We'd begged my parents to paint the walls navy blue so that we could hang bright, space-themed posters on the walls. We had ordered glow-in-the-dark stars from the back of a comic book and wanted to fix them to the ceiling. My father had ignored the requests until we'd finally driven him over the edge. He'd taken off his belt and punished us for having annoyed him then told us to take our request to our mother.
My mother's mouth had formed a thin, grim line when she saw what Father had done to us with his belt. She agreed to have the bedroom painted a dark blue. The painters had come the next week and laid down tarps before they coated the walls in darkness. Lincoln and I had watched from the hallway as they worked, discussing the various ways in which we were going to arrange the posters and mapping out a pattern for the stars. The punishment had happened almost two weeks before, but Lincoln was still limping a little from it.
"You okay?" I asked as we descended the stairs in search of snacks in the kitchen.
"Yeah, I'm good," Lincoln said over his shoulder. "I just forgot not to stiffen my legs when he hit. It'll be fine in another few days."
I nodded and wondered why our father felt the need to punish us so severely over things that seemed so trivial. Once we'd gotten our snacks and taken them out to the patio, I worked up the courage to ask Lincoln.
"Why do you think Pop does what he does to us?" I asked as I took a bite of the peanut butter sandwich and followed it with a swig of milk.
"Dunno," Lincoln mumbled through his sandwich. He chewed for a few moments, swallowed, and said, "I think he's stressed out about something, and we're the way he works out that stress. Either that, or he's one sadistic son-of-a-bitch."
"What's sadistic?" I asked earnestly. As my older brother by two years, Lincoln was both my encyclopedia and dictionary.
"It means you like seeing other people in pain," he replied as he took another huge bite of his sandwich.
"Oh, yeah, that makes sense then," I said. "But he doesn't seem to be happier after he punishes us. Does that count?"
"It's not that it makes people happy, dummy," Lincoln said with a full mouth. "It's that he likes it."
"That's just weird," I said, popping the last bite into my mouth and chasing it with the last bit of milk. I liked it when things evened out just right.
"I didn't say it made sense," Lincoln said crossly. "I'm just saying …"
"Boys," my mother called from the kitchen window. "Did you leave this mess here for me to clean up, or were you planning on coming back and doing it yourself?"
"We'll do it, Mother!" I yelled. "We were just really hungry."
"That's what I thought," she called. "I knew you didn't want your father to come home and discover your carelessness."
Lincoln and I looked at each other wide eyed as we quickly grabbed our dishes and headed inside to take care of cleaning up the mess we'd made. By the time we were done, the painters had finished with our room and were cleaning up.
We surveyed the job in a state of awe as we looked at our plans for decorating the room. It was overwhelming to think that our vision of how the room should look was about to come true. Lincoln stuck his hand out and touched the wall. When he drew back, there was a print on the wall the size of his hand, and his palm was covered in dark-blue paint.
With fear in my eyes, I looked at my brother who shrugged and stuffed his hand in his pocket.
"Dad's gonna kill you if he sees this," I whispered.
"Then we need to figure out a way that he doesn't see it, don't we?" Lincoln said in a way that struck me as oddly defiant. Up until then, we'd been partners in punishment, but Lincoln seemed to be rejecting that narrative. It seemed risky to me, but since he was the older, wiser brother, I followed his lead and helped him plan how to hide the handprint.
Our plan had ultimately worked, and no one had been the wiser. However, Lincoln's pants had suffered the consequence of him shoving a handful of wet paint into the pocket, so he'd buried them in the bottom of his dresser drawer. We never spoke about it again.
Now, twenty years later, I opened my eyes and looked over at the wall where Lincoln's handprint had been and wondered how many layers of paint it had taken to cover the memories in this room—and how long it would take for me to leave the memories behind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Leah
After the wake, I headed over to the office to take care of a few orders that were pending in our warehouse. I knew I didn't have to work. But I also knew that death or not, customers were still waiting for their orders. Our ability to survive the loss of our leader was dependent on the rest of us doing our jobs. I waved to a few of the warehouse workers and handed over the orders that were waiting to be filled.
"Get this out as soon as you can, okay?" I said to the shift manager. "I know they know about Mr. Yates, but let's keep the orders rolling out as close to schedule as possible."
"Will do, boss!" Burt nodded as he took the paperwork and surveyed the order. "How was the end of the wake?"
"The usual: lots of crying and mourning and gossip," I said.
"That's how it always is, isn't it?" John said. "The rich go out rich, and the poor get tossed in a pauper's grave."