“Gunshot.”
I looked at him then. At his face. And I got a second major shock.
I thought, Wait. That’s not Roy.
I thought, They sent us back the wrong brother.
I mean, the shape of his face was familiar. And his hair was the right color of sandy dark blond, though it was much shorter than I had ever seen it. It wasn’t that he had some major feature that identified him as someone else entirely. He just wasn’t quite Roy.
It was like seeing someone on the street that I thought might be Roy, and waiting for that click of familiarity. And never getting it.
I figured it would come along in time. But, the problem was, I had no idea how much time. In that moment I’d have guessed fifteen or twenty minutes would solve the issue. It ended up being closer to fifteen or twenty years. But I don’t mean to get off track.
“Sit down,” he said. And his voice sounded like his voice, only with most of the life gone out of it.
I pulled up a chair.
The room was dim. Weirdly dim, like Connor’s house. The curtains were drawn tightly closed. And yet he was staring toward the window as if he could look out of it, which struck me as strange.
“You look so different,” I said.
“Must be the hair.”
He lifted a hand to run it over his buzzed head, but he almost missed. He had to adjust the path of that hand to guide it to his own scalp.
I could still hear our parents fighting downstairs. But I couldn’t make out individual words, which was a blessing.
I thought about the letter. My last letter. The humiliatingly mushy one. How long ago had I sent it? More than three weeks ago. Maybe a month. I had no idea if he’d gotten it. It was impossible to know with APO mail. Sometimes it was two weeks. Sometimes two months. One letter my mother sent him never got there, as far as we could tell.
I was hoping he hadn’t seen it.
Sitting there with him, looking right into his face, I couldn’t imagine saying the things I’d said in that letter. Sad, but true. It just felt too personal. It felt like the truthfulness of the words would rip me open, exposing a part of me that might not survive out in the air. It was all just too important.
And yet some part of me had to know.
“I sent you a letter,” I said. “After I answered the last letter you sent me. It was just an extra one. It was short. But probably you’ll never get it now. Which I think is okay because—”
“I got it,” he said.
Then we just sat there in silence for a minute. Really, a full minute or more. And while we were sitting, I felt my face get redder and redder and redder.
“Why do you think it all came down the way it did?” he added.
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know how it all came down.”
“Oh.”
More silence.
“What were you trying to tell me?” I asked him, anxious to change the subject. “In that last letter? Something you saw, but it got all blacked out.”
“No.” His voice sounded firm for the first time. Almost normally firm for Roy. Not quite, but at least in the right ballpark. “No, you don’t need to hear that. The minute I sent that letter I was sorry. The minute it was out of my hands I would’ve done anything to take it back. When I found out you couldn’t read it, I was so relieved. I never should’ve put that on you. Once a thing like that gets into your head you’ll never get it out again. Never.”
He dropped into silence. Then, much to my alarm, he began to cry. Really sob openly. Roy was five years older than me, and I had never seen him cry. At least, not that I could recall.
“I just wanted to get home to you,” he said. “When I got that letter. But I didn’t want to let the guys down. It still kills me that I let the guys down.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Oh hell,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m on so many painkillers. I mean, they’ve got me so doped up, buddy. Morphine up the wazoo. Not literally. I just mean I’m on a lot of it.”
He fell silent. I waited while his sobs wound down. A long, slow, painful wait.
I felt a little better knowing he was on heavy meds. Because otherwise his behavior was scaring me. But knowing he was on a lot of morphine really helped explain things. He had been given a huge dose of truth serum. He would come around when it wore off. Go back to seeming like himself.
“I should probably get some sleep,” he said.
“Sure. I’ll just leave you be. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”
I let myself out of his room.
My father had left to go back to work. Or, anyway, he’d left. I could hear the tires of his car crunching on the gravel of the driveway. The part about his going back to work was just a guess.
I was hungry, but I didn’t go into the kitchen. Because my mom was still in there, and I was afraid she would tell me more. I was pretty sure, without ever talking to myself about it, that I wasn’t ready to know more.
I managed to wait about two hours before running back to Mrs. Dinsmore’s cabin—mostly to avoid cutting into Connor’s time with her. I did not manage to stay away completely.
The dogs ran to greet me, and I was so happy to see them that I started to cry. Well, I suppose it wasn’t just the dogs. I had a lot going on to put those tears in me. The dogs were more like a fuse into all that gunpowder. But it did strike me
