Whatever Will Be: Brother's Best Friend Romance Page 2

  I wonder what Trent has done. He is forever getting into trouble at school and anyone foolish enough to challenge him quickly understands that Trent doesn’t back down no matter how bloody and bruised everyone gets.

  The truth is, Trent makes me nervous. He’s not a loudmouth like Danny but I get the feeling there are things going on in his head that I wouldn’t want to hear about.

  Almost as if he can sense my critical thoughts, his face swivels in my direction. We stare at each other from behind separate panes of window glass.

  The day I started screaming in math class, Trent showed up right after Mrs. Reinholtz slapped me. Somehow my purse had fallen, spilling out makeup and tampons and hair scrunchies. Trent picked everything up without thinking twice. He handed my bag to me and then yelled at the kids crowding in the doorway that they ought to back the fuck up and keep quiet if they wanted to stay healthy.

  That was the only nice thing he’d ever done for me and I don’t think it matters that he almost certainly did it for Danny’s sake and not for mine.

  Jules inserts herself between Danny and the cop and she says something that makes the officer relax. Though Danny is far bigger than Jules, she succeeds in dragging him away from the scene.

  Trent’s eyes are still on me and he smirks, which is weird. I don’t see anything funny about what’s happening. He’s in the back of a Lake Stuart police car and I’m being taken to a mental health facility in Ithaca.

  Lately I’ve learned something about people. Sometimes they laugh at weird times.

  My mother laughed when she heard my father had accepted a plea deal that would mean spending twenty-five years at a state prison outside Syracuse. She only laughed for a few seconds before she tried to light a cigarette and couldn’t because her fingers shook too much to hold the lighter. She has filed for divorce already. She hasn’t gone to visit my father once and I don’t think she plans to.

  Danny slams the car door once he’s back inside and I feel sorry for him. If Trent’s in enough trouble to get sent away for a while, then Danny will really be on his own and he’s not used to being on his own.

  I turn around with the intention of reassuring him and then lose track of what I should say. I’d rather not lie and tell him everything will be all right when nothing is all right.

  Jules climbs behind the wheel again and I wonder when she began looking much older than eighteen. Once she leaves for college I don’t know how we’ll manage. Maybe Danny never argues with her anymore because he understands the same thing I’ve come to understand.

  Jules has become the glue struggling to keep the broken pieces of our lives connected.

  Liam Cassini is speaking to the officers now and I can only see the shadow of Trent’s head in the rear window of the police car. Danny scowls in the backseat with his arms crossed.

  Jules checks on me with a worried glance and smiles when she notices I’m already looking back at her. She drives away quickly so we don’t have to watch the aftermath of Trent’s arrest. Jules waits until we’ve turned a corner before she dips one hand into the slouchy black purse atop the armrest. She finds what she’s looking for quickly and passes it over.

  “I almost forgot, Abigail sent this for you.”

  Abigail Fisher’s impossibly bright smiles gleams up at me from the cover of Abigail Fisher’s Greatest Hits, all songs recorded many years before I was even born. Abigail Fisher speaks fondly of her Rosebriar years in interviews. She remembers my father as a little boy running amok through every corner of his grandfather’s resort. Every holiday season she sends us a colossal fruit and cheese basket. I suppose I ought to think of her as my benefactor since she’s footing the bill for my Ithaca stay.

  I pop open the case and a square of white paper falls out, blue ink written in old fashioned spidery script.

  “Whatever will be. Love, Abigail.”

  I stare at the words. I try to picture Abigail thinking for a long and meaningful moment before scratching her ballpoint pen across the piece of stationary bordered with pink roses.

  She might be saying that there’s no use in worrying over the future when uncertain events can ruin all your plans.

  Or she might be trying to offer hope that all will work out in the end.

  “It’s not fucking fair,” grumbles Danny and in a very un-Danny-like display of uncool temper, he punches his own seat three times.

  Jules’s mouth presses into a line for a second. She’s sad and she’s worried and she has been saddled with more heartache and responsibility than any high school senior should be but she’s also lucky. At least she’ll be able to escape to college in a couple of months.

  I know I’ll have to come back. And I know Jules has to leave. I don’t blame her for that.

  “You’re right,” says Jules. “It’s not fair. Now put your seatbelt on.” She double checks to make sure mine is fastened.

  I guess that’s what happens when you’re placed in charge of people who need you to take care of them. You become obsessed with strapping them into seatbelts.

  Danny punches the grey leather upholstery one more time and I think he’s acting like an overgrown toddler but I’m no one to judge these days. He clicks his seatbelt on and grows silent, probably thinking that with all the ways he’s been kicked in the teeth lately, the sight of his best friend being marched away in handcuffs just takes the cake.

  As we leave Lake Stuart behind, I flip Abigail Fisher’s Greatest Hits over and discover the name of the first song on the list.

  Whatever Will Be.

  Oh.

  That’s what she meant by the note.

  I don’t know why I have an urge to laugh.

  “We’ll stop for lunch along the way,” Jules promises. She moves her head to peer at our brother in the rearview mirror. “Does that sound all right, Dan-O?”

  Only our dad ever calls him that. But Jules is not trying to rub salt in the wound. She’s doing her best to substitute for the parents that none of us really have anymore. Our father is lost. And our mother never really liked being a mother in the first place. She likes it even less now.

  “Whatever,” Danny mutters.

  I turn around and see him back there, taking up more space than most men as he glares out the window. But his expression changes when he notices I’m looking and he tries to submit a smile of encouragement.

  Then my gaze shifts to my sister. Jules squints into the sunshine, her hands tight on the steering wheel.

  We’ve never been close, not any of us.

  Jules was always the busy big sister who outgrew childhood games early.

  Danny was the rough-and-tumble brother with no patience for sitting still.

  As for me, the baby of the family…

  I suppose I’ve been the immature nuisance; always nervous and far from daring.

  I’m very aware of where we’re going and why. However, I’m not unhappy, not right at this second.

  Because if we’re all walking through a nightmare, at least we’re walking through it together.

  The three of us.

  Jules tosses over another smile when I pop in Abigail’s CD. The throaty voice filling the car is made for mournful ballads of love and longing. I appreciate old music but I’m a hard rock kind of girl and love songs make me gag on all the dreamy romance in their lyrics.

  Still, I like the sound of Abigail’s voice and I can almost believe she’s telling a story that I’ll want to hear and so I keep listening.

  “Our past and our future.

  Kissed by the moon.

  Fate undivided.

  Whatever will be.”

  I know there is plenty to be unhappy about.

  But I also know I can count on the loyalty of my sister. And even my brother.

  I’m starting to hope that might be enough to help me stand tall against the storms on the horizon.

  1

  Trent

  I don’t know jack shit about funeral manners.

  Manners aren’t my p
riority, never have been.

  Yet I can’t shake the thought that I need to pay my respects.

  I haven’t been in contact with anyone from the family and this is why I’m thinking about manners and wondering if it’s a fucked up gate crashing move to go knock on a door an hour after the girl who lived there was buried far too young.

  Then again, a funeral isn’t a wedding or a tuxedo event. No one is shelling out three hundred bucks a plate and mailing out gold embossed invitations. When someone dies, you’re supposed to show up. That is, if you give a damn.

  And I do.

  Despite the fact that I haven’t seen Jules Aaronson in a hell of a long time, I was floored by the news she’d been killed in a car accident less than two miles from here on the night I returned to Lake Stuart. I even passed the scene and cursed the forced detour with no clue that a girl I grew up with had just lost her life.

  That was three days ago. This morning Julianne Aaronson, lifelong resident of Lake Stuart, was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery. I tried to force myself to attend the service and couldn’t. Woodlawn Cemetery is a place I’ve been to once and refuse to return to. That lone occasion was also a winter day, the day my mother was buried, but the month was December instead of February.

  The digital version of the Lake Stuart Gazette only gave lean details of the accident. The streetlights were out. A garbage truck was parked where it wasn’t supposed to be parked and the roads were caked with a sheet of black ice. There was a link to click if you wanted to offer typed condolences and I clicked on the link but typed nothing because ‘thoughts and prayers’ aren’t in my vocabulary. But there was also information on the funeral plans and a request to donate to a local animal shelter instead of sending overpriced flowers that no one cares about and will die the next day.

  Of course, I could have just called Danny instead of playing internet detective.

  This is what I should have done.

  The old days of childhood when we were the best of friends are long gone but we touch base now and then and I keep tabs on him. He spent some time playing college baseball in Michigan before being drafted into the major leagues. Danny’s lucky break came when he got called up from the minors after a wave of midseason player injuries left a gaping hole on the roster of the Boston Red Sox. His batting average that season was a personal best and he seemed destined for a seven figure multi-year contract and a permanent place in the sun.

  Then his unlucky break came when he collided with the catcher at home plate and suffered a gruesome knee injury. He’s been down in the minor leagues ever since, playing for a second rate league in Arizona, earning peanuts, and hoping for another shot at the brass ring.

  I haven’t seen him in a while and we don’t talk more than once or twice a year. Danny knows nothing about my return to Lake Stuart. He would have asked why the hell I’ve come back. The reason is a thorny one. It’s not worth thinking about today.

  No, today I’m going to pay a visit to a house I used to like much more than I liked my own. Today I’m going to face my old best friend and shake his hand before telling him I’m sorry as fuck that there was ice and a garbage truck.

  Worst of all, Jules left two little girls behind, which multiplies the heartbreak by a million.

  The Aaronson family has suffered some hard knocks long before this. Years ago, Danny’s father bludgeoned a summer tourist to death following a traffic dispute. His family was shocked to pieces but I wasn’t shocked at all. Alex Aaronson was a heavy drinker with a crazy temper. He probably still has a crazy temper but I doubt he’s allowed to drink himself silly in prison. Before my dad’s mind evaporated, he had to chase Alex Aaronson off the brewery grounds all the time because the guy would run up monstrous tabs at the bar and irritate the paying customers.

  The murder was Lake Stuart’s first one in something like thirty years and it was all anyone talked about. My fists got scraped up more than once from having Danny’s back when he had no choice but to shut people up when they decided to shoot their mouths off. As long as I live I’ll never understand what’s to be gained from kicking someone when they’re down but in high school it’s a regular old hobby. Jules seemed like she was able to brush off the noise and Danny was high enough on the social food chain that he could still hold his head up.

  His other sister was another story. Skinny, rabbit-faced little Gretchen was always wound up a little too tight and the stress got to her. One day she snapped, started shrieking her head off in the middle of class and got sent to some hospital for a little while.

  I lost track of what happened to her after that because my own life took a turn for the worse and the world of Lake Stuart became a memory. I guess Gretchen is all right now. Last time I heard from Danny he mentioned she was going to medical school.

  Or maybe it was business school.

  I forget.

  School isn’t a subject I take an interest in. Not since I got accused of a phony crime invented by a psychopath and sent to a place that included the word ‘school’ but was the opposite.

  But I swore this wasn’t a day to brood over fury and revenge and so I won’t.

  Just for today.

  From my vantage point at the floor to ceiling front window I can see cars beginning to arrive. They soon hog every inch of curb space and eject overdressed occupants who step stiffly across the ice in uncomfortable shoes. They’re all going to the same place; a two story grey shingle house that used to be more impressive before time and neglect had their way.

  Jules, for all her big dreams and fancy scholarship offers, never did leave.

  I guess she couldn’t.

  Sometimes life delivers a hand of really fucked up cards.

  As if on instinct, my eyes sharply jerk to the north. This real estate listing had boasted ‘spectacular lake views’ which is a goddamn joke because the lake can only be seen if you stand on a chair in the kitchen and try to squint between the tree branches. On a frigid day of clouds and fog like this one, the lake would be colorless and flat, not even worth looking at. But I have no complaint because I already knew all of this before I offered seventy-five grand above asking price. After all, this used to be my house, the one I grew up in. I’m already familiar with the views from every window so I wasn’t expecting to see water.

  I’m sure he can see all the water he wants to see.

  His house, built with a stolen inheritance, hogs a big piece of lakefront and boasts a private dock.

  This train of thought gets shut off deliberately, before I can choke on my own familiar rage.

  It’s time to take a walk down the street. Danny will be around for his sister’s funeral and if he wants to tell me to get lost then so be it.

  Approaching empty handed makes me feel like a dick. I probably should have brought flowers anyway, something colorful to battle the day’s ugly grief. The wind chill probably hovers in the single digits and I forgot a jacket but this level of cold isn’t the kind where you wonder if you’ll still be alive in an hour. That’s a kind of cold I’m familiar with, still dream about and wouldn’t wish on an enemy.

  No, that’s a crock of shit.

  I would wish it on him. His fingers, his limbs and even his cock could turn purple before snapping off and I’d fucking cheer.

  The Aaronson house looks worse up close. There are a handful of roof shingles missing and the front porch floorboards are chipped and loose. This is the oldest house on the block and looks the part in a bad way.

  Before I climb the wobbly four steps to the porch I watch a pair of people belted into black winter coats ring the doorbell while breathing out frost clouds. The man turns to the woman and asks, “How long do we need to stay?”

  “SHH!” scolds the woman and self-consciously pats the coil of blonde hair on her head.

  It’s only when they’ve gone inside that I realize I recognize her. We went to high school together. There are bound to be a lot of people here I’ll know. This isn’t a big town.

  I hesitate
to knock or ring the doorbell. I doubt I’ve ever done either one at this house. The back door leading to the kitchen was chronically unlocked and I’d just walk right through it with no regard for the time of day. Alex Aaronson, sloppily bearded and perpetually snacking on junk food, was a fixture on the living room couch. If he wasn’t passed out with his mouth open then he’d be sweating over the fate of some sporting event on the big screen television because he’d bet money on the outcome. He was never bothered by the sight of me and I’d get waved upstairs to Danny’s room by a chubby hand. Danny’s room was directly across the hall from Gretchen’s and Gretchen liked to keep her door open unless she saw that I was around.

  I have no idea why, but at the first echo of my footsteps Gretchen would bolt to her bedroom door and slam it in a panic, like she thought I was lurking nearby just to catch a glimpse of her flat chest and scrawny legs. They were not interesting and neither was Gretchen herself.

  I always thought of Danny’s kid sister as an underdeveloped little weirdo who might collapse into a coma if her report card contained a single B. However, I did feel pretty shitty the day she broke down. Gretchen was not a rotten person and it wasn’t her fault she was too fragile to deal with life. Some people just aren’t built to withstand punishment.

  At this point I’ve spent so much time standing around at the front door like a half frozen creep that eventually someone else comes along and wants to go inside.

  “Excuse us,” chimes a tinkling voice and a set of really old women peer up at me from beneath red wool hats that have been pushed all the way down over their ears. I can’t tell which of them spoke.

  “Sorry.” I step to the side and a mittened hand reaches out to press the doorbell.