Page 7 of By Sin To Atone

When my gaze flitters up to his, I find his locked on me, watching me. Not missing a single beat.

Fingers on my throat, I slip away as quickly as I can, hearing Craven make some apology offering to comp their drinks. I push through the swinging doors of the locker room and run into a bathroom stall where I lock the door behind me, drop to my knees and puke.

2

Ezekiel

Craven finally walks away. This round of drinks is on him apparently. Fucking idiot.

The curtain the girl disappeared behind settles into place. From the look on her face, I guess she heard who I was.

“I take it that’s her,” Jericho says. I feel his eyes on me as he slips his mask to the top of his head. “You okay?”

I swallow whiskey, feeling more okay than I have since receiving the first email months ago. In fact, I feel anger, only anger. I push my mask off and turn to Jericho.

“I’m fine. Good, actually.”

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

My brother and I study one another. It’s been three years since I’ve seen him. We’ve talked a handful of times in those years. Business mostly. He looks good. Younger somehow. Happy.

“How is your wife?” I ask, instead of answering his question, because I know she’s one of the reasons he’s happy.

He smiles, warmth blooming in his eyes. Something new for my brother. “Isabelle’s good.”

“Angelique?”

“Getting bigger every day. She misses you, you know.”

“We FaceTime often.” Angelique is my niece. She’s Jericho and Kimberly’s daughter whom Jericho kept hidden from the world for years. Hidden from me, too. I understood his decision. I’d probably have done the same, considering.

“FaceTime is not the same and you know it.”

“Mom and the boys?” My brother adopted Matty Bishop, Isabelle’s nephew, the son of his enemy. He and Isabelle had their first child, a boy named Christian, a year and a half ago and their second son, Adan, a few months ago.

“They’re all good. You should see Angelique with them. Calls them the kids.” He chuckles. It’s a new look for my brother. It’s a good look. “And mom’s doing well. Healthy. Happy.” He pauses. “Isabelle’s pregnant again,” he adds, seeming almost hesitant. Almost as though he is not sure if he should share his news with me. “A happy surprise.”

“Contraception is a thing, brother.”

He shrugs a shoulder.

I smile. I’m happy for him, truly. I want to be, at least. Although there’s something between Jericho and I that has never healed. That I seem to hold on to. Seeing him again after these years just reminds me how powerful that thing is.

Jericho is my big brother and in the years Zoë, mom and I needed him most, he was gone. Traveling to whatever corner of the world he wanted to disappear to while the shitstorm that was our father ripped our home, and what was left of our family, apart. It may be unfair, but I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different if Jericho hadn’t left whenever he could. If he’d just been there with us. He knew what dad was like even if he didn’t know everything he'd done until it was far too late. But, when things got ugly, Jericho vanished without once looking back. I haven’t forgiven him, even if there’s a part of me that wants to. That knows he was dealing with things the only way he knew how.

Jericho’s face darkens. I assume it matches mine because the air between us has shifted palpably.

“Why is your return a secret, Zeke?” he asks.

I asked him to meet me here, only calling him from the airport once I landed in New Orleans. I hadn’t decided up until then if I’d tell him I was back in town. I’m not planning on staying long. Just until I take care of Blue Masterson or whatever the hell her name is. But in order to do that, I need him.

I glance around, making sure we can’t be overheard. We’re sitting in the farthest corner of the club and the others are preoccupied. I reach into my jacket pocket and retrieve my phone. Scrolling down my email, I open the first message I received from Blue Masterson and turn it, so the screen faces him.

Jericho reads it and I watch his face harden. He reaches for the phone, takes it, and opens the attachment which is a newspaper article reporting the deadly crash.

Our father, along with one of his many mistresses, was killed in a car accident in Austria several years ago. For a long time, only I knew it wasn’t an accident. Jericho pieced the puzzle together and confronted me more recently. It was only after that he learned why I did it.

My chest tightens at the thought of why I did what I did. I wonder if this pain is so acute even now, so many years after Zoë’s death, because we were so close once. So close we shared our mother’s womb. We were twins. That bond between us, that connection, it faded as we grew older, but I still remember the feeling of having a second half. A part that was not me but so much a part of me that I still feel the loss of her. I remember the comfort that bond brought me, even when I was too young to put words to it. The pain of losing her, and the way I lost her, it’s a heavy, solid thing that is unchanging. Unending.

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