Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
EREZ
There are a dozen large paintings around the room. On easels. Leaning against the walls. Floors. Furniture. Hanging on the walls. Stacked. Lying on the bed. On the windowsills.
Smaller ones of various sizes cover every surface.
The subject matter changes throughout. Sometimes they’re of us—my brothers, parents, and me. Sometimes they’re of animals. There are landscapes, objects, and imaginary worlds. Alice’s muse was all over the place.
No matter how often I look though, I don’t see a message hidden in the flowers or written in the clouds.
I’ve spent hours looking over every single inch, but I don’t see even a hint of black anywhere.
Shadows are made with different colors. Deep maroon or navy blue.
Royal plum and forest green. Not even pupils are black.
They look black from a distance, but they’re not black.
Beside the door is a trash bin holding three empty black acrylic paint tubes and an empty plastic cup. It’s been sitting there for almost ten years now.
Three tubes of black and not a smidge of black anywhere.
A shadow falls into the room, and I glance up, knowing exactly who I’m going to find. I’m not wrong. My youngest brother, Zephyr, stands there watching me for just a minute. Then he bows his head and joins me on the floor.
He kept his promise. For the past three months, we’ve practically dissected Alice’s room looking for a message I feel in my gut is here somewhere. A scrap of paper. Writing on her bedframe or inside a drawer. Rolled up within her clothes. Hidden in her closet.
We combed through literally every fucking centimeter of this room, being careful to put everything back exactly how we found it.
There’s nothing here.
We’ve had his lover, Matty, who talks to ghosts, in here more than a dozen times, looking for Alice. Looking for a ghost who was here in the last minutes of Alice’s life. Or was here to witness what we didn’t see.
Nothing. Matty says he’s never seen a place so empty of the dead.
I don’t know what that means, but it’s fucking frustrating.
Zephyr wraps an arm around my back and leans his head against mine.
At the beginning of November, he promised me that if I stayed out of Alice’s room until he returned home after the new year, he’d help me look for something Alice left behind.
He wouldn’t stop looking until we found it or until I was convinced that there’s nothing here.
All the evidence suggests there’s nothing here, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing it. Maybe it’s right in front of me. Maybe we need to line up all the paintings in a certain order so they’ll spell something out. Maybe she gave the painting with the message to a friend before she died.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
I’m waiting for Zephyr to tell me I need to accept that there’s nothing to find. I think he wants to say so, but he won’t. Because he promised that he’d be by my side and support me while I looked until I said we were done.
“Want to look through the closet again?” Zephyr asks.
I shake my head. “I think they’re in the paintings.”
“What do you think the chances are that the message is under the painting we see?” he asks. “Like, she put it on the canvas then covered it with something else?”
I chew the inside of my lip as I stare at the one directly in front of me. There’s a wolf girl in a field of flowers, looking up at the cotton candy cloud sky with laughter.
“What if we’re supposed to interpret what they mean?” I gesture to the wolf girl. “Is that supposed to be Alice? Did she see herself with a monster inside her, so the painting reflects what’s on the inside?”
“That wolf girl is laughing,” Zephyr points out.
“Maybe that’s what she wished she was. Strong like a wolf.”
Zephyr nods absently. He’s not buying this idea.
“You find anything?” I ask.
My brother is a private investigator with Van Doren Technologies.
Though he doesn’t work often, sometimes he takes on a project.
I gathered the courage to ask him to look into Alice and finally told him whereI found her.
How. The man I shoved into the street—who was killed in the collision that day.
I’m not in the least bit sorry.
That man is the only true fact we have, though. We know his identity. The truth is, Alice didn’t know her parents’ names. She had no idea how she came into the possession of that man, though I think she left out details.
There had been comments here and there that suggest she didn’t tell me the whole truth. I believe she didn’t know her parents or didn’t remember them. She doesn’t know how she was separated from them. She didn’t know her name. She chose Alice because she enjoyed when I read Alice in Wonderland.
We chose that name together, and that’s what I offered my family.
It took Alice several years before she’d talk, but not because she didn’t know how. She was mute. After she died, I looked into situational mutism and found that a lot of people become mute in response to trauma, which makes sense given how I found her.
“Nothing new,” he answers. “Do you think she actually knew her name?” This isn’t the first time he’s asked this question.
It took me half a dozen paintings to realize that Zeph was looking for a signature that read anything other than Alice Deth. However, she only signed about half of the paintings she created. I wasn’t sure if that meant the others weren’t finished or… She didn’t want to claim them?
“Maybe there’s a connection with the paintings she signed and those she didn’t?” I muse out loud.
Zephyr pushes himself to his feet. “Let’s find out.”
We spend the next hour organizing the paintings in Alice’s room into two piles—signed and unsigned. Is there a pattern? A common theme? Hell, is there a common color?
The sun is beginning to set by the time I admit defeat and lean against the wall to stare at them from a distance. There’s no puzzle to solve here. While I still think Alice left something for me to find, I don’t think it’s in the paintings.
Zephyr stands at my side and wraps his arm around my back again. I lean into his side, feeling fucking defeated.
“She’s laughing at us right now,” Zeph says quietly. “I bet you can hear it. She left it where she was sure we’d find it. A decade later, we’re still looking. She’d be telling us we’re being dumb boys.”
I smile. Alice’s teasing voice saying, “You’re such dumb boys—it’s right there!” flutters through my head. Tears sting my eyes. I haven’t cried in years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel them prickle almost every other day.
“I can almost see her pointing.” My eyes turn toward the desk. The desk we’ve been under and pulled every single drawer out of.
Zephyr laughs. “Right. Next time, she’s going to cuff us upside the head.”
My smile climbs. Alice pushed us, but it was always teasingly.
Sometimes, I thought she remembered the way I shoved that man away from her and into oncoming traffic to save her.
Me, a child, proving to her that even as a small kid, we had strength and power.
We could protect those around us. I think her pushing and gentle cuffs were Alice testing the confidence she had in her ability to protect herself.
It’s easy to make up all kinds of stories now that she’s not here. Maybe romanticize memories. Give purpose and definition to little moments or colors that are far deeper than what they actually were.
“Want to come over for dinner?” Zephyr asks.
I nod. “Yeah. Maybe fresh eyes will help.”
He doesn’t argue even though he’s probably tired of this misguided hunt. He kept his promise, and I should let him off the hook. However, every time I think I need to tell him we can stop, words fail. I don’t want to stop. There is something here! Selfishly, I want Zeph’s help.
Zeph pulls me into his car instead of allowing me to drive my own. He doesn’t live far, but between the start of rush-hour traffic and the ridiculous number of lights, it’s almost twenty minutes to his apartment.
“Liam find a job yet?” I ask.
He smiles, and for a minute, I stare at his smile. My brother is happy. He’s one of those guys who’s always laughing. He jokes and follows the good times. There isn’t a serious bone in his body.
It wasn’t until he disappeared for almost four months onto Dark Island that I realized how much of my brother’s personality was an act. He was hiding. No one looks too closely at a man who always has a smile on his face.
In his absence, I realized how much I was failing Zephyr. He needed someone to see the broken pieces inside him, but I’d been struggling with my own so I didn’t see his.
He asked me to come out to Dark Island for Thanksgiving, and I did. It was the first time that I saw my brother finally begin to heal. I witnessed real smiles. Genuine laughter.
I’m still not entirely sure what caused all his cracks. Have they been there since Alice’s death? Longer? Were there others mixed in, criss-crossing and making them as deep as canyons? I’ve wanted to ask, but I haven’t had the courage to do so.
“Nah. I think he’s enjoying taking care of us,” Zephyr says, his smile wide.
He came home with three lovers, which was something I hadn’t anticipated happening.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see Zephyr settle down with a single person, never mind three.
Then again, now I can’t imagine him in any other situation with any other people.
They just… fit together. They very obviously complete each other.
“His calling in life is a boywife, huh?”
Zephyr laughs loudly. “Oh, please. Please. Call him a boywife.”
Liam comes from wealth. His family is very traditional in their roles and traditions and whatever. They never cared that he was gay, from what I understand, but that didn’t mean the expectations placed on him changed.
So yeah, I can see how calling him a boywife would make him twitch. This will now be my newest favorite thing. I can already tell.
“What about Darwin? Matty?”
He hums. “Matty just completed his first shoot since leaving Dark Island, and I think he’s on cloud nine. I’m not sure he realized how much he missed photography. Which, of course, makes Liam feel a whole new round of guilt.”
I’m still not entirely sure what the full situation is. From what I understand, something Liam did caused Matty to be exiled on Dark Island where he was essentially a prisoner. I’ve never asked for details, and quite frankly, I’m not sure I want to know.
“Maybe he needs to help Matty rebuild his career. If he feels new guilt for causing him to lose it initially, helping him grow it again might heal a little of that.”
Zephyr tilts his head. “I like that idea. Add that suggestion after you call him a boywife to soften the blow.”
I snort.
“Dar is… I think he’s still struggling to find something he wants to do.
I’m not sure he’s found the means to realize that he’s not actually living in his parents’ shadows.
His parents don’t care what he does; they’ll love and support and praise him even if he simply wants to adopt cats for the rest of his life.
But he’s not able to accept that yet. He still feels like he’s failing their legacy. ”
“No offense meant, but I’m glad our parents are just…” Murderers. It’s difficult to feel like we have big shoes to fill.
Yet, in some sense, we do. When they were younger, they went on a road trip of vengeance and killed every single person who had ever bullied our mom during her childhood.
It’s the epitome of love, in my opinion.
Maybe it’s twisted, but considering one of our dads is an undiagnosed psychopath, I think it says a lot.
He hums in response. “In a way, I think Lan and I have already carried on their legacy. In different ways, of course.”
I nod absently as I watch people move with purpose down the sidewalk while we wait at a red light. Lanzo works in the tech department of Van Doren Estates. Lanzo, like our Dadaz, is a psychopath—diagnosed, though I’m not going to pretend he’s a tamed psychopath, either. There’s no such thing.
Both of my brothers take out the trash, so to speak, for different reasons and in different capacities.
Sometimes, I wonder if our parents wished I would also follow in their footsteps.
I think I went in the direction I did because it brings me closer to Alice.
Art was something we were passionate about together.
“I don’t,” I say quietly.
“You carry on Alice’s legacy,” Zephyr says, and my gut clenches.
“Do I?”
“Absolutely. She would be so fucking proud of you, Erez.”
I release a slow breath and smile. A little. I think he’s right. She loved to watch me draw.
Zephyr pulls into the parking lot of his apartment building.
It’s a large converted factory that I honestly love.
There are times I consider moving into one of the vacant apartments, but I don’t because I don’t want Zeph to feel like I’m smothering him.
I live just down the road from our parents’ house. From Alice’s room.
They’re still in the studio apartment that Zephyr had before it was four of them living under one roof.
It’s a very large studio, so it doesn’t exactly feel crowded.
I keep waiting for their arguing to begin since they’re always right on top of each other, but over the past four months, I’ve started to think their close proximity is by design.
I think they have a lot of loneliness that they’re making up for now.
Matty is on the couch with his laptop on his lap. Darwin is in the kitchen with Liam, prepping dinner.
“I brought one more mouth to feed,” Zephyr announces when we walk through the door.
None of his partners are surprised in the least to see me.
Zeph nudges me and gestures his head toward Liam. Say it. Say it!
He’s wearing an apron because he’s frying something, which I think is a good enough opening. “You know,” I say, gathering everyone’s attention. Liam meets my eyes. “It’s nice to see you embrace the role of boywife.”
The hand that had been stirring whatever’s beside the deep pot of frying foods pauses. His eyes narrow. Matty giggles loudly before slapping a hand over his mouth.
“Boywife,” Liam repeats in a deadpan tone.
“It’s a thing. Look it up.”
He sighs heavily, but I think it’s all for show. His gaze meets Zephyr’s, and a smile twitches on his lips. Then his attention is back to the contents on the stove.
I’m glad to be here tonight. I love spending time with Zephyr and his guys.