2. Cori
Chapter two
Cori
PRESENT DAY
M y best friend Britta had borrowed my SUV for the weekend to go camping, so I ended up taking two rideshares to get home after the party.
The first was to the Chipotle in the U District, where I picked up a burrito—chicken, because their carnitas never tasted quite right—and a large order of chips and guac.
The second drove me to my house in Wallingford.
Last year, I’d moved into the new-build, row-house-style fourplex near Meridian Park.
There weren’t many houses like this in Seattle, where the front door hugged the sidewalk.
My home was a testament to the city’s chaotic decades-long building boom.
Whenever one beautiful old Craftsman went down, four to six whatever-was-popular-at-the-moment-style townhomes or condos went up.
But even if my sideways shoebox of a house looked a little odd, I loved the place. Its three bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths were a step up from the downtown apartment I’d been renting. I preferred the quieter neighborhood too.
I told the driver to drop me off on the corner so he wouldn’t need to worry about navigating the one-way street.
As I approached my door, I saw a familiar figure sitting on the front steps.
He was hunched and trembling, elbows on his thighs, forehead resting against his clenched fists.
I recognized the dark gray jeans with holes in the knees and tattered sweatshirt as the same outfit he’d been wearing the last time I saw him, over a month ago.
Did he even have a spare change of clothes?
He must have heard my heels striking the sidewalk, but didn’t look up to acknowledge me until I stood directly in front of him.
“Johnny.”
“Hey, Sis.”
His red-rimmed eyes appeared vacant and bloodshot.
He ran a shaky hand across his face. I smelled the acidic rankness of his clothing.
Or possibly his body. I had no idea where he was living these days, let alone whether he had access to a proper shower.
Band-Aids wrapped around most of his knuckles, and scabs lined his jaw, along with several open sores.
It didn’t take much deductive power to conclude that my brother had been using.
“What are you doing here?” I asked gently but with an edge in my tone.
“Ouch. Do I need a reason? Maybe I just wanted to visit.”
I hmphed. At least he was cognizant. Coming down, I guessed, based on how hard he shivered in the mild air.
“You don’t need a reason. You just usually have one.” I gave him a half smile as I stepped past to open the door, motioning for him to follow me inside. I glanced around to see if any of the neighbors were watching.
Johnny clocked the move. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“Sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be.” He waved his arm around as he sat down at my tiny kitchen table.
“I’m fucking proud to have a little sister like you, who lives in a neighborhood where I stick out like a dookie in a fruit basket.
” He sighed as I removed the food from the bag.
“Better you be ashamed of me than like me.”
“I’m not ashamed of you, J.”
He pressed his lips together, letting the untruth pass.
I wasn’t ashamed, exactly, but I’d certainly done my best since college to distance myself from him.
Between his short stints in jail or rehab, Johnny had been like a ghost in my life for most of the past decade, slipping in and out without truly being a part of it.
He’d only met Marcus once before my former fiancé and I ended things, and I’d never introduced him to any of my other friends or JBC colleagues.
I broke the rule about unwrapping the foil from the burrito as I put it on a plate and sawed it in half.
“Will you eat something?” I asked.
“Nah,” Johnny replied. “Already ate.” He leaned back and patted out a quick rhythm on his stomach.
I grimaced. At five foot eleven, he weighed maybe one forty soaking wet, the purple veins under his pale skin protruding and ghoulish.
In another world, he was healthy and filled out, with a full set of teeth.
But even missing a few molars—mercifully, all his front teeth remained—his smile still charmed as he beamed at me. Johnny was a good person underneath the addiction, and I mourned the loss of the brother I could barely remember.
I sat down with my food across from him. He took the soda I offered. As I ate, he rubbed the fingers of one hand over the knuckles of the other, and I gestured toward the Band-Aids I’d noticed earlier. “Get in a fight?”
“Ah…no. Just some friends messing around with poke and stick tattoos.” He darted his eyes from side to side and wrung his palms.
“Look, J, it’s nice to see you. I mean that,” I said honestly. “And we can sit and shoot the breeze or whatever if that’s what you want… Or maybe you should just tell me why you’re here.” His eyes appeared conflicted, almost guilty, so I added bluntly, “You know I can’t give you any money.”
He startled at my candor, then exhaled. I’d learned the hard way that any money I gave him went straight into his pipe or his veins, so I hadn’t made that mistake in a long time.
I still tried to buy him clothes or meals when he’d let me, and I occasionally paid a landlord directly on his behalf during the few periods when he was sober enough to live in steady housing.
As far as I knew, he’d been couch-surfing or unhoused for the better part of a year.
The thought of him sleeping on the street or in those awful tent encampments horrified me, but I was aware he did that sometimes when he used.
I’d never let him stay with me longer than a night or two—mostly because he refused to get clean, but also because I hadn’t wanted my worlds to collide.
I’d been riding the fine line between loving my brother and keeping him separate from the rest of my life since college.
Johnny didn’t say anything, so I assumed I’d guessed correctly. But I spared him the indignity of forcing him to admit he’d come to ask for money. I took a bite of chicken, chewing thoughtfully as some of the tension left the air.
“Can I crash on your couch tonight?” he asked after a minute.
“Yeah. You can stay a few nights if you need to, as long as you don’t bring any stuff into my house.” He nodded, and I nudged the tortilla chip bag his way, raising my eyebrows in challenge.
Johnny let out a lazy chuckle. “Fine.” He took a chip, bringing it to his mouth dramatically before chomping down. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed, licking his lips. “This is fucking delicious.”
My cheeks lifted. “I know. I can’t tell if it’s the lime or the salt or what, but the chips are the star of the show.”
Johnny snatched the bag from my hand, and I watched with satisfaction as he ate almost the entire thing.
He even took a few bites of my burrito. It was the most I’d seen him eat in a while and it occurred to me that, with this new phase in my life, I could potentially spend more time with my brother without having to worry about compromising my carefully curated persona.
I wasn’t delusional that I could get him to clean up his act, but perhaps I could do more to ensure he ate and had clean clothes.
We sat for a while, and I told him about JBC and the acquisition. I laughed out loud when my brother became the last person that day to ask if I was sure about not going to TremMark.
After attempting to find out what he’d been up to the past few weeks—questions he’d brushed off by turning the conversation back to me—I gave up. I doubted it was anything I’d want to hear about anyway. I focused instead on having him here in my living room, sober-adjacent and happy for the moment.
He refused the guest bedroom, so I made up the couch while he took a shower. We watched a replay of the Mariners game before going to bed, and I realized I hadn’t spent time like this with my brother in ages.
In the morning, I discovered the blankets folded neatly on the couch. Johnny was nowhere to be seen. I tried not to be upset. At least we’d had a great night. Hopefully, there would be more soon.
I looked around the living room, attempting to decide what to do with the rest of my Saturday. It would be strange adjusting to not working, even on weekends. Perhaps I’d travel or do some volunteering, maybe catch up on watching all those Marvel movies Jason and Brad loved so much.
I decided to treat myself to coffee and a pastry from the little place a few blocks away.
Slipping on jeans and a light sweater—Prada, but at least it was casual—I gathered my hair into a ponytail. I grabbed the purse I’d used yesterday off the kitchen counter, humming when I observed it clashed with my outfit.
By the time I pulled out my wallet to pay for a soy latte and double chocolate muffin, an indulgence I planned to make more of a habit, I felt almost giddy.
But when I reached for my credit card to use in the old-fashioned reader, I encountered only a leather sleeve where a plastic rectangle should have been.
Knock, knock… twenty seconds …ding-dong…
I alternated knocking on the door with stabbing my index finger against the doorbell.
I’d been expecting the location to be a little seedier, picturing Johnny’s usual friends, but once the rideshare dropped me off in front of this bungalow in a suburb north of the city, there was no turning back.
This was the only lead I had to find my brother.
The barista at the coffeehouse had been nice about giving me their biggest muffin. I think she’d sensed my frustration when I’d had to dig out my backup card to pay for breakfast.
Johnny didn’t have a phone, so the best clue I had as to his whereabouts was this single-story olive-green house with neatly cut grass and freshly painted cream trim.
About six weeks ago, he’d shown up on my doorstep looking for a place to crash.
I’d been handling a lot of meetings and paperwork from home at the time, shepherding the acquisition, and I was worried one of my coworkers might show up.
I'd only let Johnny in long enough for him to tell me it was cool, that he could stay with a friend instead.
Feeling guilty, I offered to send him there in a car, using my app, and this was the address he'd given me.
Knock, knock… twenty seconds …ding-dong…
Why wasn’t anybody answering? A huge construction truck and a little sedan sat in the driveway.
Someone had to be home, right? It was eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, a time when most humans were awake.
Of course, based on my brother’s track record with his friends, everyone on the other side of the door might be passed out.
I’d gone online to cancel my card and saw transactions for large purchases made at two local department stores, as well as several online retailers.
Apparently, Johnny’s plan was to get money through reselling, a scheme that had landed him in jail for a short time in his early twenties.
The credit card company offered to open an investigation to dispute those charges, but I didn’t want to create a situation where Johnny might be in real trouble if things escalated.
I simply told them I believed my card was compromised and asked for a new one.
Leaving it there had been an option. I could have chosen to move on from the fact my brother had stolen from me and gone about my day, lesson learned.
After all, I’d spent a lifetime perfecting the art of not getting sucked into his problems. I could lock up my purse the next time he came around, and we could both pretend this never happened.
But, dammit, I thought we’d turned a corner last night.
My mind kept drifting to our easy conversation, the best one we’d had in years. Laughing over dinner. Had it been hard for him to steal from me after that? I pictured the blankets folded on the couch this morning and imagined it had.
But I needed to know for sure. I needed him to say he was sorry. Too bad for Johnny, I’d just abandoned the script I’d used to guide my entire adulthood. And like my colleagues at JBC, my brother was in for a surprise. I wouldn’t be letting him walk all over me just to maintain appearances.
Knock, knock.
Ding-dong.
I paced back and forth on the small front porch.
An old man in enormous glasses peered at me from behind the curtains next door, and a woman pushing a stroller gave me the side-eye as she passed.
For all I knew, Johnny had punched in a random address and didn’t even know this house.
I wished someone would answer the door so I could find out.
I wanted to have this conversation with my brother and bring things to a head for a change. To engage in the conflict instead of avoiding it.
The minutes ticked by. Still nothing.
Shaking my head, I exhaled in defeat. Clearly, whoever lived here wasn’t home.
I turned to leave when I heard feet shuffling toward the door on the other side. Finally! A sign of life—hurrah! The deadbolt clicked, and I gathered myself in time to see a man silhouetted behind the screen.
“Sorry,” he said, moving to unlock it. “I was in the backyard and didn’t hear the bell at first.”
As the door opened, I straightened.
“That’s okay.” I yanked my purse onto my shoulder, positioning a hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun. “Sorry to bother you. I’m looking for—” I stopped cold as he stepped into the doorway. Disbelief clouded my mind. “Oh my god…” My arm lowered in slow motion. “Deck?”
Either the stress of the past few days had caused an intense hallucination, or Arturo Decker stood right in front of me.
My heart hammered. The sensation of tightening lungs gripped me, binding my chest like an iron band. A shockwave traveled down my spine.
“Deck?” I whispered again.
He stared at me, slack-jawed. His dark brown eyes blinked, then blinked again.
Those eyes. Big and round and stormy. With the soulful gaze that had fueled so many of my teenage daydreams.
For twelve years, I’d tried to forget those eyes. Tried to forget the haunted look he’d given me the last night I’d seen him.
The worst night of my life.