‘I know all that. I was there when the paediatric doctor told Michelle.’
The paediatric doctor.
As though simply saying Saskia’s name would allow his brother to read the truth all over his face.
As though he didn’t know how every inch of how her body felt and tasted.
As though she wasn’t carrying his baby.
Possibly.
Probably?
Shaking it off, he tried for levity.
‘I was asking what the story was with you, numbnuts.’
Not exactly his most convincing attempt at humour, but it was all he had in him. Fortunately Sol seemed too caught up in his own issues to pick up on it.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he mumbled, a sure-fire giveaway that he was lying.
Malachi snorted. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You forget I’ve practically raised you since we were kids. You can’t fool me.’
Sol opened his mouth and Malachi waited for the usual witty comeback. But for once it didn’t come. Instead his younger brother glowered into his coffee. Strangely, he was avoiding Malachi’s stare. And when Sol spoke his voice was unusually quiet, his words coming out of the blue.
‘I haven’t forgotten anything. I remember everything you went through to raise us, Mal. I know you sold your soul to the devil just to get enough money to buy food for our bellies.’
The words—the previously unspoken gratitude—slid unexpectedly into Malachi’s chest. Like a dagger heading straight to the heart and mercifully stopping just a hair’s breadth short.
How was it that the very moment he was ready to doubt himself his brother seemed to say the words that made him think again? As if Sol had known just what to say when he couldn’t possibly have guessed about Saskia being pregnant, let alone that it might be Malachi’s.
Or was it just that he was reading into it what he wanted to read? Trying to convince himself that perhaps Saskia and her baby—their baby—wouldn’t be better off without him?
Which made no sense—because he didn’t want a family.
Did he?
Savagely, he tore his mind back to the present once more.
‘Bit melodramatic, aren’t you, bratik?’ he gritted out. ‘Is this about Izzy?’
‘I guess.’
Sol was lying again, and Malachi couldn’t say why he wasn’t calling his kid brother out over it.
‘Yeah. Well...no need to get soppy about it.’
‘Right.’
Downing the last of the cold coffee and grimacing, Sol crushed the plastic cup and lobbed it into the bin across the hallway. The perfect drop shot.
Then, without warning, Sol spoke again.
‘You ever wonder what might have happened if we’d had a different life? Not had a drug addict for a mother? Not had to take care of her and keep her away from her dealer every spare minute?’
It was as though the tiniest, lightest butterfly had landed on that invisible dagger in his chest, beaten its wings, and plunged the blade in that final hair’s breadth deeper. Driving to the heart of the questions which had started circling around his brain ever since he’d heard Saskia utter those words to that nurse, creeping so slowly at first that he hadn’t seen them over the chaos of the fear.
If he’d had a different childhood, would he be greeting this news differently now?