“This isn’t about a girl? Mom might be better suited–”
“No.” I wasn’t going to talk to my parents about Kristen. It would be all over the local news before sun up tomorrow if I did.
“Hmmph.” I watch his hands carefully craft what I think will be a soaring hawk when he’s done.
I steeled myself to ask the burning question that had been honestly bothering me for the better part of the last decade. “What does Hunter have that I don’t?” My question stopped my father from his work and he stood up placing the bird with the half completed wing on the table.
“Hunter was born into a world of hurt, Damien.” He’s clutching the table looking out the garage window that looks into the kitchen. We can see my mother humming to herself, a cordless house phone tucked between shoulder and ear with a smile.
“Right, we brought him home from Michigan.” I said acknowledging the universal truth.
“My brother could be a real bastard.” I shook my head in agreement. I could only imagine what Hunter experienced, to this day he doesn’t really talk about it and I never asked.
“I shared my room with him for the better part of three years before he shipped out.”
“Your mother and I worried about that. We were happy having you and taking on a second son was a lot to ask. I guess we didn’t think we should have asked you too.”
“It’s not that Dad. Hunter is my brother in all the ways that count.”
“But we treated him differently. I know. You can say it, Damien.”
“It’s just that, I felt like I was sharing you with him.”
“You were, but I get what you mean. I can’t take that back. I had my own guilt because I let Hunter grow up in that environment for so long and did nothing.”
“I know his dad used to hit him. I guess I never really thought it though.”
“Hunter won’t thank me for sharing this but I read the original police report.”
“It was a car accident, wasn’t it?”
“Close. Hunter gave an unofficial statement when they treated him at the hospital. Your Uncle was driving, maybe drunk and most likely angry. There wasn’t a time I didn’t remember my brother as being an angry kid.” Dad seemed to lose himself before speaking again.
“Anyway,” he looked like he was shaking cobwebs off a memory. “Hunter watched his mom fight back, your uncle hit her and she grabbed the wheel as the car careened on the road before crashing. They both died, but Hunter was left there pinned until help arrived.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right. Your mother, sensitive soul she is wanted me to go get him right away, but your Aunt’s family went out there first. After they rejected him your mother told me to go out there and bring him home or not to come back at all.”
“I didn’t know you and mom fought about this.” It was weird and amazing having this latent new perspective about my parents.
“I wasn’t sure how to get involved without making things worse and your mother wanted to charge in like a bull.”
“I can’t imagine mom like that.”
“Son, it’s the quiet ones that’ll get you twisted up as much as the wild ones, but in a different way.” He winked.
26
Kristen
Damien wakes me from a dead sleep, my belly huge and protruding. Thirty-nine weeks is no joke. Everything is swollen and I have to pee every time I move. My body hurts everywhere as I struggled to lean up on my elbows in the bed. My back hurts stabbing pains everywhere. Why the hell don’t mothers tell their daughters about how awful pregnancy really is? The mood swings which Damien thinks are my normal personality, the weight gain, the food cravings and weird hairs growing in places they shouldn’t. Ugh! Oh, right, because by the time we’ve given them their own grey hairs with our stupid adolescent stunts, their cackling like witches ready and waiting for grandchildren. For some reason it brought me to a scene in Outlander with the Pagan women dancing around the stones singing serenely when I felt anything but serene or goddess like.
“Babe.” He looks worried and insistent about something.
“What the hell did you wake me for, Demon?” I looked at my boyfriend ready to kill or at least maim him severely. Cue those unpredictable homicidal mood swings. Who the hell wakes up a pregnant woman who is on the verge of giving birth as we speak? There were days I was pretty sure that my love had a death wish.
“How do you feel about getting married?”