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  I could still hear our parents fighting downstairs. But I couldn’t make out individual words, which was a blessing.

  I thought about the letter. My last letter. The humiliatingly mushy one. How long ago had I sent it? More than three weeks ago. Maybe a month. I had no idea if he’d gotten it. It was impossible to know with APO mail. Sometimes it was two weeks. Sometimes two months. One letter my mother sent him never got there, as far as we could tell.

  I was hoping he hadn’t seen it.

  Sitting there with him, looking right into his face, I couldn’t imagine saying the things I’d said in that letter. Sad, but true. It just felt too personal. It felt like the truthfulness of the words would rip me open, exposing a part of me that might not survive out in the air. It was all just too important.

  And yet some part of me had to know.

  “I sent you a letter,” I said. “After I answered the last letter you sent me. It was just an extra one. It was short. But probably you’ll never get it now. Which I think is okay because—”

  “I got it,” he said.

  Then we just sat there in silence for a minute. Really, a full minute or more. And while we were sitting, I felt my face get redder and redder and redder.

  “Why do you think it all came down the way it did?” he added.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know how it all came down.”

  “Oh.”

  More silence.

  “What were you trying to tell me?” I asked him, anxious to change the subject. “In that last letter? Something you saw, but it got all blacked out.”

  “No.” His voice sounded firm for the first time. Almost normally firm for Roy. Not quite, but at least in the right ballpark. “No, you don’t need to hear that. The minute I sent that letter I was sorry. The minute it was out of my hands I would’ve done anything to take it back. When I found out you couldn’t read it, I was so relieved. I never should’ve put that on you. Once a thing like that gets into your head you’ll never get it out again. Never.”

  He dropped into silence. Then, much to my alarm, he began to cry. Really sob openly. Roy was five years older than me, and I had never seen him cry. At least, not that I could recall.

  “I just wanted to get home to you,” he said. “When I got that letter. But I didn’t want to let the guys down. It still kills me that I let the guys down.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Oh hell,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m on so many painkillers. I mean, they’ve got me so doped up, buddy. Morphine up the wazoo. Not literally. I just mean I’m on a lot of it.”

  He fell silent. I waited while his sobs wound down. A long, slow, painful wait.

  I felt a little better knowing he was on heavy meds. Because otherwise his behavior was scaring me. But knowing he was on a lot of morphine really helped explain things. He had been given a huge dose of truth serum. He would come around when it wore off. Go back to seeming like himself.

  “I should probably get some sleep,” he said.

  “Sure. I’ll just leave you be. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”

  I let myself out of his room.

  My father had left to go back to work. Or, anyway, he’d left. I could hear the tires of his car crunching on the gravel of the driveway. The part about his going back to work was just a guess.

  I was hungry, but I didn’t go into the kitchen. Because my mom was still in there, and I was afraid she would tell me more. I was pretty sure, without ever talking to myself about it, that I wasn’t ready to know more.

  I managed to wait about two hours before running back to Mrs. Dinsmore’s cabin—mostly to avoid cutting into Connor’s time with her. I did not manage to stay away completely.

  The dogs ran to greet me, and I was so happy to see them that I started to cry. Well, I suppose it wasn’t just the dogs. I had a lot going on to put those tears in me. The dogs were more like a fuse into all that gunpowder. But it did strike me that they were the only . . . well, I started to say “people,” but they weren’t people. They were the only beings in my life who loved me and had no trouble saying so.

  Now, if there was one thing I hated as a kid, it was anybody seeing me cry. Dogs not included. That’s another thing that’s great about dogs.

  I thought I’d just put the tears away again. I wrestled with them as I stepped up onto the lady’s porch. I figured I would win, because I usually did. But that day they flipped me and pinned me. Got me in a headlock I knew I could not escape. This time I’d get my freedom back when the tears told me I could have it back and not a moment sooner.

  I sat on the edge of the porch with the dogs and cried into Rembrandt’s short silver coat. Every time I lifted my head Vermeer tried to lick the tears off my face.

  I heard a voice from behind, and it startled me.

  “This can’t be good. You don’t ever come a second time unless you’ve got something bad going on.”

  I didn’t answer.

  She came and sat on the edge of the porch with me. I kept my face pressed into the boy dog’s coat, so she wouldn’t see I was crying. But then a little hiccupy sob broke through the gates.

  “Oh dear,” she said in that signature gravelly voice. “You’d best tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I raised my head. The jig was up anyway.

  She was wearing jeans with a big, oversized, untucked blue work shirt over them. Sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her hair was down and freshly combed. It struck me that she had been a pretty woman, once upon a time. Before she’d decided she didn’t want to be anymore. Before she’d decided she didn’t want to be anything to anybody.

  “Spill it,” she said.

  “It’s too much, though.”

  “What’s too much?”

  “For you, I mean. First me and then Connor. Both needing you and leaning on your time like we do. It’s too much. Isn’t it?”

  I was looking off into the woods as I asked it. But I heard her sigh.

  “Well, it’s a lot,” she said. “But I don’t know the magic boundary on what’s too much.”

  We sat for a minute, saying nothing. Vermeer was still licking my face.

  “Now you know why I have dogs,” she said.

  “Yeah. They help. Wish I had one.” Another awkward silence. “I never asked you what kind of dogs they were.”

  “Weimaraner and Great Dane.”

  “Oh. That explains a lot. That’s how they got so big.” I paused. Cannonballed into the deep end of the thing. “My brother’s home from the war.”

  She gave me space to say more, but I didn’t use it.

  “And, obviously,” she said, “there’s a reason why that’s not such a happy thing like it’s supposed to be. How bad did he get hurt?”

  “Lost half his foot. Well. A third of it, anyway.”

  “Land mine?”

  “No. He says it was a gunshot.”

  “Yeah. I guess that makes more sense. Land mine wouldn’t leave you any foot at all. So, listen. It’s bad, I know. I’m not saying it’s not bad. But it may turn out to be a small price to pay. I mean, you get your brother back, and if he’d stayed over there, maybe not one bit of him would’ve made it home.”

  I didn’t answer. I was staring off into the woods, thinking I wouldn’t bother her with the rest of my troubles. How much of other people’s problems can one poor woman take?

  “There’s more,” she said. “Am I right? It’s written all over your face.”

  “I just don’t understand why my folks are upset with him. They’re acting like it’s his fault or something.”

  “Hmm.”

  We sat for the longest time. Minutes. I got the sense that she had all kinds of things to say but hadn’t decided whether or not to say them.

  “My ex had guns,” she said after a time. “I’m not a fan of them myself. But he had a deer rifle, and then a pistol for home protection. That’s what he called it, anyway, but it always seemed to me that bringin
g a gun into a house is more likely to do the opposite of protecting it. Case in point, he was cleaning it. Thought he’d taken all the shells out, but he’d left one in the chamber. Shot himself in the foot. Still walks with a bad limp to this day. Not that I’ve seen him any too recently.”

  I waited. I was wondering if she was going to tell me what this had to do with my situation. It did seem like a weird coincidence that we both knew someone who had taken a gunshot to the foot. Maybe that was her only point.

  “Here’s the reason I’m telling you all this.” She paused. And I knew that something big was coming. And I knew I didn’t want it. “Kind of hard to shoot a person in the foot from some distance. More likely you’ll get them somewhere between the legs and the head. For that foot injury, seems like the gun would have to be right above the foot, pointing down. Now, I can’t say that for an absolute fact. I’ve never been in combat, and I suppose weird things happen. I’m just talking likelihoods here. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I wasn’t feeling much. At least, not in the way of reactions or emotions. The inside of my head seemed to be stuffed with cotton. The inside of my guts felt like concrete. My mouth was painfully dry.

  “But you don’t want to go there just yet.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Fine. I won’t bring it up again.”

  We sat in silence for a time. Then I guess she got tired of that, because she spoke up.

  “Well, if you got nothing else you wanted to say . . .”

  “I need to ask you about something.”

  “Okay . . .” But she sounded skeptical.

  “I’ve been working really hard not to ask anything about Connor. Because I figure what he talks about with you is none of my business. But I just wanted to know if he told you this, because it’s one of those life-or-death things. Did he tell you his father’s gun went missing? And his mother thinks he took it?”

  “Yeah. He told me he didn’t take it.”

  “Oh. Okay. Good.”

  “You think he took it?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said. “About anything.”

  And, with those words, it came over me how tired I was. Bone tired. It was like a wave that broke over my head and then took me.

  Something came out of me that I wasn’t expecting.

  “You still take drugs?” I asked her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I heard you drank a lot and took a lot of drugs. Showed up places around town pretty much out of your mind, so then maybe a lot of people who wanted to be on your side, maybe after that they couldn’t be. But I never saw you out of your mind, so I was thinking maybe that’s a lie. I guess I was hoping it was a lie.”

  “You saw me in a coma from an overdose of pain meds.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. Well don’t I feel stupid now?”

  She didn’t say more for a long time. I could feel her gathering up for something. Maybe to talk to me about it. Maybe to go back inside the cabin. Maybe she hadn’t even decided yet herself.

  “After the incident,” she said, “I drank and used. And, yeah. It got pretty bad.” Her voice sounded unusually quiet. As though she’d lost all her energy. “Then I got clean and sober. Went to meetings and everything. For years—over ten years. Then I started needing some pain meds for an old back injury. From the accident. And then I got carried away on those. Which leads me to the time you met me.”

  “You could go back to the meetings.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I’m still kind of on the fence about that. About whether there’s any point. Now if you’ll excuse me, that’s more than I usually tell anybody, even those I’ve known forever. And I think it’s more than enough for one day.”

  She got up stiffly. As though her back was hurting her. Or at least as though something was. She walked back into her cabin and closed and locked the door behind her.

  I stayed and hugged the dogs for a while longer. But sooner or later I had to go home, and I knew it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Picking Up Stuff

  Oddly enough, the first outside visitor to come around and see my brother was Connor. And I hadn’t even told him Roy was home.

  He showed up sometime after breakfast. I wasn’t out running because, for the first time since I’d picked up the habit, I didn’t feel like I wanted to. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I heard the knock at the door, but I waited for my mother to get it. Normally she would get it. This time she never did.

  I trotted downstairs and threw the door wide, and there he was. It was surprising to see him at my house, to put it mildly. I’m not sure if that showed on my face. Probably it did.

  I almost said, “What are you doing here?” but I caught it just in time. Realized how rude it would sound.

  Instead I said, “Sorry about yesterday. You know. How I said I’d come by and all.”

  “Well, I wondered,” he said. “But then I found out about Roy.”

  So that’s a small town for you.

  “You want to come in?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like to see him.”

  That was the first I realized he’d come here for Roy and not me. Which was fine. It just surprised me. Looking back, I’m not sure why. For all the time he’d spent at my house over so many years, of course he knew my brother. Cared about my brother. But somehow I’d gotten so wrapped up in what Roy meant to me that I wasn’t including anybody else in the picture.

  I waited until we were walking up the stairs to say, “I’m not sure if he’s awake.” Purposely waited. I didn’t say it at the door, because I didn’t want him to go away and come back later. If we had to wait, I wanted him to wait with me. I wanted him to talk to me. I felt like we hadn’t talked in ages.

  I wanted to know if he was okay.

  Bumping into him relatively often outside his own bedroom seemed to be a good sign, but I wanted to hear it straight from him.

  I knocked on Roy’s door.

  “Oh thank goodness,” I heard Roy say from inside.

  I didn’t know what that meant, except it meant he was awake.

  I opened the door.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. He sounded disappointed.

  “Yeah, me,” I said, talking over my hurt. “Can Connor come in and say hi?”

  We stepped inside without really waiting for an answer.

  I pulled up a chair, and Connor sat on the end of Roy’s bed. Carefully.

  “I thought you were Mom with my pain meds.”

  “No,” I said. “Just us.”

  “Where is Mom?”

  “No idea. She might not be home. She usually gets the door when she’s home.”

  “Do me a favor, buddy.”

  My eyes had been gradually adjusting to the dim light, and I noticed that he was sweaty. As though he had a fever. Which worried me.

  “What?”

  “Mom has my pain meds in the downstairs bathroom. Kind of dumb if you ask me. Run down and get them, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

  I left Connor and Roy alone to talk and ran down the stairs. I called for my mom three times, but never got an answer. So I walked into the downstairs bathroom and grabbed the only prescription pill bottle with Roy’s name on it from the medicine cabinet.

  I have to admit it: I had a little tickle of doubt, or dread. Or both. Because my mom may have been many things, but she was never dumb a day in her life.

  But I couldn’t look into Roy’s face and refuse him something.

  I carried it up the stairs and stepped back into his room.

  Connor and Roy had been talking, but quietly, so I couldn’t hear what about. Roy stopped when he saw me and reached his hand out for the pills.

  “I forgot water,” I said.

  “I don’t need water.”

  “How can you take a pill without water?”

  “I do it all the time,” he said. �
�Learned it over there.”

  I watched him shake two of the tablets from the bottle into his palm. I almost said something. Because I had read the label coming up the stairs, and it very clearly said to “take one every four hours as needed.” But I didn’t say anything. Because it was Roy. Who was I to tell Roy what to do?

  He popped them into his mouth and chewed them.

  “You chew those up?” I asked.

  “They hit you faster that way.”

  “Don’t they taste awful?”

  “Pretty damn bad, yeah.”

  I walked into his bathroom to get him a cup of water to wash away the taste. Roy had his own bathroom off his bedroom. I had to use one down the hall. The perks of being older, I suppose.

  “Thanks,” he said when I handed it to him.

  And I noticed again how much he was sweating.

  “You want me to open a window or something?”

  “No!” he said, all sharp and sudden. “I’m freezing.”

  That was when I started worrying he might be sick. I sat on the edge of his bed, as close to him as I could, and watched him. He did seem to be shivering some. I wanted to reach out and put a hand to his forehead the way our mom would do if she thought we had a fever, but I could never bring myself to do it.

  So I just stared at him, and listened to him talking to Connor about more or less nothing. Connor’s school, and his family. I couldn’t help noticing that Connor was painting a rosy picture of his life while Roy was gone. Then again, what did it really matter? It was just small talk and we all three knew it.

  After a time I saw Roy’s shivering start to ease, so I figured the sweating and shaking was more about pain and maybe not an actual illness. I felt my shoulders loosen up, and I was shocked by how tightly I’d been holding every muscle in my body. I made a conscious effort to let everything soften up.

  A few minutes later, as Roy asked questions of Connor, he began to slur his words. And yet he reached for the pill bottle again. I’d left it on his bedside table, not realizing that might have been a mistake. Once he was under the effect of the drug, he might not understand that he was taking too much. Maybe that had been the method behind my mom’s madness in keeping them downstairs.