CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CONNECTICUT, PRESENT DAY
“I will see you again.”
“No, you won't, Charlie.”
My head was held in my hands as I replayed those words on repeat, words I'd kept at bay for all these years.
Stormy held her arm around my shoulders, one hand clasped to my knee, while Ray brewed coffee and tea in the kitchen.
Noah had been ordered to take Miles out of the house, to find something to do with him around town and give the rest of us the quiet and space to handle things … as if there was something any of us could do about any of it. Still, I appreciated Ray's urgent order to her oldest son, and I appreciated Noah's lack of protest in spending the day with his much younger brother. Because it had been done out of respect for me, and that was something I could never take for granted.
And then there was Soldier. Sitting across from me on the coffee table, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped against his forehead. Telling me what he knew of my brother's last moments on earth instead of visiting his uncle in prison.
I didn't want to know what had happened while wanting to memorize every word until I felt like I'd been there myself.
“This is just what Levi told me,” he reminded me for the second time, making sure I understood this wasn't his firsthand account. “But they had brought in this new kid. Young guy, not even twenty yet. He was there on a few robbery charges after he failed to appear in court—or at least that's what Levi told me.
“Anyway, apparently, this kid has a freakin' mouth on him. Like he doesn't know when to shut up, can't take a hint … that kind of thing. Levi said he'd already gotten thrown into solitary a few times for mouthing off too much to the officers. But …” Soldier pulled in a deep breath. “Levi said that, overall, he's an okay guy. Just young and stupid, you know, and Zero … Luke … he liked him. They became buddies.”
I couldn't help but laugh as I dropped my hands from my head and let them rest on my thighs. I leaned back against the couch, keeping my eyes on the ceiling. “Yeah, he would. Probably saw himself in the kid,” I muttered more to myself than anyone, thinking about my brother as a teenager and the shit he'd say.
Soldier nodded before releasing a heavy sigh into the room. “Well, one day, this kid said some shit to the wrong guy. Big, mean fuckin' dude named Spike. I didn't know him well, but that's why. You didn't wanna get mixed up with him, and this idiot kid went and spewed some bullshit at him in the cafeteria. Levi didn't hear what it was or anything, and honestly, I guess it doesn't really matter. This fucker pulled a shiv on the kid, went straight for the jugular, but Luke got in the way.”
I lifted my head abruptly to pin my eyes on Soldier and the somber expression on his face. “He was killed ?”
“God, Charlie, I'm so sorry,” Stormy whispered from beside me, resting her cheek against my shoulder and squeezing my knee.
As he pulled in a deep breath, Soldier closed his eyes and nodded. “Levi said Zero was always defending this little shit. The kid has a mouth on him, yeah, but from what Levi told me, it's like he’s overcompensating, you know? He's picked on a lot by the other guys. They tease him about everything, and … I dunno … Luke took him under his wing or whatever and made it his mission to protect him.”
A pained groan ripped through my throat as I dragged my palm over my face, turning my gaze toward the window and the bright sun streaming through it.
He had lost me and found some other pathetic loser to fill the void. Someone else to defend and protect.
The kid might've reminded him of himself to a point, but at the heart of it, the kid had reminded him of me . But this time, he'd been the one to lose his life.
“You fucking idiot,” I sent off to the universe, hoping it'd reach his ears.
“Levi said that big, nasty fucker actually apologized to Luke while he was lying there,” Soldier added in a gruff tone, and I closed my eyes, trying to imagine my brother on the floor of some cold, dirty cafeteria, a pool of blood spreading beneath him.
“Was he alone?” I asked.
“No,” Soldier replied. “That kid—Jimmy's his name—and Levi were there when he died.”
I tried to be grateful. I tried to cling to that tiny shred of comfort, knowing that Luke hadn't taken his last breaths alone, but what the hell did it matter if I hadn't been there? God, what if he'd been scared? What if he had been thinking about me? What if, instead of holding the hand of some fucking prison buddy, he had wished I'd been there instead? What if, at the very end of it all, he'd cursed me for not keeping my goddamn promise?
I shook my head in some pathetic attempt to shake every one of my thoughts and questions away because not a single one of them mattered. Nothing in life slammed a door shut quite like death did, and regardless of what I might or might not believe about an afterlife or whatever came next, there was nothing I could do about it now . Questioning and regretting changed nothing, and whether I liked it or not, it was something I'd just have to force myself to accept. I knew this. I was smart enough—mature enough—to acknowledge it, but, holy fuck, that didn't mean I didn't hate it.
Slowly, I began to nod as a weak, trembling sigh whispered past my lips. “Okay,” I said quietly. “Thanks. For telling me.”
“I'm sorry it had to be me,” Soldier said, that hint of anger returning to his voice. “Those fuckers over there … I don't know why they wouldn't have called you. I just—”
“They wouldn't have known where to find me,” I cut him off, shame dripping from every word. “I changed my number, my address. All they had was my name, and they probably didn't care enough to look it up.”
Stormy looked at Soldier then, and through the corner of my eye, I could see the curiosity creasing her brow. “What about his body?” she asked him. “What do they do when a prisoner dies?”
“They send them to the police coroner, and they contact their family, but …” His eyes met mine, and he grimaced apologetically. “If they don't have someone to call, I guess they just …” He shrugged in lieu of an answer, one I would've preferred not to hear.
Still, I wondered.
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Um … end of September,” Soldier said quickly, as if pulling from a recent memory, and that startled me. “Yeah, it wasn't long ago. It was literally right before we went up to Salem to visit you,” he added, looking to Stormy.
“Huh,” I muttered, nodding as a thought crossed my mind.
Then, I grabbed my phone.
***
“Sir, all inmate deaths are handled by the local police department,” the woman on the phone told me.
I paced from one end of the guest room to the other as I nodded. “I see. And, um … can you tell me how, uh, long ago he was killed?”
“Are you the inmate's next of kin?”
“I'm his brother.”
“You should have received notification—”
“I-I didn't … I wasn't …” I pinched the bridge of my nose and released a breath through puffed cheeks, trying to gather what was left of my patience and sanity. “I've been away for a-a while, and I didn't, um … hear about what had happened until just now, so—”
“I see. What did you say the inmate's name was?”
Was . My stomach churned sickeningly. “L-Lucas Corbin.”
The clacking of keys filled the silence as I waited for her to give me the official date of death. I braced myself, aware that Luke's demise was about to become real, final. The other side of the dash on an epitaph.
“September 29.”
The air left my lungs as my eyes filled with a fresh, hot batch of tears. “His birthday had just passed,” I whispered into the phone, as if this lady, this cold stranger, truly cared.
“I see that,” she replied, implying with her tone that maybe she actually did hold some genuine sympathy.
“He was forty-two,” I muttered, quickly doing the math.
Forever forty-two.
“I'm very sorry for your loss.”
I swallowed and nodded as I sat on the edge of the bed. “Yeah,” I whispered, barely audible. “Thanks.”
“I can give you the local police department's number if you want to try giving them a call.”
“That'd be great. Let me just grab a pen.”
I grabbed my sketch pad and Sharpie out of my backpack, and as I uncapped the marker and told her to go ahead, I thought about the irony of this moment. Luke had been the one to get me my first drawing pad and pack of markers, and there I was, using those very implements to jot down the next step in hopefully laying his body to rest.
Life is so fucking weird , I thought to myself, popping the cap back into place and thanking the woman for helping in whatever way she could.
“Did Luke, uh … did he have any personal belongings or anything?” I took a chance asking, and she sighed into the phone.
“Honestly, if their things aren't collected pretty quickly after the family is notified, all the stuff is usually trashed or pilfered by the other inmates,” she said matter-of-factly. “I'm sorry.”
My heart sank even as I said, “Yeah, it's okay. Just figured I'd ask.”
I hung up and dropped the phone to the bed, giving myself a moment to sigh before making the next call. My eyes glanced at the time glowing on my cell phone's screen, and I huffed a bitter laugh. Two hours ago, I had thought my brother was still alive. I'd been on my way to introduce him to the woman I knew so deeply in my bones that I would one day marry, and now, I was just trying to bury him. Or whatever was left of him anyway.
“Fuck,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands over my face.
I didn't want to handle this shit. Luke had handled things last time, when Mom and Dad had died. Well, him and Nana. Now, they were dead … they all were. I was it, all that was left.
The door creaked open, and Stormy poked her head in.
“Hey.” She entered tentatively, cautiously. She closed the door behind her, letting it click shut slowly, while keeping her eyes on me. “How are you doing? No, wait, that's a stupid question. I'm sorry. I'm just—”
“No, it's okay,” I said, outstretching my hand to welcome her in.
“God, Charlie.” She accepted the warmth of my palm encasing hers and sat beside me on the bed. “I know I've said it a million times already, but I am so, so, so fucking sorry. I can't even imagine how you're feeling.”
“Not great,” I answered with a humorless laugh. “But … I think I'm glad I know.”
That was when I noticed the stiffness of her limbs and the thrumming of her pulse. Her phone was clutched in her hand, the screen glowing bright. I asked her if there was something she wanted to say, and she stammered with nervous intent.
“Um … I-I didn’t know if now would be the right time to bring it up, but …”
“Tell me anything to get my mind off this shit.”
“Well …” She blew out a deep breath and lifted her phone, her eyes meeting mine. “While you were on the phone, I googled Luke’s name.”
After all this time, she only decided now to utilize the search engine at her fingertips. After there was nothing more for me to tell, no more secrets between us, and I loved her for it.
She turned the phone’s screen toward me, and a picture of Ritchie looked back. I knew it well. It was the friendliest, least menacing picture the media could find of him. One from his days of coaching the high school football team. His smile was nice enough, but his eyes were as cold as a shark’s.
“W-why are you showing me this?” I asked, fighting the nausea that rolled through my gut at the sight of his face.
“This is him, Charlie,” Stormy whispered, her eyes glistening with tears. “This … this is the guy who … h-he was at that bar. W-when I was sixteen. He … he—”
“He’s not a good guy, Charlie. You have no idea. He’s bad .”
“Are you serious?” I asked, but of course she was. Why would she lie? “Are you sure ?”
She nodded slowly, one tear slowly trickling down her cheek. “Believe me, I’m sure.”
My heart lurched into my throat as I looked between the picture of Ritchie and her face, and all at once, a new, special kind of hatred toward him began to grow, along with a brand-new sense of gratitude toward my brother. Who had unwittingly murdered the man who had raped the love of my life long before I knew her name … and only God knew how many others.
God, what were the chances? How the hell was it even possible that I would meet her so many years later and—
“So, um …” She pulled in a deep, quivering breath and removed Ritchie’s face from her phone screen. “Did the, um … prison give you anything useful?”
I cleared my throat and held up the sketch pad resting on my thigh. “Yeah, uh … the number for the police department that conducted the investigation and autopsy. The woman on the phone said they might still have his body, but … I don't know. I kinda think it's a long shot, but I should probably take it.”
She nodded. “Might as well. Just in case.”
I filled my lungs in preparation and snatched my phone from the bed, ready to dial. Stormy asked if I'd prefer she leave, and I told her to stay, needing her to hold my hand and keep me warm when the cruel touch of heartbreak threatened to encase my spirit in ice yet again.
The phone was answered almost immediately by a gruff, impersonal tone. I explained the situation all over again, and the cop on the line listened intently before sighing. He asked for my brother's name and did a little digging on his end, typing on a keyboard and grumbling incoherently to himself.
Then, he finally said, “Ah, yeah. We picked him up back in September, on the twenty-ninth.”
“Right. Um … you wouldn't happen to still have his body there, would you?” It felt ridiculous to ask, like they just kept dead bodies lying around.
The man was silent for a moment, then said hesitantly, “No, we, uh … we released the body to the next of kin.”
What the fuck?
My brow creased immediately. “But I'm the next of kin,” I replied. “He was my brother. We're the only two left in our whole freakin' family. So, if you didn't release his body to me, then—”
“Sir, if you want to come down and bring the proper identification with you, we can talk about this further.”
I shook my head as my heart took off at a pace I knew couldn't be healthy. Stormy sat beside me, her hand clenched around mine, as her eyes watched my reactions, concerned and worried.
“My brother didn't have anybody else,” I pressed further, panicking and growing exceedingly angry. “Who the hell did you give his body to?”
Bizarre scenarios filled my head as I imagined Ritchie and Tommy's mother, Mrs. Wheeler, going down to the police department, claiming to be my brother's next of kin. Scenarios in which she gleefully celebrated her unexpected, unplanned vengeance for her oldest son's untimely death. Scenarios where she praised the big, mean man who'd inadvertently done her dirty work for her.
“Listen, I shouldn't be giving you this information without seeing some ID,” the cop said, dropping his voice close to a whisper. “But I don't know where you're located, and I'd hate for you to drive all the way here just to show me your license. But if you're saying you're your brother's next of kin, then there's either something really weird going on here or your brother was keeping some pretty big secrets from you.”
I didn't want to mention that it'd been five years since I'd seen or last spoken to Luke. I was sure there was plenty that'd happened within that time that I had no clue about. But then again, my life had been at a standstill throughout most of that time, and I hadn't been the one in prison. What reason would I have to believe Luke had done more with that time than me?
“Why do you say that?” I asked, my gut rolling around an angry bundle of nerves.
“Because the person who came in here, claiming to be his next of kin, was his wife.”