Page 90 of Brother's Keeper

A child-sized coffin lay at the foot of the hole Nash and I had dug. I stood atop it, covered in mud and leaning heavily on the shovel. I let the tool drop and went down beside it, stretching out my quaking legs and wiping the lid of the glossed wooden box with tingling hands.

Part of Donovan died then, twelve years ago. His innocence was stolen long before I was willing to admit it. I tried to protect him, but I failed.

I was too tired to do more than sit amidst the crumbles of damp earth. Last I checked, Nash was propped against a tree overhead, similarly spent. I would need his help when I was ready to crawl out of this hole, but I wasn’t sure when that time would come.

Maximus was gone. Not sent away as I’d intended with well wishes and bad memories of his weeks in captivity. Nash insisted on a memory potion for the lucky devil, then drove him into town while I wandered around the Bitters’ End like a wraith, steering clear of the room where Ripley and Maggie were holed up and giving Pippa a wide berth.

When Nash returned an hour later, he found me hiding out behind the bar, looking at the bottom of a whiskey bottle and a pile of cigarette butts.

I wasn’t up to burying Donovan, but I was drunk enough to believe I was, and that it couldn’t wait anothermoment.

Now it was mid-afternoon, and I was horrifically sober. My head lolled back against the side wall studded with roots and buried rocks, and I took in a narrow view of the sky. Pink and orange hues mingled with standard blue like a whimsical watercolor. It was pretty. Peaceful and isolated enough we’d been able to toil half the day without interruption.

My breaths slowed, and my eyelids fluttered, threatening untimely sleep. When I forced them open, I saw Nash’s copper hair gleaming in the sun overhead. His sleeves were rolled up, showing forearms streaked with dirt. Even his face was speckled muddy brown and cut with tracks from recent tears.

“You ready?” he asked.

I wasn’t. I never would be. But I nodded.

He disappeared from sight, leaving the uninterrupted sky. It took all my remaining strength to shove myself to standing, where my head barely poked over the top of the hole. Turning toward where we’d parked the Porsche, I watched Nash walk around the front end and pop the trunk.

He stood there for the longest time.

Finally, he reached inside. I looked away from the scene, simultaneously unsure of what he would soon present me with and all too certain.

Shuffling footsteps swished through the grass, and a chill raked down my spine. I’d stopped breathing at some point in the waiting, and now my lungs burned. Air eked in as I glanced back to see Nash crouched and Donovan’s body lying prostrate on the ground betweenus.

Seeing my brother’s wounds for the first time in daylight, the viscera was almost more than I could bear. Severed tendons and veins stood out amidst the mangled skin, coated with blood in various stages of coagulation.

Maybe I’d had a bit of blissful denial because the sight of it shocked me. I could barely move or form a thought as Nash slid a hand under Donovan’s severed neck and another beneath his knees, then offered him out for me to take.

I wasn’t sure I could hold him.

The dead weight hit my weary arms and tipped me toward collapse. I struggled with the body, trying to ease it down gently and finally falling forward to hit the coffin lid on my knees and elbows while cradling Donovan’s head.

“Fuck,” Nash grunted from above. I glanced back and found him upright, his face in his hands as he turned away from the grave. He wanted to leave. I knew because I wanted that, too.

Pushing up, I let Donovan’s head rest gently atop the still-buried coffin. I crawled off of him, bracing on all fours as I took a moment to look him over. His eyes were closed, and his skin was ghastly white. His dark clothes made the blood look like wet blobs across his shirt that spread into brownish splotches on his exposed chest and face. He never stood a chance. Not in the gang, not against Jax, not with me.

My father’s words haunted my mind.“You’re gonna do great things.”

If only he knew.

I wasn’t sure how long I hovered there, hoping—as I had with my parents—to feel close to Donovan one last time. But, just like with my parents, I felt nothing but absence.

Finally, I stood and raised a hand toward Nash with a pitiful request. “I’m fucking stuck down here.”

He wiped his arm across his eyes and crouched to grab hold of my arm. It was harder than it should have been and left us both grunting with effort as he hauled me out of the hole. Topside, he tumbled back, and I fell forward, wanting to sprawl in the grass and rest. But I wasn’t done yet.

My body was taxed, and my brain was, too, but I didn’t care enough to mind my mental limits. I deserved to hurt. To be pushed toward destruction and damnation. I deserved to be buried and gone. Not Donovan.

It took a mammoth effort to target the pile of dirt we’d unearthed and push it with telekinetic force. Pain spiked into my skull, and I let out a cry as the dirt filled the hole. It heaped atop Donovan’s corpse, blacking out his view of the beautiful sky, burying him forever.

A headache rocked me, and I cupped a hand to my face, feeling the familiar trickle of warmth leaking from my nose.

“You’re bleeding,” Nash said from his position on the ground.

Twinging pain accompanied my reach for the car keys poking out of his pants pocket. I called them through the air and gripped them while walking swiftly toward the parked Porsche.

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