Old Fashioned - Becker Brothers

Again, silence.

It was a tornado of emotions for each one of my brothers, one that had already ripped through me. I was on the other side of it, sitting calmly in the rubble, thinking of how to rebuild. But right now, they were in the thick of the storm, and I knew all too well how disconcerting that was.

“I think I need to tell Mallory,” Logan said after a moment.

I frowned.

“It’s her father, for Christ’s sake,” he pleaded with me. “I don’t feel comfortable making a plan to confront him without her being in on it.”

My chest tightened at the thought of someone outside of my brothers knowing what I’d found, but I understood what he was saying. Mallory’s father was the main subject of the discovery. It was only fair that we told her what we found.

“Alright,” I conceded. “But, I think right now, we need to all stay calm and quiet about this. I’m going to look into getting a lawyer, see what our options are.”

“It has to be someone outside of town,” Noah said. “I don’t think we can trust anyone here.”

“Definitely,” I agreed, then I ticked through the list of what we each needed to be doing. “Logan, you fill Mallory in, maybe she’ll know something more about that night, or at the very least know how we can get Patrick to admit to whatever happened. Mikey, I want you to comb through the last few journal entries, make sure I didn’t miss anything. And Noah,” I said, looking at him last. “You are going to go on your honeymoon and forget about this until you get back.”

He scoffed, ready to argue, but I shook my head firmly.

“I mean it,” I said. “You just married the love of your life. There’s nothing to be done right now, not until we get a lawyer and make a plan — and we won’t do that while you’re gone. Okay? I know it’s going to be hard to do, but you need to focus on Ruby Grace and enjoy your time with her.” I exhaled long and slow. “I have the State Championship game on Friday night. You’ll be back from your honeymoon on Sunday. Let’s just agree to meet up then, and we can talk through the next steps. We’ve waited ten long years, guys… we can wait another week.”

My brothers all exchanged looks, but in the end, they nodded in agreement. One thing I’d learned as the older brother was that it was my responsibility to help them see reason when all they wanted to see was red. It wasn’t always an easy task, but they trusted me — and as long as that was true, I knew they’d listen, even if they didn’t agree.

“I need to come up with a reason why Kylie and I can’t go back to New York,” Mikey said.

“No, don’t do that. Go back. You have work and she does, too. We need to keep everything normal. But I’ll book you a flight to come back home next Sunday, okay?”

He frowned, but nodded. “I want her to come, too.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get you both a ticket.”

We were silent for a long while, each of us staring at the fire where its flames licked away at the evening settling in around us.

“Do you think we’ll get what we need to take him down?” Logan asked after a long while. “I mean… do you think we’ll actually get justice for Dad?”

No one answered, because none of us knew for sure.

All we did know was that we had to try.I hadn’t realized how much of my focus had been on what I’d found in my dad’s journal until I’d finally told my brothers and relieved myself of being the only one who knew.

As soon as I did, every ache inside me turned its attention to the hole Sydney had left.

The week passed by in slow agony, with my days spent working with my athletes in weightlifting class, my afternoons spent at practice getting them ready for Friday, and my evenings spent on the phone with one or more of my brothers, trying to calm them and reassure them that everything would be alright. Before I knew it, it was Friday night, and I was on the field watching my team warm up in preparation to play the biggest game of their lives so far.

And while I should have been focused on that, I could only think of Sydney.

I could only feel numb.

The naïve part of me thought that if I kept busy all week — and I did — there wouldn’t be time to be broken up over Sydney.

But she didn’t need to be the center of my day to be present in every moment of it.

She was like a slow leak, forcing her way between all the crevices of my broken heart and slowly, centimeter by centimeter, wearing it down and causing it to rust so much so that I wondered if a stiff inhale would make it shatter altogether.