Page 34 of Lies in Promises
Henry gives him a nod in understanding, taking the baby and trying to sooth him as best as he can. The baby must feel safe, because after a few seconds, he calms in his arms and lays his head against his shoulder.
“I’ll get them some food and get the guest rooms ready. Just keep the fighting to a minimum. No blood, not in my house,” Henry informs us. We both watch as he walks up to the kids on the front steps, says something to them, and guides them into the house. It’s a good minute after the massive front door closes that Robert speaks.
“His house?”
When I turn to look at him, he has an eyebrow cocked.
I roll my eyes. “He’s the one who lives here and maintains it. I would call it his.”
Apparently, that surprises Robert. “You don’t live here?”
I let out a frustrated sigh, not wanting to participate in small talk with my brother. “If I answer, are you going to tell me why the fuck you’re here? What exactly do you need help with?”
My guess is money.
Why else would he show up out of the blue? He probably needs a good chunk of change and decided the best way to get it was to use his kids and their sad faces to make me feel sympathetic. If the kids didn’t look like him, I would have said they were probably child actors.
Robert lets out a sigh as he looks over to his right. He looks down the long driveway for a second or two before turning back to look at me.
“Can we go inside and talk? I’ll explain everything, I promise.”
I want to scoff at his promise. He’s broken promises to me before. I should tell him to take his promise and shove it up his ass, but Henry and my mother raised me better than that.
No response comes from me. I simply stare down my brother and truly take him in for the first time.
He looks disheveled, and not in ahe’s been traveling all daytype of way. He looks like he’s been wearing the same clothes for a week. He looks exhausted, beaten up emotionally, like he could drop to the ground at any moment. He looks almost drunk, but not in the same way I was a few hours ago.
It actually hurts seeing him like this.
Which is why I let out a sigh and nod for him to follow me into the house.
At the very least, I can hear him out.
As we walk inside, I hear a sharp breath behind me. I almost suggest we talk outside, but if I had to learn to be in this house without our parents, without him, then he does too.
I guide him to the study—our father’s study. It took me a while to work up the courage to even walk in here. Every time I did, it reminded me of what I lost, who should have been here. Eventually, I was able to work around the lump in my throat and use the office for homework while I was in high school and then as a starting point for Titan.
There is no sharp intake of breath when we walk into the study, but my brother does stand in the doorway for a few minutes, taking in every inch of the room.
It’s pretty much the same from the last time he saw it. There are a few things that had to be changed because of age, but the majority of the books are still my parents’ collection. The paintings on the walls are still those picked my mother. They are still very much alive in this room, just like around the house.
“You didn’t change much,” Robert states, his eyes resting on the picture of the four of us on one of the bookshelves.
I shake my head, even if he isn’t looking at me. “It didn’t seem right.”
He continues to look, walking around the room, touching things that haven’t been moved since he left except to be cleaned.
“Do you miss them?” he asks as he stands close to the wooden desk.
“Don’t you?”
I don’t have to be next to him to hear the shakiness of the breath he lets out. “Every day. Just like I missed you.”
His statement makes me ball up my fist so I can cross the room and punch him in the face. If he missed me so damn much, why the fuck did he abandon me?
But I keep my anger controlled. The only thing stopping me from doing what I want is his kids in the other room.
Trying not to blow up, I move the conversation back to the topic at hand.
