Page 73 of Born in the Spring

I clatter my ring of keys onto the bar so he knows he has company and his head tips up, but he doesn’t turn around.

I’m straightening my shirt as I approach him, as if it’s crooked, as if I need to make an impression, and I cringe atmyself.

I stop at his side, but leave several inches of space, as there are stillmilesbetween us. He doesn’t acknowledge me, and I watch him through my side vision. I’ll give him the respect of a head-on stare when he gives that to me.

My hands are stuffed into the pockets of my jeans, but the longer I’m in his presence, the more my vulnerability around him prickles in my gut, and I fold my arms over my chest.

“Does anyone else know you’re here?” I ask to be certain I’m getting to him first. “Does Mom know you’re here?”

“She will,” he says back, and I try not to hear it as a warning as I sigh my relief that she hasn’t seen him yet. He can take out whatever he needs to take out onme. I can be his punching bag. And get in a few hits too.

“What’d you do with my initial?” he asks next, and I eye the rest of our initials on the tree while assessing the curiosity in his voice. There’s nothing general about the question, him having my same idea by putting the fault on me.

“It’s gone,” I answer plainly and pointedly. “And so were you. By choice,” I emphasize, loud like my feelings, my hatred for his walking out leaking through. “So why are you here? Asking Mom for a divorce wasn’t enough of a Merry fucking Christmas?”

His head shifts toward me, so mine shifts toward him, and when our stares lock, I tell myself to hold him to this, tome, to the son he let down long before he skipped town. To the son he still had andchoseto lose.

He looks like he’s aged several years instead of nearly one, and the only reaction I have to the slight bags under his eyes and the frown lines around his mouth—the only outward proof of his grief—is a tight swallow, that one motion washing thatemotion down.

“You’re gonna tell me you haven’t thought me a coward for not being here?”

“You’ve always been a coward when it comes to me. Me,” I emphasize again. “But why are you doing this to Mom?”

He releases a grumbling sigh as he leans against the back of the couch. “I’m here to talk to yourmotherabout that,” he says with his own emphasis, his way of using my words against me to redirect the conversation. “This is between me and her.” More proof of that cowardice.

What about what’s between me and you?

If I was on my father’s mind at all, I was in the scraps, and that’s not enough for me to hope, because that’s what I’ve always been.

And with him around, and in his eyes, I’m always going to be a kid. Too young or too dumb to understand that my parents didn’t always have the best marriage, but what made their marriagegoodwas their devotion to each other. Their devotion to loving each other and taking their vows seriously and working through every hardship.

My father abandoned all of that. The only vow he took seriously, in the most twisted way possible, and during the hardest of hardships, was til death.

“You don’t even want to try?” It’s a plea for Mom, fortheirrelationship. Not for ours.Not for ours.

“Your mom and I aren’t the perfect people you have in your head,” he responds, not even taking a second to think about it, and I scoff.

“I know you’re not perfect, Dad. Because I’m not. Right? Not like Shepherd was.” When he looks down, with just his eyes, his head still tipped high, my voice cracks with my nextpoint. “But then he wasn’t, either. That’s what his death is to you. A moment ofimperfection, and now he’s gone, and your pride’s been fucked, and you should’ve just stayed gone too,” my desperation to not be in this position anymore adds as another loud feeling.

“Enough,” he says low with a blink up, his appearance of control as I lose mine making me take some back, and I grip my elbows with silent, deep breaths before forcing my hands down into my pockets.

“It’s not enough.” My shrug feels helpless, because nothing is going to change. Nothing I say to him will matter any more than it used to, but I’m still stepping closer, searching for even a piece of the dad my brother had. “None of this is enough. And wealllost him. And I. . .” The rest of that sentence flinches away when he looks down again, and my next one is my opposite desperation for him toseeme.

“What if it had been me?” My voice cracks again, living in my own selfish moment. I’d never want him to leave. I’d want him to be here for our family, but that kid he’ll always see me as needs to hear him say he would’ve grieved the same, becausebothof his sons mean that much to him.

When I knownoneof us mean what we should.

And when he gives me his usual nothing, I move away from him so he doesn’t hear the effort it takes to wash that pain down, my gaze finding and blurring the lights on the tree.

I sniff in what I can as I start back toward the front. “I’m gonna warn Mom,” I tell him, in an edged tone he doesn’t like, because he comes back with the same one.

“You knew they were supposed to get married.”

That stops me, a twinge in my heart as he puts my brother andmygirl together in my mind.

“Shepherd and Elara.” It’s a statement, assuming I did know, and I don’t give him any satisfaction of being right as I’m forced back to that specific night.

Shepherd had been back for two days when I watched him walk up the steps to my porch and join me at the railing. He had a beer in each hand, and when he passed one to me, I knew by the drop in my gut that it was for a deeper reason than beers between brothers.

---