Brandi nodded. “Absolutely. Your turn, Jim.”
“Also grateful to be here like this,” Dad said. “Because for a moment there it looked…Oh God. Sorry, guys.” Dad’s eyes had started to tear up, and now he was wiping it away.
“It’s okay, Jim,” Brandi said. Mom patted his back.
Dad took a deep breath, laughed a little at himself. “Sorry again. Don’t know what got into me. I guess it wasn’t that long ago that Laura and I were sitting at this table with the police, them telling us…” Dad took another deep breath. “Them saying we couldn’t give up hope, but the fact that they were saying that…it just felt like they were starting to lose hope. And we had to stare into that abyss and hope that somewhere in there, Aidan would take shape. Which he did. It’s all good again.”
Brandi was getting a little teary too. When I snuck a look at Aidan, he looked something between embarrassed and horrified.
“Your turn, Lucas,” Brandi said.
“Glad to have Aidan back, duh.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I wish I had one of those devices from Men in Black that can erase everyone’s memories. I’d love everyone to forget the past week, so we could really be back to normal instead of this normal but we’re now in.”
“What do you mean, normal but?”
I thought it was obvious. But I reminded myself that Aunt Brandi wasn’t living with us, so she wouldn’t necessarily know.
“Normal but everyone’s looking at us funny,” I explained. “Normal but there are all these questions that nobody’s asking, but you can tell they really, really want to ask them. Normal but we were kinda on the news last week, and that doesn’t disappear when you change the channel. Normal that we’re a family again, but…we also have to deal with this big thing that happened to us.”
“That makes perfect sense to me,” Brandi said.
“Me too,” Dad added, reaching over and messing my hair. “We’d all like to get rid of that pesky but.”
Normally, Aidan would be all over Dad using the phrase “pesky but”—I half suspected Dad had said it just so Aidan could laugh at its resemblance to pesky butt. But Aidan didn’t say a word.
At least not until Brandi turned to ask how he was doing. Before she could get a sentence out, he asked her, “So how are you doing?”
“Happy to be here, honestly,” Brandi replied. “Things like this make you realize where you need to be. And I haven’t been around enough.”
“Oh, come on,” Mom said. “You’re here plenty.”
Brandi laughed, so I figured Mom was teasing. Or Brandi just refused to be offended by the accusation that she was around too much.
“Can I be excused?” Aidan asked.
This made Brandi laugh even louder. Then she sucked some dried frosting off her fingers and said, “No way, dude. It’s your turn. So tell your auntie what’s going on in that bright head of yours.”
“There’s no way for you to understand.”
“Tell me.”
“First, you tell me…do you think I’m lying, like my parents do?”
“We don’t think you’re lying,” Dad jumped in and said.
Mom shushed him. “Let Brandi answer, Jim.”
Aunt Brandi pushed her chair back and scooted it so she was facing Aidan directly. He turned her way.
“I’m going to be honest with you, kid, because I don’t know any other way to be. I don’t think you’re lying on purpose. I think you absolutely believe what you’re saying. And I respect that. Completely. But do I believe it’s true? Again, if I’m being honest, the answer is: I have no idea. It stretches credibility—but life stretches credibility all the time, to the point that credibility doesn’t have much credibility left, you know? What concerns me is that a lot of the time when we believe a story that’s fantastic, it’s in order to cover over something really traumatic that’s happened. I am worried that someone hurt you, or that you hurt yourself, and that if the hurt isn’t addressed, it’s only going to get worse. I’ve tried to bury things, Aidan, and I can tell you—it doesn’t work. Burying something doesn’t take away the weight of it. It only pushes the weight deeper and makes it harder to carry around.”
Aunt Brandi stopped and reached over to turn Aidan’s chin so he was facing her perfectly.
“Do you hear me?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Good. Now…it’s your turn. How are you doing?”
“I’m sad.”
“And why are you sad?”
“Because I’m here.”
“Do you mean in the kitchen right now, forced to have this conversation? Or do you mean here as opposed to there.”
Aidan looked away from her, down to his lap. “I mean here as opposed to there.”
“That’s an awful thing to say!” Mom exclaimed at the same time Dad said, “Aw, Aidan, no.”
Brandi ignored them. “That’s hard, Aidan.”
When he looked back up this time, he was angry.
“I know that,” he said, standing up. “None of you know! None of you were there! It’s better, the way they do things—and it makes you realize how awfully we do things here, okay? They know how to get along with each other. And let people do their own thing. Not like here. None of you have any idea.”
He ran out of the room then. I thought he’d go to our room, but the footsteps kept going, up to the attic.
Mom and Dad both stood up.
“No,” Aunt Brandi said. “Let him be alone for a little bit.”
“Brandi,” Mom said coolly, “that’s not your call.” She dropped her napkin on the table and headed upstairs, Dad following.
“Well, that went well!” Brandi said to me. “Want another cinnamon roll?”
I shook my head.
“Nah, me neither.” She gave me a look similar to the one she’d just given Aidan, all this intense concentration. “Has he been talking to you?”
“A little,” I said. “At night.”
“That’s good. And how does he seem to you?”
I thought about how all the fun of life seemed to have drained away from him, how the brother I knew who was so boisterous and out in the open was now stuck in his own head…or maybe stuck in a place that could only exist in his head right now.