful man could stand to be handfed, sponge-bathed, and have his shoes tied by a nurse, but he couldn’t let go of his bedroom. An elevator had been installed at lord only knows the cost a few months earlier, and I realized how thankful the paramedics would be when they made the trip back to the ambulance. The thought that that might be John’s last trip down in the elevator dawned on me—his last time inside his house—and my knees gave out the rest of the way.
I staggered against Chance, and with a grunt and a tightening of his arm, he managed to keep me from falling to the floor. I knew how hard it had to be for him to basically hold me with one arm, so I tried to find my strength that seemed to have vanished. Where was it when I needed it most? Where had my ally that had gotten me through so many tough times gone? It had gotten me through a mother’s death, years of Conn playing games with my mind and heart, and through two abrupt life changes, first to Red Mountain then to Pullman.
Where was my tried-and-tested strength when I’d just been told the man I loved might be my mother’s secret love child with the man who’d been like a father to me—the same father who was about to die? Maybe I’d finally used it all up, or maybe it was just exhausted and needed to recharge, or maybe I’d never been as strong as I thought I’d been. Maybe I’d always been as weak as I felt right now. Maybe my strength had been an illusion the whole time.
“It’ll be okay,” Chance said in a low voice as he helped me the rest of the way down the hall. “Whatever happens, it’ll be okay. We’ll be okay, Scout.”
It didn’t sound like he believed his words, and I knew I didn’t. But right then, Chance wasn’t only being strong for himself in what had to be one of the most terrifying moments of his life—he was being strong for me too. It wasn’t me who got my feet moving again, and it wasn’t me who made it down the hall—it was all Chance. His strength got me through. Maybe that’s where part of my strength had always come from—him.
. . . And he might have been my brother.
Shoving that possibility aside, I kept moving forward, keeping his arm around my waist just in case my knees turned to gel again. Just when we were about to round into John’s room, we heard another familiar noise that was nearly as loud and imposing as ambulance sirens—Conn’s voice shaking in rage.
“Who is it, John?” his voice blared out into the hall. “Who the fuck is your bastard son?”
“Back up, Conn,” Chase ordered. “Better yet, get the hell out of here.”
“I want a name, you son of a bitch! I want a name before you leave this room, and even if I have to strangle it out of you, you’re not leaving without giving me a name!”
That was when Chance and I lunged inside to find one of the most chaotic scenes I could ever imagine. John was being bound to the stretcher, looking mostly, if not totally, unconscious, while Faye wept silent tears at the end of his bed. The paramedics were clearly uneasy with Conn standing by the bed, red-faced and eyes wild as he screamed at his unconscious father. Chase was pacing by the wall with the windows, his arms around his head as if he was totally helpless . . . again.
The paramedics were just getting ready to lift the stretcher, and John, from the bed when Conn pounced, straddling his father. Conn’s fingers curled into the collar of John’s pajamas, and he started to shake him.
“I want the name! Give me the fucking name! You owe me that one thing out of life!” Conn’s voice filled the room, seeming to reverberate off the walls. “I want the bastard’s name!”
“Conn! Enough!” Chance propped me up against a wall, probably still worried about me going down, then charged the bed.
Two shocked paramedics looked like they didn’t believe what they were seeing while Chase continued his neurotic pacing, lost in his own world. The nurse wasn’t crying so silently any longer. Now she was sobbing, pulling on Conn’s leg as if she actually had a chance of yanking him off John. When Conn’s shaking became more violent, to the point where John’s head was bouncing so ferociously I was almost waiting to hear the snap, Chance charged. He didn’t pull back at the last minute either. He dove into Conn and managed to topple him off John without bringing the stretcher to the floor with them.
“Get him out of here!” Chance ordered, pinning Conn to the floor as he lashed out with his arms and fists.
The paramedics went into action, moving with a new fire. Once they had the stretcher off the bed, Faye led them out of the room, pulling on the chain around her neck where she kept the elevator key. I shouldn’t have looked at John as they passed by, but I couldn’t help it. He looked like he was already dead. Nothing about the man tied to the stretcher passing by hinted that he was still in possession of a heart that beat. The colorless pallor of his skin, the chest that barely seemed to rise and fall, the scent and feel of death clouding the room . . . he was gone. Maybe not officially enough for a death certificate, but we’d never see his eyes open again or hear another word come from his mouth—not even the one name that would haunt all of us for the rest of our lives. Before he passed, I let my fingers brush his hand. It was cool, lifeless.
After they were gone, I thought the chaos in the room would subside, but it seemed to only dial up in severity. Conn had managed to wriggle an arm free and was throwing it into Chance as hard and often as he could. Instead of doing anything to deflect it, Chance stayed frozen and took it. He didn’t even look like he felt each hit. Chase was still by the windows, twisting his wedding band and shaking his head as if he hoped to wake up at any moment.
The three brothers I’d grown up with were falling apart. One had been f
alling apart for so long he’d unraveled years ago, but the other two, the ones who’d been my pillars of strength, were losing themselves moment by moment.
I loved those three brothers. Some might have been more deserving than others, but I loved them all regardless. I would have done anything to alleviate the pain I saw on each of their faces.
I would have done anything for them, but I also knew that on some level, I was the root of all of their anger and frustration. Had I never come into their lives all those years ago, their feelings wouldn’t be as complicated. Had they never known my name or seen my face, so many heartaches and breaks could have been avoided.
I was responsible for breaking three brothers. With that realization came the responsibility of putting them back together as best as I could. But as I watched them break into even more pieces in their father’s bedroom, I realized something else—three brothers had broken me too.
PEOPLE AVOIDED HOSPITALS for good reasons. They were so saturated with illness and death that breathing the very air inside felt contagious, as if those walls took days off one’s life expectancy. At least that was how I felt camped out in the waiting room just outside the I.C.U. I could feel the very life being siphoned out of me, and I was utterly powerless to stop it. My life felt tied to John’s, and as his last few grains of sand fell through the hourglass, mine matched his.
That might have been because I felt like when John died, his secret would die with him, and I’d have to spend the rest of my life with this giant question mark. I’d have to live without knowing if the man I loved was tied to me by blood. When John died, I’d have to leave again. For good this time. If he died without regaining consciousness, as the doctors had prepared us for, I’d have to go back to Pullman, pack up my apartment, and put the past twenty-five years of my life, along with the town, in the rearview.
The Armstrongs had messed me up good, and I’d returned the favor. Maybe it wouldn’t even matter if I knew the name because too much bad blood had been spilt between us all. Yes, there’d been good times, but as I cowered in the corner of a waiting room while a man died a few rooms down, it was hard to hold on to the good and remember it.
Once Conn had gotten in enough hits, Chase had paced the room ragged, and Chance had been literally beaten from his senses, we’d all piled into Chase’s SUV, and I sped us toward the hospital. We left Faye to look after Wolf and herself since she seemed as upset as the rest of us, which struck me as odd since she was an end-of-life nurse—every patient she worked with died sooner or later. But maybe Red Mountain had woven its way into her as much as it had all of us, tipping both the tragic and beautiful scales. Life was heightened on those thousands of acres, and no one who entered its boundaries was exempt. The highs of life were higher, but the lows followed the same pattern, and in my experience, the lows outweighed the highs at Red Mountain.
At least that was how I felt as I swiped a handful of tissues from the second box I’d torn through. Thank God they kept those well stocked in the I.C.U. They only let us in to see John one at a time. Chase had been the first, and he’d come out looking worse than he had before going in . . . and he’d looked like hell going in. He’d been reduced to the same man I’d seen when I arrived a week ago and found him camped out on the pool table.
Next in was Chance, and he’d been in there for a good ten minutes. I didn’t know where Conn had disappeared to, but he wasn’t being let into John’s room upon the recommendation of the paramedics who’d arrived on the scene.
Chance had barely said two words to me or anyone on the drive to the hospital. I knew he needed time to work out the same things I was trying to work out, but I’d become so dependent on Chance’s comfort and everything-will-be-okay attitude that his shut-off silence only confirmed that what the two of us, as well as the entire family, were facing was overwhelming. It was life-changing.
When I noticed a figure hovering inside the doorjamb of the waiting room, I assumed it was one brother, only to discover it was a different one. It was too late to hide my face from him, too late to pretend I wasn’t broken and gutted with the puffy face and red eyes to prove it.
Instead of lowering my head back into my arms, I sat up straighter and angled myself toward him so we were straight on. “Go ahead. Take a good look. A really good look. Enjoy it. Save it for later when you need to be cheered up.” My voice came out like venom, foreign to my ears. “I know how much you enjoy watching me cry. I know how you get off on me falling into some pit of despair. I know your happiest moments have been my worst, so get comfortable, grab a chair, watch me have a marathon. One of us might as well be happy.”
It was the longest I’d looked at Conn since I’d arrived. I’d been focused on not making eye contact with him, but now my eyes were locked on him as I let him take a good look at me. A good look at what he’d been trying to get out of me since I’d arrived. My tears meant Conn’s victory—they always had—but as I studied his face, I saw something else move into place. Something that suggested the opposite of victory.
“I don’t fucking love to watch you cry.” Conn’s voice was a stark contrast to what it had been inside John’s room. In fact, it was such a contrast to what I was used to from him I barely recognized it. “I know I’ve done everything to prove otherwise, but I don’t enjoy making you sad or watching you cry. I hate it.”
Making me sad seemed like such a gross understatement of what Conn had done to me that I wanted to laugh, but I was too shocked by his words, his voice, and his whole demeanor. This was the side of Conn I’d seen so rarely I’d forgotten it existed. This quiet, almost gentle side of him was so foreign that my first instinct was to wonder if he was leading me into some sort of trap where he’d get me to open up right before he gutted me just like I knew he couldn’t wait to do.
“Yeah, well, sorry if I’m not inclined to believe that considering you’ve done everything in your power to ensure I was either miserable or crying or wishing I’d never met you.” I wiped my nose and eyes, still keeping myself squared in front of him.
Conn shifted in the doorway. “That’s because I wanted you to feel those ways . . . and I still do.”
“Why?” I motioned at my face. “Why would you want me to feel this way?”
Conn couldn’t seem to keep looking at me. His eyes fell to the floor. “Because I knew it was the only way to keep you away from me.”
His words were quiet, almost a whisper. They entered me like a shout.
“What are you talking about?”
Conn exhaled, glancing over his shoulder. I knew he didn’t want to be here—I didn’t even know why he was here—but since he was, I wasn’t going to let him escape. Not when Conn was opening up for one of the first times in his whole life.
“Conn?” I said, sliding a bit out of my corner.
“I’m trying to tell you that I was so harsh with you, so cruel to you because I didn’t want to let you get close to me.”
“Yeah, that was obvious.” These tears might not have been directly related to him, but there’d been dozens of times when they had.
Conn shook his lowered head. “I wasn’t doing it to protect me. I was doing it to protect you.”
“You protected me from nothing, Conn. Nothing.”
“I protected you from everything,” he snapped, his eyes lifting to meet mine. “I protected you from me.”
“I didn’t need protection from you. I needed some semblance of care and concern from you. I needed you to cut me loose or reel me in, not play your sick game of back and forth.”
In this light, Conn’s eyes didn’t look so dark. They didn’t look so deep they might swallow me if I got any closer.
“You did need protection from me. I knew as soon as you showed up that you felt some sort of connection to me.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “A connection that was reciprocated . . . but I also knew if I let that reciprocation show, I’d somehow manage to fuck you up as bad as I already was. I couldn’t do that to you, so I kept you away the best
way I knew how.”
“By being a first-rate asshole?” I uncurled from the ball I’d been wound into since I’d fallen to the floor in the waiting room.
Conn gave me half a smile. “Putting it mildly, yes.”
I stretched my numb legs, my mind racing. “You felt that same . . . connection?”
His eyes met mine for a moment then fell away. He nodded.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“If I had, you’d’ve wound up in the exact position I just found you in.” He motioned at my corner of the waiting room. “I barely had a clue what love was, so how the hell could I be expected to show it to someone I cared about? I knew you’d be better off without me.”
This was all coming at me so fast, like a river breaking through a dam, and I wasn’t sure how to hold on to enough to make sense of what was being said. I couldn’t sift through the particulars when I could barely grab the highlights that were spilling over me. “Then why the games? Why pull me closer, lead me on, only to kick my feet out from under me when I least expected it? Why do that to someone you were so concerned with keeping away?”
Conn lifted his shoulder before dropping it into the doorjamb. “Haven’t you ever wanted something you told yourself you couldn’t have? Didn’t you ever fail at steering clear of it? Didn’t it make you want it even more? Didn’t it become the only thing you could think about?” His head fell back, his eyes closing. “It wasn’t like you were easy to avoid, Scout. I had to see you every day, at nearly every meal. I had to pass your room on the way to the shower. I had to pass you on your way to bed at night. I went to school with you. I shared a roof with you—I couldn’t escape you. So I slipped up. I fell off the wagon. I’d let myself believe for a minute that I could have what I wanted and fuck the rest, and that would send me into that spiral of pull and push.”