Elena touched her stomach. “I’m going to be sick.”
“You’ll be okay.” Michael’s voice was colder than he’d planned, but Elena’s accusation hurt. He’d mentioned money only so she’d know he could provide for her. Hide her. Keep her safe. He moved for the door, and she followed.
“How much more?” she asked.
“Enough.”
“Please tell me there’s an explanation for all this.” She caught his arm, and he stopped. “I need something.”
They were in the hall. It was empty. Elena was on the balls of her feet, a bird ready to fly. “I have a story,” he said.
“About?”
“Beginnings. Reasons. Everything.”
“And you’ll tell me?”
“Yes, but later. Okay?”
“If you promise.”
“I do.” He turned on his heel, and they moved to the bottom of the stairs. Michael checked the sidewalk, then ducked back inside and hugged her fiercely. Her hair was warm on the bottom of his chin, and he wanted to tell her one more lie: that everything would be fine, that life would go back to normal. “We have to move quickly. Head down. Straight to the car.” He pulled her across hot concrete and into the car. She spilled loosely into the seat. From where they were, Michael had two options to get out of the city fast. He could go north to the Holland Tunnel or east to the Brooklyn Bridge. He rounded to the driver’s side, got in, and cranked the car. Beside him, Elena sat with her eyes closed. She mouthed silent words, and it took Michael a second to understand the thing she was unwilling to say out loud.
She made a hard knot of her fingers.
Michael drove north through the city, then out through the Holland Tunnel and south on the interstate. Beside him, Elena watched the city fall away. “I’ve never been out of New York,” she said.
“Maybe this will be good, then. A chance to see the country.”
“Is that a joke?” she asked.
“A bad one, I guess.”
Miles clicked onto the odometer, the silence painful. “You said you have a story.”
The sky outside was a summer sky, a lover’s sky. They were in Jersey, and her voice could have belonged to a stranger.
“It’s about two boys.”
“You?”
“And my brother.”
“You don’t have a brother.” Michael waited, and she nodded. “Ah. Another lie.”
“I’ve not seen him since I was ten.” Sun pushed heat through the windows. Michael showed her a photograph. Colorless and cracked, it was of two boys on a field of snow and mud. Their pants were too short, the jackets patched. “That’s me on the right.”
She took the photo and her eyes softened. “So young.”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Julian.”
She traced Julian’s face with a finger, and then touched Michael’s. Color moved into her face, the empathy that was one of her best traits. Her accent thickened as it did when she got emotional. “Do you miss him very much?”
Michael nodded, knowing that she would listen, seeing it in her face, the way it softened. “They say you don’t remember much before the age of two, but that’s not true. I was ten months old when Julian was left naked on the bank of a half-frozen creek. He was a newborn. It was snowing. I was with him.”
“Ten months old?”
“Yes.”
“And you remember this?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Like what?”
“Black trees and snow on my face.”
Elena touched the photograph.
“The silence when Julian stopped screaming.”
Elena kept her eyes down as Michael spoke of two boys dumped like trash in the woods, of cold water and the hunters that carried them out, of long years at the orphanage and his brother’s deterioration. He spoke of crowded rooms and sickness, of conflict and boredom and the indifference of malnutrition. He explained how strong kids learned to steal and weak ones learned to run; how older kids had the power to hurt. “You can’t imagine.”
Elena listened carefully as he spoke. She listened for lies and half-truths and the tells that would reveal them. She did this because she was smart and wary and carrying a child that meant more than her own life. But there was honesty in him when he spoke: flashes of anger and regret, a fire banked long in his heart. “Hennessey died on the bathroom floor. I took the knife and I ran.”
“To protect your brother?”
“Because I was the oldest.”
“You ran and took the blame with you?” Michael said nothing, but Elena knew from his face that the statement was true. “What happened next?”
Michael shrugged. “Julian was adopted.”
“And you were not.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“It is what it is.”
“And once in New York?”
Michael rolled his shoulders. “The city is not a good place for a boy alone.”
“What do you mean?”
Michael slipped into the left lane, passed a slow-moving car. His voice did not change when he said, “I killed a man nine days after I got off the bus.”
“Why?”
“Because I was small and he was strong. Because the world is cruel. Because he was drunk and insane and wanted to set me on fire for the fun of it.”
“Oh, my God.”
“He found me asleep near the docks, and doused me with gasoline before I could get to my feet. He had one foot on my chest, trying to get the match lit. I remember his shoes, black, tied with white string; pants so crusted with grime they crunched under my fingers. The first match didn’t light. It was damp, I guess. Or he stripped the sulfur. I don’t know. God, maybe. The second match was in his hand when I put the knife in his leg. Right in the side, just above his knee. It hit bone and I twisted it until he fell. Then, I put it in his stomach and I ran.”
Elena shook her head, no words.
