“You’re a good older brother.”

“Not that good.” He took a deep breath. Ahead, the hospital loomed up from the city, brown brick and layer after layer of glass windows. He paused and stepped beneath the awning of a shoe store as the morning rush hour traffic passed by on the sidewalk. “I got a call late one night, two years after she’d moved in with him. She was barely twenty years old, but sometimes I thought she was older. This was three years ago, when I was thirty, and I remember thinking— this couldn’t be real. It was the police on the other end, and they said something happened to Jamie, and that her husband had done something, and I needed to come down to the morgue immediately.

“They had me identify her body. Half her face was bashed in. I don’t know how it happened, but they’d gotten into an argument, he was apparently drunk or high or maybe both. He beat her with a bottle, and when he realized he’d gone too far, I guess he decided to finish her off—and shot her in the head. The neighbors heard the screams and the fighting and the gunshot, called the cops, and they caught him as he tried to run away. He went through the court system pretty fast, and he’s in jail for the rest of his life now, but Jamie’s gone, very much gone and I guess none of that matters.”

I stared at him and tried to force myself not to cry. I couldn’t imagine going through something so horrific, so visceral or awful. The accident had been like that for me, something scarring and deeply affecting, and I was still processing it in my own way, still trying to come to grips with the fact that my mother was in a coma and there was no promise that she’d ever wake up—but his sister was dead, his parents were gone, and he was left alone.

I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s so awful.”

“Now you can probably understand why I feel so strongly about helping you.”

I chewed my lip and met his eye. “I’m not your sister.”

“No, you’re most certainly not.” A little smile played across his lips. “My sister’s gone, but you’re still around. I can still help you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t want to feel like I was taking advantage of a grieving man, didn’t want him to think that I was pulling him along deeper into this hell with me—but then again, he seemed to think that helping me could redeem him somehow. And truthfully, I needed his help more than anything in the world, and wanted him around me.

“Come on,” I said, turned toward Mercy. “I want to visit with my mom.”

He nodded, dropped my hand, and headed out again. I hurried to keep up, trying to picture what it must have been like for him, standing in a morgue and staring at the destroyed face of his dead sister, trying to come to grips with the fact of her death, with the truth of his future without her—and trying to do the same thing for my own life and my own mother.* * *I sat on a plastic chair and leaned forward, elbows on the bed. Mom’s hand felt like rubber wrapped around a skeleton. Her chest rose and fell in time with the beeping machines and she didn’t move, didn’t stir.

“The wedding was surprisingly nice,” I said, stroking her palm with my fingers. It was a strange sensation, touching her like that, but I felt close with her and always had, and I halfway hoped that by tickling her, by giving her some sort of sensation to grab on to, maybe it could help pull her back out of the darkness and bring her back to me.

“I wore black though,” I said, laughing. “I didn’t feel right wearing white, you know? Since it wasn’t a real wedding. But he gave me this enormous engagement ring, and a nice band, and, I mean, we kissed, you know, during the ceremony.” I blushed a little, feeling stupid. She couldn’t hear me, so it was probably okay to tell her this. I didn’t talk to my mother about boys, although there hadn’t been many boys in my life. A few kisses here or there in high school, but no real boyfriends, nothing too intense. “I liked that part. I thought it’d be weird, since he’s a total stranger, but he makes me feel seen and heard, and that kiss was… it was just right. It felt really good.” I laughed again and shook my head. “I think I’m crazy, but I can’t help it.”

I heard a noise behind me and half turned, heart rate jumping. The privacy curtain was pulled around my mother’s bed and her room’s door was shut, so I couldn’t see who came in. I figured it was Fiona or one of the other nurses, come to check on Mom—but instead the curtain pulled back, and Cosimo smiled in at me.

Tags: B.B. Hamel Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net