“I said, no!” she hollered, yanking her arms from me. “I don’t know what lie they told you, but my mom was healthy. She was fine and then—”
“She was not fine. She had stage 4 metastatic cancer. It had spread to multiple—”
“Why are you saying this?” she snapped at me, eyes filled with tears. “Are you trying to hurt me more?”
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Helen, please listen.” I reached out for her, but she pulled back again, shaking her head.
“I would have known if my mom had cancer. They are lying to you to cover up what they did to her.”
“Helen—”
“No!” she snapped, stepping back again, shaking her head before she turned and quickly left me standing in the entryway, right on top of the Ethan and Calliope’s monogram titles.
What was I supposed to do now?
The world had flipped.
I flipped back to being the useless brother, lover, and son.
“I know that look.”
Glancing up, I watched as Uncle Neal stepped in from the living room. With a book in hand, he looked to where Helen had run off to then back at me.
“What look?”
“The look of one in his brother’s shadow,” he said, and I froze, causing him to chuckle. He stepped up right beside me, taking off his reading glasses. “Were you the one who shot her?”
“And if I was?”
“You’ll die,” he said, not at all making me feel better.
“You are shit at pep talks, Uncle Neal.” I gasped in shock.
“So, you did shoot her.”
I rolled my eyes, “Is it too early for a drink?”
“The drinks don’t make it go down easier.” He frowned, placing his hand on my shoulder. “But, I’ll have one with you because I remember what it felt like to be you.”
“Still waiting for the pep in this talk.”
He smacked the back of my head with the book in his hand. “Patience. It’s coming. You ready?”
“Sure,” I replied, rubbing the back of my head as he pushed me into the living room. Inside I came face to face with the family portrait Calliope had demanded we dress up nicely for. She didn’t want it as a photo but an actual oil painting. It was so large it hung over the whole fireplace.
“He’s always going to make you feel like shit,” my uncle said, giving me a drink.
“Who?”
“Ethan. He will always make you doubt yourself. He doesn’t mean to. But the talented ones never do.”
I frowned…he was total shit at this. “The talented ones?”
“Each generation, there is one brother who is just better at this. Why I don’t know—”
“I thought it was the younger brother who was better?”
“Because your father told you that horseshit,” he chuffed, moving to sit by the fireplace. “Even from beyond the grave, the man taunts me.”