Page 126 of When the Storm Breaks
My legs carried me across the room, and I took a seat on the sofa, perched on the edge of it, my fingers spinning the silver feather ring around and around. Landy took a seat on the other side of me. Brody was across from us, still leaning against the wall, looking like a man about to face a firing squad. I kept my eyes on him. Shirtless and barefoot, wearing faded denim. His hair messy and disheveled, made worse from running his hands through it. He didn’t say a single word. He couldn’t even look at me.
Landry held his phone in front of me and I dragged my eyes away from Brody and took the phone from Landry’s hand. In the first photo, Brody was punching Landry. It looked as if they were in the hotel lobby. The headline read:Shiloh Leroux’s Boyfriend Has a History of Violence.
“You punched my brother?” I asked Brody.
He stared at the floor and didn’t respond.
“Landry,” Marcus said, and it sounded like a reprimand.
Before I could even react to this, Landry told me to keep scrolling. So I did. Although I wished I hadn’t. My breath got trapped in my lungs. I stared at the photo of a man who looked so much like Brody that for a second, I thought it was him.
“Your boyfriend over there. His father killed our mom,” Landry said. “He shot her in cold blood and left her there to die while we sat in a car outside, waiting for her to come back. Only she never did.”
“I… how…” My eyes sought out Brody again. Only this time instead of seeing the man I loved, I saw a murderer. I saw the man who had taken away our mother. I’d never even gotten the chance to know her. I’d never heard her voice singing me to sleep. Reading bedtime stories. Tucking me in and telling me she loved me. I’d been robbed of all that because of an addict who had been trying to rob a convenience store. He’d shot three people. A cop. The convenience store manager. And my mother. The cop lived. The store manager died instantly. My mother died in the hospital twenty-four hours later.
Anger bubbled up inside me, red hot and blinding. I stood up from my seat and hurled the phone at Brody. He didn’t even try to duck out of the way. It hit him square in the chest and fell to the floor at his feet. I flew across the room and then I was on him. I struck. My fists pummeling him, my hands smacking and shoving his chest and his torso and shoulders-- everywhere and anywhere I could reach.
I was blinded by my fury, fueled by rage.Why did it have to be him?
“You knew about this, didn’t you? You were trying to hide it from me.” My voice was a whisper, scared to say the words louder in fear that would make them real. I smacked his chest with the heels of my hands. My wrath knew no bounds.
His hands wrapped around my wrists and he tried to pull me against him, but I resisted.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Get your filthy hands off my sister,” Landry roared.
Brody released me and I took a step back, my chest heaving, tears streaming down my cheeks. “How could you keep this from me? How could you not tell me that your father killed my mother?”
“I didn’t know. I swear on my life, I had no idea—”
“Bullshit! Itoldyou. I told you my mother’s name. How could you not know the names of your father’s victims?”
“I didn’t know,” he repeated. “Do you think I would have kept something like this from you?”
I laughed harshly. “You told me your parents were dead. Is that true?”
“My mother is dead. The man who—”
“Your father,” I seethed. “Are you going to deny that he’s your father?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled a breath. “He’s in prison for life. Louisiana State Penitentiary.”
“That’s not the same as dead, Brody. Being in prison is not the same as being dead.” My voice sounded shrill, beyond hysterical. “My mother is dead, and your piece of shit father is still alive. How is that fair?”
“It’s not.”
“I hope he lives to be a hundred so he can spend every single day of his life being reminded of what he did.”
Brody’s eyes met mine. “You think I don’t want the same thing? You think…” His voice cracked on the words and through the blur of my own tears, I saw that he was crying. “Fuck, Shy, I never… I didn’t know.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you knew it all along. You were there, Brody. You were there, weren’t you?”
He wiped his hand over his face and nodded yes.
I wrapped my arms around my body and tried to stop the shaking. My stomach was churning, and I felt like I was going to throw up. None of this seemed real. “Where were you when my mother was shot?”
“In the car. He told me... to wait in the car. Fuck, Shy. I never… I’m not him,” he gritted out. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying but I couldn’t feel any sympathy for him.
