Hate You Not

“Oh, Burke,” she whispers, so quietly. “Where are we?” It’s a question intended for a sleeping man.

I pull together the tiny bit of courage I have left and whisper, “This is my mausoleum.”

She doesn’t make a sound. But she holds me. It’s what I need to stop the shaking. When I feel more steady, and I’m pretty sure she’s still awake, I take a deep breath, letting June know I’m awake.

“B?” Her voice cuts like a light across the darkness in my heart. “This is your old house?”

“Yeah.”

She nods, as if somehow she knows all the rest. “Was this room your room?”

“How did you know?”

She holds me a little tighter. “B? Why did you tell them I’m your person?”

“Because you’re the one I want,” I whisper.

“Why not your father?”

The shaking starts again. In its strange, awful way, it’s so reliable—the things that trigger it, the places.

June holds me tighter.

“Burke…I tried to look you up. From my phone…when you were sleeping just now. I looked you up a while back…just to see. But there was nothing anywhere about your family. Just about Asher and Sutton.” I hate the way my body trembles harder, knowing what she’ll say next. “While you were sleeping tonight, I looked again. Google. I found this story from a few weeks back. It’s from like…this gossip column.”

I inhale, and she does, too.

“Did your— Burke. Did something happen here…that I don’t know about?”

I want to laugh at how she’s skirting it. I read the story, too—along with everyone in the Bay. Even the headline trumpeted the news: Tech Titan Lived Through Family Tragedy

I suck in a deep breath. Blow it slowly out. And turn around to fully face her. I can’t see her clearly, but I feel her gaze on my face. I feel the warmth that’s radiating from her, the concern.

I shut my eyes and just say it. “My mom died here.”

“Did…” She hesitates, and I spare her the angst of asking what the gossip rag implied.

I shake my head. “There was always speculation…because they fought.” Because he hit her, and me, and some of her friends knew that. “But he didn’t kill her.” Not with his hands. “He was gone that night. It was a school night,” I choke out. “She was here, with me and Asher. I was ragging her about something…and she was on the couch.”

I squeeze my eyes shut as tears trek down my cheeks. “It was me that set her off.”

“You’re not acting like my Mom, and now you never do!”

“She was depressed. I think she had been for a while. She wanted to leave him.” I swallow to steady my voice; still, I can’t seem to project above a whisper. “My uncle was a successful lawyer. Dead from cancer now,” I add, just in case she wonders why she’s never heard of him. “That was the irony. My mom thought she could never get away—not with custody of us. Because my father was vicious. And my uncle.” I swallow a swell of grief, then do some breathing so I don’t break down again. And still, my voice cracks when I say, “He died the next year. It would have worked, if she had stayed. She had to wait it out, but it would have worked, I think.”

Instead… “She put a note under her bedroom door. I found it. It said ‘call 9-1-1.’ And—” my voice drops to a whisper rasp— “I love you boys.”

June wraps herself around me. My whole body quivers with the weight of what’s inside. I gulp deep breaths to keep it locked down.

“Burkie…” She squeezes me tighter. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

It’s her voice that does it. Hearing June sound upset, syncing up the past and present while her arms are wrapped tight around me—it knocks down my last wall.JUNEI hold him against me, and he sobs for what feels like an hour. He locks his arms around me and holds on so tightly, sometimes I can barely breathe, but I don’t mind even a little.

“It’s okay…” I say it like a litany. Because it’s what I hope for. I realize, though, that it isn’t. He’s not okay, so I change my whispers to “I’ve got you.”

I’m not even sure he hears me, nor that my words matter. His grief has been locked up for a long time. Pushed down, starved off, hidden. The stupid gossip column about Mrs. Masterson’s suicide implied Burke had worked to ensure stories about her death that were in print newspapers and local magazines at the time didn’t make it online and weren’t searchable in any archives.

It makes sense now—everything that didn’t. The article I found on my phone came out two days after we last saw each other—on a Tuesday.

“It makes sense,” I murmur, when he’s quiet, breathing heavy but no longer weeping. “Why you were so upset about Margot and Oliver, and how much you wanted them back.” They’re roughly the ages of Burke and his brother when they lost their mom. “You asked if I was dating anyone. Was your father…” I swallow.