A shadow moves across his eyes. “I agreed. In the beginning.” Hearing this is like swallowing glass. It has to feel the same way to say it. “Not so at the end.”
“But…” I’m beginning to understand something, and I don’t want to. A long time ago, I got involved with her. “When did this happen?”
“Daphne…”
“When?”
“When I was fourteen.”
I stand up without knowing why. Leo crosses the room and picks up something from the floor. A wastebasket that sits at the side of my desk.
“That’s too young,” I manage, and then bile surges up along with my dinner.
He holds my hair back from my face. And that’s maybe the worst thing. That he’s standing here saying things like it’s okay, Daph and don’t worry and I know when it’s him who has to live with it, and I didn’t know, I didn’t know. When it’s over I burst into tears.
Most of my memories from that time are hazy and indistinct, but there are a few that stand out in perfect clarity. Me, standing at the side of Leo’s bed, shaking him and shaking him. I’d had a bad dream. I’d dreamed I was still in trouble from earlier in the week. But he wouldn’t wake up. He looked too pale, too deeply asleep, and that scared me more than the dream did.
Leo goes to the door and murmurs something to someone waiting outside, and then he takes me through to the connecting bathroom. He puts toothpaste on my toothbrush and gets an elastic for my hair and collects a glass for water.
I can’t stop crying. I’ve had a lot of practice turning off tears, but this time I can’t do it. He takes me back to the bedroom and waits while I sit at the side of the bed. Then he pulls up the chair from the desk.
He doesn’t lean back in his chair, and I notice it now. All the times I’ve seen him. In his house. In our parents’ house. He’s never tossed himself onto a couch or sat back in a church pew.
“Does it still hurt?” I want him to tell me it doesn’t. That it looks worse than it is.
“It’s hurt every day since it happened, Daph. My nerves are all fucked up.”
“Jesus.” I wipe away more tears. I might not be able to stop but I don’t have to sob. Hurt coils around my heart. “Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
That yes, from him, might as well be a novel on how badly it hurts. He would never admit it if it wasn’t terrible. “Am I the only one who didn’t know?”
“No.” He looks me in the eye. “I’ve told a very limited number of people. Eva and Haley. Gerard and Mrs. Page.”
“But not me.”
“Daphne.” More hurt wells up at his tone. So damn gentle. “You were five.”
“I’m not five now.”
“I’m telling you now.” His eyes flash, and my stomach crumples again. I am asking too much. “Jesus. I never wanted to tell anyone in the first place.”
“Why did you tell Eva, then? Because she could handle it, right?” And I couldn’t, no matter how old I got. He is my favorite brother. That doesn’t mean he owes me his secrets. But he’s been wrapped in pain for years and years, and I never noticed. How could I have missed so much?
He takes a breath and his gaze slips away again. Something’s happening in his mind. To keep himself in control. I’ve seen him do this a hundred times. A thousand. I never knew what he was thinking about.
“Eva only knows because she was standing in the foyer when I got home. There was no hiding it. The blood had soaked through my jacket.”
Another memory whispers by. The hallway at my parents’ house as a child. Frozen in place on the way to the bathroom. I’d heard a ghost. It sounded horrible to be a ghost. Like it hurt.
“There’s no way she fixed that.” Eva’s only a little bit older than Leo, and definitely not a doctor. “You had to go somewhere.”
“I didn’t. We used rubbing alcohol.”
Agony. It had to be agony. “And that was enough?”
“No. It got infected afterward. She had to drive me to the hospital while everyone else was out of the house.”
“Oh my god. Was that—” Eva sitting next to me on the couch in one of the sitting rooms with her arm around me. It’s just a trip for school, she said. He’ll be back soon. “That was the trip for school.”
Leo’s mouth hints at a smile. “I’m surprised you remember that.”
I’ll never forget the trip for school.
I don’t want to tell him why.
“I remember more than you think.”
His expression sobers. “I’m sure you do.”
“You should have told me.” My tears feel like plain salt now, burning into my skin. “You should have let me choose.”
My brother reaches for my hand and holds it. “There wasn’t a lot of choice to go around.”
“You should have let all of us choose.” Because. “You fought with Dad. You got hurt. And now I find out—now I find out it’s on top of this.”
“That was the deal,” Leo says. “The more he came after me, the less he came after you.”
“You could have said—”
He very nearly laughs. “Could have said what? By the way, Daphne, Caroline Constantine attacked me. Could Dad beat the shit out of you this time?” Leo shakes his head. “No.”
“Leo.”
“I was trying to give you a chance.”
“To do what?”
“To be anybody in the world. Anyone you wanted to be.” His voice thins out. “I didn’t want you to have to be me. Angry all the time. Hurt all the time. It’s exhausting.” He squeezes my hand, and it’s like watching a house of cards tumble to the ground. I’ve always seen Leo as invincible. Practically all-powerful. I didn’t think about the cost. And this—this is costing him. There’s a tension around his eyes that I assumed was irritation, but it’s not. I know now. It’s pain. “I can’t let it happen, Daphne. I can’t let this collector take anything from you against your will.”
I stand up, and so does he, and this time when I hug him, I hesitate. He’s always moving my arms at the last second. Always with his guard up. I thought it was because he was ticklish, or something like that, but it’s the scars. My heart breaks all over again.
“I wish you would have told me. It hurts that you didn’t say anything.”
“I know.”
“I’m still kind of mad.”
“I know that, too.”
I’m not going to fight him on this anymore. I’ll stay. Guilt coats the insides of my lungs. It’s hard to breathe like this. It was probably harder for Leo, all these years. It’s the smaller moments that make me want to sob right now. I can picture Eva’s face when he stepped into the foyer. The moment the rubbing alcohol touched his skin. Blood on the hem of a shirt. I imagine the ocean washing these thoughts away so I can sleep tonight. How has he lived like this? How?
“Are you pissed at me?”
Leo huffs a laugh, but it sounds sad. “No, sister mine. I’m not.”
Chapter Fifteen