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  “Yes, ma’am. I sure do.”

  “You’ve just got to stay out of the outcomes, Lucas. It’s not that you walked Connor out here to meet me that’s weighing you down. It’s the fact that you’re holding yourself responsible for whether it works out or not. You can take your brother to some meetings without turning yourself inside out. Trouble is, you take on the responsibility of being the one who sees to it that he recovers. Want to know why that stuff takes so much out of you? Easy. It’s all stuff that’s out of your control. You’re trying to change things that’re not within your control to change. And whenever you try to do something that’s impossible to do, you’re going to find yourself a little on the tired side. Make sense?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It does.”

  It did. Actually. Though I’m not sure that was the good news.

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “It’s just that . . . what you just said . . . it’s that kind of advice that lets you know what to do but not how to do it. I mean, how do you not take that stuff on?”

  “Right. I’ll grant you that. It’s easier said than done. But practice at it. You’ll get better at anything you practice.”

  We sat quietly for another minute.

  Then she said, “Here,” and held out the meeting schedule to me.

  “You should keep it,” I said. “You told me you might think about going back.”

  “I know where those three meetings are if I want them.”

  I sighed. Took it from her. Folded it up and stuck it in my shirt pocket.

  “How’s it going with Connor?” I asked.

  “That’s not what you were going to practice, now is it?”

  “I just thought maybe if I knew more, I could worry less.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” she said. Then, “I can’t really tell you how it’s going, because I don’t really know. He’s talking to me. Talking is better than not talking. But beyond that it’s hard to say.”

  “I wish I knew why he couldn’t talk to me.”

  “Because you take it on.”

  “What do you mean, take it on? I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means you care too much about him to stand back from the situation. If he tells you he can’t take much more, you freak out and feel like you need to do something. Me, I just hear him out. I just let him get it off his chest.”

  “Nothing wrong with caring,” I said. I sounded a little on the defensive side. Probably because I was.

  “Never said it was wrong. You asked the question and I answered it.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  We sat another minute. Vermeer sighed deeply, finally accepting that the run was unavoidably delayed. She curled up in the dirt at my feet, and Rembrandt took her cue and followed suit.

  “Look. Here’s what I don’t get,” I said. “He’s so close to his mom. And she depends on him so much. Especially now that his father is gone. I just can’t understand how he could even consider such a thing. You know. Knowing what it would do to her and all.”

  “But can you understand that he feels a lot of rage toward his mom? Because she depends on him too much? And because he has to consider her feelings first in everything he does?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but no answer had formed yet in my brain. And, before one could, I looked up to see Connor walking up the path toward the cabin. So I knew this conversation was over.

  It was time for me to practice relaxing about the things I couldn’t control.

  When I’d finished my run and jogged home, I found more opportunities to practice.

  My mom was gone. Where to, I had no idea. She was starting to be away more and more. She said nothing about it, and I couldn’t imagine even wanting to know the story behind it. I figured if I knew, I wouldn’t like what I found out. Call it a hunch.

  Roy had managed to come downstairs on his own and was limping around on his crutches, obviously looking for something. And what he was looking for was obvious.

  I stepped into the hall just in time to see him leave the downstairs bathroom and make his way into our parents’ bedroom. I followed him. Stood in the doorway and watched him pull open the top drawer of my mom’s dresser and rummage around in there.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  It startled him so much he almost lost his balance and fell off his crutches.

  I’d meant to say it casually. Not so much as an accusation. More like “Hey. What’s up?” I don’t think I succeeded.

  “Oh. Hi. Buddy. You scared me. Listen. Mom took off and forgot to give me my pain meds.”

  I doubted that. She had a written schedule. She checked off the doses with a pencil. I didn’t say so.

  “So . . . ,” he continued, “. . . you know where she’s keeping them now?”

  “No.”

  “Help me find them. Okay, buddy?”

  “No.”

  My brother seemed to freeze in time. Really, the whole world seemed to. The utter silence was shocking. I remember thinking the birds had stopped chirping outside the window because of what I’d said to Roy. Though, looking back, it’s possible they’d just flown away by then. For their own reasons.

  I heard him clear his throat carefully.

  “Thought you cared enough about me to do me a favor, buddy.”

  “I can’t do that one, though.” I wanted to say I couldn’t do it because I cared about him, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk like one of those corny made-for-TV movies where people say exactly what they’re feeling, as though there was nothing difficult about that at all. As though people did that correctly every day. “As a matter of fact,” I said instead, “I was going to ask a favor of you.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to come someplace with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I want you to not ask where.”

  “When? Now?”

  “No. Later on this afternoon.”

  “Weird that you won’t even tell me what it is.”

  “I know. But I’m just going to ask you to trust me. You trust me, don’t you? And if you do this for me, I’ll do something for you. I’ll ask Mom to show me where she keeps her schedule of your meds so I can look over her shoulder and catch it if she ever forgets and skips a dose.”

  I waited for a minute. Watched as he rolled that around in his head. It was a useful offer only if she really was forgetting. It was no use to him if he only wanted to take more than what had been prescribed.

  Meanwhile he seemed as though he never planned to answer.

  “So will you go with me?”

  “On one condition. That Mom or Dad won’t drive us.”

  “How are we supposed to get there if nobody drives us?”

  “Well how do you get places? You never ask them to drive you.”

  “Walk. Or take the bus. But I don’t have a hurt foot.”

  “I’m good on my crutches now. They’re mad as hell, and I’m not getting stuck in a car with either one of them lecturing me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Suit yourself. We’ll take the bus.”

  I bolted down as much dinner as I could stomach, then took a plate up to Roy and told him to hurry. Told him we had to leave in twenty minutes.

  When I got downstairs, my mom was doing up the dinner dishes.

  “Roy and I are going out,” I said.

  I had to run it by her. No way I could get him out of the house without her noticing. But it was dicey, and I knew it. She was a brick wall between me and our getting where we needed to go, and I knew I might not get through her. I could feel a little vein pulsing with tension near my ear.

  “What?” She said it not like she hadn’t heard me. More like she’d heard it but she couldn’t believe it. “No,” she added. “No, no, no. I don’t like this one bit. I don’t trust either one of you.”

  That was a sad truth, but I believed her. In fact, I’d already known.

  “But—”

  “I need that boy h
ere where I can keep an eye on him.”

  I moved closer to the sink. I needed to confide in her quietly. And I think she knew it. I think she could see honest information coming. She seemed to withdraw into herself. To move out of the way of the honesty. She never moved her feet, though. It was all an inside job.

  “I’m taking him to an NA meeting,” I whispered.

  “What is that?” she asked. As if it irritated her not to know. “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Like AA, except for drugs.”

  “How do you even know about a place like that?”

  “Darren Weller told me. I promised him I would do this for Roy. So please, please don’t stop me from doing this. Okay? It might help. And I promised.”

  “Oh.”

  I watched her face change. Watched her feelings about the situation evolve—possibly against her will. It always seemed to bother her to let her anger drop away. It was something she seemed to want to hold tightly.

  “Well I guess I underestimated you,” she said. “I’ll drive you boys.”

  “No. We have to go on our own. He agreed to go with me on the condition that it would be just the two of us. And he doesn’t know where we’re going, so don’t spill the beans, okay?”

  A long pause.

  Then all she said was, “You need money for the bus?”

  “It would be nice, yeah.”

  I’d been hoping Roy had some. If not, we were on foot.

  I followed her to her purse, where she dug out a handful of change. She dropped it into my palm, staring into my face the whole time. It made me uncomfortable. It made me need to look away.

  I felt her hand on my cheek.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said. “Take care of your brother.”

  Then she hurried off. Before I could even answer her. Before she’d be forced to confront the fact that she’d said a kind and loving thing.

  We got off the bus on Main Street, near the end of the business district. It turned residential farther down.

  It was almost six, and I wanted to walk faster. I didn’t want to be late for the meeting. But I had to slow my steps for Roy.

  The sun was on a long slant behind us, but it was still hot. Weirdly hot. I could feel it baking the back of my neck. I could feel sweat trickling down into my collar.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  I figured this time he meant it more logistically. Like “Which way should I walk?” At least I hoped so.

  “The bank,” I said.

  “Isn’t the bank closed after five?”

  “The community room.”

  The community room was a separate room in the back with a separate entrance. It made no difference if the bank was open or not.

  “Oh,” Roy said.

  I could feel him wanting to ask more. But, to his credit, he didn’t.

  We walked around the corner of the bank. I was still shortening and slowing my strides for Roy, who seemed to be tired already on his crutches. We walked down the side street and into the parking lot.

  The door of the community room was standing wide open, and the light that spilled out of it felt welcoming. I could smell cigarette smoke and coffee.

  A big handful of guys and one lady were standing around in the parking lot smoking and talking. Two massive chopper-style motorcycles sat parked among a smattering of cars. The guys nodded to us as we walked slowly by.

  Then, just at the doorway, Roy stopped cold.

  I had already walked into the room, where tables had been arranged in a big square. It took me a second to realize that Roy wasn’t with me anymore.

  I backtracked, and found him staring at a handwritten paper sign taped to the wall next to the open door.

  It said: NA MEETING IN PROGRESS—PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB.

  “No,” Roy said when he saw I was there. Not really in a defiant way. More like he was churning things around in his head, and this was the only thing he could push out.

  “But you already promised.”

  I watched him chew that over behind his eyes, still staring at the sign. As if it took many minutes to read every word.

  “But I didn’t know what I was promising.”

  “But you promised to do whatever it was without knowing what it was.”

  A pause. I felt like my whole life was resting on that pause. Bowing everything under the weight. Ready to snap something at any minute.

  “Tell you what,” Roy said. “I’ll go to the meeting. But only if I can do it by myself. You have to go home.”

  “But I promised Darren Weller I’d stay with you.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Darren Weller. Got it. That explains a lot. Look. Seriously. Buddy. This is not the kind of thing a guy does in front of his little brother. Can you understand that? I’ll give the meeting a try this one time, but first you have to go home.”

  I sighed. I saw no way out.

  I dug in my pocket and counted out change for the bus trip home. He took it from me.

  “You have enough for the bus?” he asked me.

  “I do, but I can just walk. Or run it. It’s not even two miles.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  The people who’d been milling and smoking brushed past us into the room. Through the open doorway I could see the clock on the wall at the end of the long tables. It was straight up six o’clock.

  “You’d better go in,” I said. “I think it’s starting.”

  He limped in on his crutches, and I closed the door behind him.

  I almost went home.

  I walked out to the street. It was absolutely abandoned out there. Everybody in town was home for dinner. It felt weird, like standing in a ghost town.

  For a minute or two I just stood there and looked around. Then I decided I would wait for him. I didn’t know how long the meeting was. Maybe an hour. Maybe even an hour and a half. But I decided I owed it to my brother to be there when he got out.

  I would sit on the curb outside the community room door, leaving him alone to do his meeting thing in privacy. But when the meeting let out, I would walk him to the bus stop and we would ride home together. And if he wanted to, he could tell me how it had gone.

  Yeah. That felt right.

  I walked back around the building. Sat on the curb where the sidewalk leading to the meeting room door met the tarmac of the parking lot. My back to the door, I watched the sun through the trees, careful not to stare long enough to burn out my eyes and go blind. But I wanted to see if I could actually watch it go down. Or if time moved too slowly for that.

  A couple of minutes later, long before I got the answer about the sun, I heard the door swing open behind me. I didn’t even have time to turn around and see who was coming out. Before I could, a knee crashed into my back, and the person attached to the knee went flying over me.

  “Ow!” I shouted out loud.

  I watched my brother Roy fall onto his crutches on the tarmac. It was weird how the moment seemed to play out almost in slow motion.

  “Ow!” he shouted.

  So we had that in common, anyway.

  I lurched up and forward to get to him. I tried to help him up. But for the moment he seemed to accept being down.

  “I didn’t see you there,” he said. “The sun was in my eyes.”

  “You okay?”

  “I think I bruised my ribs falling on this damn crutch.”

  “You sure you didn’t break any?”

  “Not positive,” he said. “No.”

  “Did you hurt your foot?”

  “Oddly, no.”

  “Where were you going?”

  He never answered the question. Then again, the longer the silence held, the more the question answered itself.

  “Come on,” I said. “You have to get up.”

  He sighed deeply. Then he let me help him to his feet. I handed him back his crutches.

  I thought he might challenge me and walk off toward the bus stop. He didn’t. I think he might have been too
humiliated for that.

  He walked back to the door, and I held it open for him. And then I followed him in. And sat with him.

  He never offered a word of objection.

  It was somewhere near the end of the sharing, when I’m pretty sure everybody else had spoken. The leader of the meeting—a big guy with a leather vest and tattoos all up and down both arms—asked my brother Roy if he wanted to say anything.

  He didn’t call him by name.

  He just said, “Maybe our newcomer would like to share?”

  Roy pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head.

  Everybody stood up and closed the meeting by holding hands around in a circle and reciting the serenity prayer out loud. I had been sitting next to Roy, so I was holding his hand on the left side, which felt weird. Actually weirder than holding the hand of a total stranger on my right.

  I didn’t know the prayer, so I just moved my lips a little and listened. Soon I would know it backward, forward, and upside down.

  Chapter Fifteen

  What Might Be Coming Next

  Connor showed up at my house early the next morning. Very early. Before my run. Before my parents were awake.

  I let him in through the kitchen door and we tiptoed upstairs. I had a little bit of churning going on in my stomach, because it seemed like he had come to tell me something, and I worried it might be something bad.

  I closed us into my room, and we sat on the bed, both of us staring down at the spread. We were just fascinated by that spread.

  “I came by yesterday afternoon,” he said. “But your mom said you were out.”

  “Yeah. I had to take Roy somewhere.”

  “Really? That seems weird.”

  “Why does it seem weird?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Just seems like parents take a guy his age someplace. Not his little brother.”

  “Well, this was a little-brother thing.”

  I was hoping he would ask no more about it, and I got my wish.

  We sat a minute in silence. Connor was wearing jeans with a hole worn in the knee, and he was rolling the loose frayed threads between his fingers. Funny how desperate a person can get for something to focus on. For something to do with his hands.