“Alex-”
He put the handset back in the receiver and lay back down. A second later, the phone rang again. He ignored it. After three more rings, it stopped.
The trick, he decided, was to treat Ben as dead. Not to hate him, not to resent him, but just to place him in the same part of his brain where he kept his memories of Mom and Dad and Katie. Maybe he could even grieve for him. Then he could accept the loss, get over it, and move on. That's what he needed to do. Ben was dead. That was okay. That was good.
His agitation eased. His exhaustion rolled in again. He started to doze.
Someone pounded on the front door.
He sat bolt upright, total recall of that night in the bath flooding his mind.
“Alex!” he heard Ben call. “Alex!”
He thought about the gun Ben had given him. If he still had it, he might have shot through the front door.
He pulled a pillow over his head. He's dead. This is a bad dream. He's dead.
The pounding got louder. “Alex, open the goddamn door or I'll shoot the lock out!” Ben shouted. “You want to explain to the neighbors? The Levins? The Andrews? Mrs. Selwyn?”
Christ. Alex got out of bed and threw on a robe. He walked down the stairs and stood in front of the door. “Go away,” he called loudly.
“Open the door.”
“No! I don't want anything from you. Just go away!”
“Alex, I'm going to count to three and then I'm going to shoot the lock out. One.”
Good God, it was like when they were kids again. Except with guns.
“Two.”
“Okay, okay! Don't shoot, you idiot.”
He opened the door, and damn if Ben didn't have his gun out. There was a bandage on his head that gave Alex a surge of satisfaction. Ben put the gun back in its holster and walked in. Alex closed the door behind him.
Ben looked around. Alex realized he hadn't been in the house in, what, eight years? Something like that.
“Looks the same,” Ben said. He sniffed, his expression contemplative. “Smells the same.”
“What do you mean it smells?”
“In a good way. It smells like…”
“Like what?”
Ben shrugged. “Like home.”
Alex almost said, Well, it's not your home. Instead: “What do you want?”
Ben looked at him. “Your boss is involved in this.”
Alex almost laughed. “Osborne?”
“They blackmailed him. He was their inside man.”
“Good for you, Columbo. But it's too late. I don't even care. Just go.”
“Alex-”
“We're done, remember? Seriously. Go.”
“You don't understand.”
“No, I do. I'm on my own, and so are you. Just go. Just go, Ben. Get out of my house.”
He'd called it “my house” deliberately, but Ben seemed not to notice. “Alex, you need my help,” he said.
“No, I don't need your help, I don't want your help.”
“Yes, you do!” Ben shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. “Yes, you do, Alex, and you're going to take my help! You're going to listen to me, and if you don't want my help then, fine. I'm not going to be responsible for any more deaths. You're going to listen to what I have to say, you're going to do what I tell you to do, and then if you don't, it's your fucking fault, you killed yourself, you committed suicide on your own and it wasn't my fault! None of it!”
They stood staring at each other. Ben was panting, the muscles in his neck straining. “You think I don't hurt?” he said. “You think I don't wish I'd driven Katie home that night? Why do you want to torture me with that? You don't think I'm tortured already? What do you want me to do, say I'm sorry? Beg for forgiveness? Set myself on fire? What do you fucking want?”
His voice cracked and he stopped. Then he spun and slammed his palm into the wall. Alex heard a huge crack! and felt the shock reverberate through the floorboards. A hole appeared in the wall, plaster dust drifting lazily out of it.
Ben stood like that, his shoulders bunched, his breath heaving in and out. Then he wiped an arm across his face and turned and looked at Alex. His eyes were red. “What do you want?” he said.
Alex looked at him. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Was Ben… was he crying?
“Why didn't you just tell me?” Alex asked. “Why didn't you ever… say something?”
“Because you blame me. You always have.”
Alex couldn't deny the truth of that. And suddenly, he felt like the world's biggest jerk. He hadn't wanted Ben to be sorry. Or not just that, anyway. No, he'd wanted… he'd wanted to extract something from him. Punish him. Seeing Ben's tears, seeing the undeniable evidence of his brother's sorrow, made him realize that this was at least as much about himself as it was about Ben.
“Mom and Dad… they told me it wasn't your fault.”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, they told me the same thing. But that's not how they felt. And they were right. And so were you.”
“I don't think I was right,” Alex said, surprised at the words. “I think… I don't know.”
He'd almost said, I think I needed to blame someone. Was that it? He needed to think.
“And Dad,” Ben said. “I wish I'd done that differently. It felt like my whole life was going to get wasted, like if I didn't enlist, the window would close or something. I look back and realize that was bullshit. I could have waited. I should have waited.”
Alex didn't know what to say. He'd never felt so confused. “It… might not have made any difference,” he stammered after a moment. “I think Dad… what he did, maybe he was going to do it no matter what.”
Ben rubbed his temples. “Christ, I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
Alex smiled. “How's your head?”
“It hurts. I wasn't really expecting you to throw the gun at me. Shoot me, maybe, but not throw it.”
“It seemed like a good compromise at the time.”
“I guess it was.”
They were quiet for a moment. Alex said, “Osborne's really involved in this?”
“He is. Let's sit down and I'll brief you.”
Alex sat at the kitchen table. Ben walked over to a cabinet, took out a glass, and filled it at the faucet. “You want one?” he asked. Alex shook his head, amazed at the familiarity of it. A simple thing like getting a glass of water.
Ben joined him and gave him an earful. They'd blackmailed Os-borne. Ben's unit was involved. His commander was one of the people behind the whole thing.
“You're going to meet him?” Alex asked. “How can you trust him? I mean, he's been trying to kill me.”
“He might not have known you're my brother.”
“You believe that?”
“I'm trying to find out.”
“If he had known, would it have made a difference?”
Ben sighed. “I don't know. That's one of the things I want to find out. I'm not going to meet where he wants, I'll tell you that.”
“Where, then?”
“I'll figure something out. Do me a favor, go somewhere else for a few hours while I'm gone.”
“Ben, I can't live this way.”
“We ‘re trying to fix that, that's the point. So you can go back to your life and not have to worry about
