The Spider & the Storm

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CONNECTICUT, PRESENT DAY

Where's Stormy?

Not wanting to open my eyes yet, I reached my hand across the bed to blindly pat the empty mattress. It was unexpected. Stormy wasn't one to wake up early without me, and suspecting something might be wrong, I opened my eyes to climb out of bed.

“What the hell?” I bolted upright, immediately awake as my breath caught in my lungs, and I swept my bewildered gaze around a room I hadn't slept in for over five years.

This isn't my room , I thought, remembering the tour Melanie had given us just the day before. This is Danny's room .

But it wasn't the room of a toddler; it was mine . Everything was as it had been years ago. The back of the door, defaced with my scribbled art. The dresser, piled high with black sweatshirts and black jeans. The closet, opened and showcasing a pile of sketchbooks. The floor, not cluttered by toys, but with a pile of laundry I hadn't yet washed and a box of Sharpies I must've knocked over at some point.

I'm dreaming . Of course I was dreaming, and of course I'd dream about this place. I often did. But why does it feel so real?

I swung my legs out of bed and slowly walked over the worn carpet to the mirror beside the door. It was intact, not shattered the way I'd left it, but my bare chest and arms were etched with the asymmetrical lines of the black widow spiderweb I'd gained from my life in Salem. And why this struck me as odd in a dreamworld, I didn't know, but I tipped my head with curiosity and confusion when the scent of cooking eggs wafted up to my nose.

Stormy? But Stormy didn't cook, and I laughed. I guess that's how I know it's a dream .

I studied the back of the door for a moment, allowing myself the time to appreciate the rough drawing. It was good though, for a sixteen-year-old with zero artistic experience. That kid had been in so much pain and anguish; he was so lost, weathering a storm he didn't know how to survive. Yet he did, and somehow, he found shelter. In a town he identified with. In the heart of a woman who hadn't given him a choice but to love her back. That kid back then, he’d had no idea what to do but suffer the abuse of the pelting rain, dodging bolts of lightning and quivering from the thunder's monstrous boom. But …

“We turned out okay,” I muttered to the door, to that scared little spider beneath the angry clouds and lightning and torrential downpour. “Not everything is okay, but we are.”

Then, following the scent of eggs, I opened the door, half expecting to see Tommy's blood still staining the hallway carpet. But it wasn't, and I was glad, knowing this would be one of those good dreams. They didn't happen often, but I was grateful when they did.

I ran down the stairs, feeling lighter and happier than I had in months, wondering if it was, in fact, Stormy in the kitchen. Or maybe it was Mom—God, it'd been a long time since I'd dreamed about her, and I wished that I would. Maybe it was even Dad or Melanie, two people who hardly made appearances in my sleep, and I let the excitement bubble up to an uncontained boil as I bounded through the dining room to the kitchen doorway.

But there was nobody there, nobody manning the stove as the eggs sizzled in a frying pan. I was in an abandoned house; it was only me, and the happiness I'd felt was quick to vanish, leaving only panic in its place.

Turning on my heel to survey the rest of the kitchen, the hallway leading to the basement, and the dining room entrance, I began to mutter, “What the—”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

I spun quickly to face the hallway, where the bathroom door was thrown open and the last person I'd expected to see ran out to hurry back to the stove. Luke caught my eye and lifted one side of his mouth in a casual, lopsided smile.

“Hey, Charlie. You wanna grab me a spatula?”

“Uh …” I stammered as a hard, tremendous lump formed in my throat. “Y-yeah, sure.”

I wasn't ready to face him, even if only in my dreams, yet I couldn't take my eyes off him as I reached out to grab our mom's favorite spatula from the kitchen utensil holder. I handed it back to him, noting the way my hand shook. Why was I scared of him? Why did I wish it'd been someone else? Did I think he was mad at me?

“Thanks, man.” He looked at the pan before quickly swinging his gaze back up to my widened eyes. “Can you stop looking at me like that? Jesus. You're giving me the fuckin' creeps.”

I blinked rapidly and diverted my gaze to nothing in particular. “S-sorry. I just, um …”

“Didn't expect to see me cooking? Yeah, well, believe it or not, prison has a way of building skills you didn't have before. So, basically, what I'm saying is”—he spread his arms out and gestured toward his chest—“I'm a domestic god now.”

I leaned against the counter, gripping the ledge tightly to keep myself steady, and fixed my eyes on the sizzling pan as he continued scrambling the eggs. “Um, w-well—”

“Charlie, listen.” Luke turned the burner off and pulled a plate from the cabinet above the stove. The eggs were dumped unceremoniously onto the dish, and the pan was dropped back onto the stovetop with a clatter. Then, he grabbed a fork from beside me on the counter and pointed it in my direction. “Neither of us knows how much time you have here, so we can't waste it with you tripping over your freakin' tongue, okay?”

“H-here?” I shook my head, furrowing my brow. “The hell are you talking about? I'm dreaming. This is a dream, and—”

“Sure, sure, right. Whatever you gotta tell yourself. Come on.” He gestured for me to follow him. “Walk with me.”

Luke hurried past me with his eggs and into the dining room, where he pulled out his usual chair and plopped down. I slowly rounded the table to my place across from his as he shook the salt and pepper shakers vigorously over his eggs, and just as I was about to sit, he cursed angrily and dropped his fork to the table.

With a jolt, I asked, “W-what?”

“Forgot the fuckin' ketchup.” He glanced over his shoulder into the kitchen, then back at me. “Hey, you're still up. You wanna grab it for me?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

There was something off about this dream. Something strange about this interaction. It was so real, so normal . The floor was solid beneath my feet, and the ketchup bottle was cool in my hand as I pulled it from the fridge. The eggs on Luke's plate smelled as real as those I cooked for Stormy and myself on a nearly daily basis, and he was everything I remembered him to be. If I hadn't known better, I would've thought I wasn't dreaming at all. Like I'd jumped into a time machine somewhere and taken a trip back to eight years ago, before Luke was arrested and changed our lives forever—again.

As I stared at him, taking a heaping bite of his eggs, now covered in ketchup, I wished so badly I weren't dreaming.

With his mouth full, he looked up at me and pinched his thick brows. “What?”

I swallowed the need to cry before saying, “I'm just really glad to see you.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, jabbing his fork into the eggs. “I'm glad to see you too. I've missed you.”

“I've missed you too.”

He shook his head as he took another bite. “But listen, I don't want you to blame yourself for not coming back, okay? You didn't break any promises to me. You had said, when you got your head on straight, you'd come back, and you did. You just didn’t know I was already gone.” He snorted as he chewed before breaking out into a bubbling chuckle. “Okay, let's be real here. That chick … Stormy? She put your head on straight. But …” He pointed at me, wagging his finger. “You let her. That's the important thing. You didn't run away.”

“She didn't either,” I replied quietly.

“Yeah, I knew she wouldn't,” he muttered beneath his breath, smirking to himself as he shoveled another forkful into his mouth.

I reared my head back. “What?”

“Oh, come on, Charlie,” he said, laughing. “After everything you know now, you really think that was all you and her?”

I slumped against the back of my chair. “I don't—”

“You're killing me here.” He wiped his hands against his pants as he sat back and pinned me with an amused glare. “The wind , man. Anytime you were, like, second-guessing shit or ready to turn her down, there was the wind, blowing and nudging you toward her. And the fuckin’ birds . I know you noticed the fucking—”

“I have no—”

“Oh, bullshit.” He laughed boisterously, crossing his arms and grinning like he'd never been happier. Fuck, it made me feel happy too. “You knew , Charlie. Don't tell me you didn't. You knew all along something was up. You knew I was gone, and you knew I was there”—he cast his arm out, gesturing the entire room—“ everywhere . You didn't want to admit it; you didn't want to say it, not even to yourself, but …” He leaned toward the table, folding his arms against its surface. His eyes met mine with more sympathy than I thought I could bear. “You knew. You always knew.”

There wasn't a question anywhere in his voice, nothing but facts, and I was drowning, fighting the urge to gasp for air as I stared into his eyes. Too afraid to look away. Too afraid he'd disappear. Too afraid of being without him in this godforsaken house for another second.

“Remember, I know you, Charlie,” he said quietly. “I don't lie to you, and you don't lie to me. Right?”

I was aware of every muscle in my throat shifting as I swallowed before croaking, “Right.”

“And I know you knew.”

One single rogue tear slipped down my cheek as my lips fell open with the two most poisonous words I'd ever spoken. “I knew.”

“And yet you still insisted that Tommy was haunting you.” Luke rolled his eyes, shaking his head and chuckling loudly. Funny how I couldn't find it in me to join him.

“I didn't want it to be you,” I admitted angrily, the edge in my voice sharp enough to slice through his laughter and leave his face somber.

“No,” he said, pulling in a deep breath as he nodded. “I get that. But …” He cleared his throat and smiled, a little smug and a lot pleased. “It’s fine. You're not alone anymore. You're okay.”

I huffed an incredulous laugh, finally pulling my gaze from his to lift my eyes to the ceiling and shake my head. “I'm never going to be okay , Luke. I can't go through the shit we've been through and end up okay . I can't …” A knot formed in my throat, and I struggled to swallow it down as my chin quivered and my eyes swelled with tears. “I-I can't lose you and be okay .”

“Maybe not right now. But you will be. She'll make sure of it.”

She. Stormy . Even as I sat across from my brother in some weird half dream, half reality, the tug of longing settled against my heart. I knew I’d wake and be with her. Hell, I knew that, right now, she was lying beside me in sleep. But I missed her.

“I like her a lot, Charlie. She was made for you, man. God, I wish I could've met her.”

“Well, you would've if you hadn't gone and gotten yourself killed.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I know. But, hey, it's all good. I'm good. You're good despite what you wanna believe. Everything's good . And, I mean, considering everything that has happened to us, that's pretty fuckin' amazing.”

I wasn't sure everything was good. How could it be? He was gone. He’d left behind a wife and three kids—all of whom were unlikely to remember him. He’d left me before I had the chance to uphold my promise of returning. All this shit, all this pain and heartbreak, yet he claimed to be good. It pissed me off. It pissed me off so much that he could be good with being dead. It pissed me off more than when he'd stolen a life and gotten thrown behind bars. Because it was selfish. It was so fucking selfish … but that was Luke, wasn't it? He'd always been a selfish fucking asshole. Only caring about his own demons, his vices, his anger and incapability to keep it under control, his—

“You're wasting time, Charlie. Focus.”

Through the red-tinted rage I'd been consumed by, I locked eyes with my dead brother. Mine, I was sure, reflected every bit of my volatile ferocity, but his was soft and understanding, albeit stern. It did nothing to quell my anger. In fact, it only served to push me even further.

“God, fuck you, Luke.”

He nodded, allowing me to shove him around with infuriating patience, like some born-again evangelical saint who'd made his peace and was unmoved by the blasphemy of others. “You can feel how you want, but—”

“No, seriously, fuck you.” I shook my head, dropping my gaze to the plate in front of him and the remnants of scrambled eggs. “Fuck you for drinking. Fuck you for pushing Melanie away. Fuck you for simply existing instead of fighting to get her back. Fuck you for killing Ritchie. Fuck you for-for-for …” I reached up, gripped my hair, and tugged as a low, primal groan rasped through my constricted throat. My hands dropped back to the table with a resounding thunk , rattling his plate and fork. “Fuck you for leaving . Fuck you for that most of all. All these people … your wife, your kids—your fucking kids, Luke! You have fucking kids , and you left them! You left them without a dad, just like you and I were left without both of our parents, but at least we remember them. At least we had something to miss, something to be sad about, something to hold on to, but them? Your kids? Goddammit, Luke, they're never going to know you. They won't remember you the way I do. The way Melanie does, and—”

“And did you ever think that, maybe, that might be a good thing?”

My brows pinched as I tipped my head and stared across the table at him. “What?”

He clasped his hands on the table and shrugged nonchalantly. So much for running out of time . “You ever think it might be a good thing that they won't have to remember their dad, the murderer, rotting away in prison? You ever think it might be a good thing that I can live through stories, told by you and their mother, and not just through monitored phone calls and arranged visits?”

I swallowed and slowly shook my head. “I think stories are better than nothing, sure. But I don't think they hold a candle to the real deal. Stories can't hug you. They don't have a voice or touch or warmth . So, again, fuck you for leaving. I'll never be good with that, just so we're clear. There's nothing good in that, no matter what you might think.”

He pressed his lips in a tight line, and a morose, sad expression blanketed his face. The wrinkles etched into his forehead and at the corners of his eyes deepened, aging him just a little in the heavenly light filling the dining room. And it dawned on me then that maybe it was possible that this whole we're good , everything is good act was simply that—an act . Maybe it was what he'd had to tell himself to make his own peace with the way life—his, mine, all of ours—had turned out. Maybe it was what he felt he needed to tell me to move on. Hell, maybe it was what I should start telling myself to make it through the next day and the next, until this brand-new, searing, horrendous pain blended seamlessly with the old ones.

Maybe I should just wake up and be done with this.

Maybe I need to run away again .

“I'll never not be sorry, Charlie,” he replied, low and gruff. “I won't say I'd do it differently because it doesn't matter now. I won't say I regret anything because it doesn't matter now. But I do want you to know that I'm sorry. For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry.”

I shrugged, my shoulders feeling fifty pounds heavier than ever before. “It doesn't matter now,” I said, parroting his words.

“No, it doesn't.” He tugged at the back of his neck and deflated with a sigh. “But listen, okay? I want you to read that letter.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and laid a hand against my brow, shielding him from the tears I was struggling against. “I really don't think—”

“Read the letter, Charlie. As soon as you wake up. Read the letter. Promise me you'll read it.”

The edges of this vivid dreamworld were growing hazy. I could feel it slipping through the cracks between the realms of sleep and awake. Any moment now, I'd wake up, and Luke would be gone again. I didn't want to lose him. I didn't want to say goodbye, and somehow, for some reason, this felt like one. The hardest, most permanent goodbye.

I stood up from my chair and hurried around the table to where Luke was already standing. We collided in a hug so full of warmth, his body firm against mine, and if I hadn't known better, I would've said it was real. I wanted it so badly to be real.

“I'm going to miss you so much,” I said.

“I know.” He held the back of my head the way he had that last day I saw him at the prison. “Promise you'll read that letter.”

My fingertips dug into his T-shirt, my mind aware of how soft the material was beneath my touch. “Only if you promise I'll see you again.”

I felt him smile as he nodded. “Yeah, Charlie. You will. Now, wake up. Live your life. Marry that woman, for fuck's sake. Tell her to look up Ritchie’s picture. And read that letter.”

***

Charlie,

This is weird.

Honestly, there are a few things that are weird about this, but I think the one that takes the cake is knowing that, if you're reading this, I'm probably dead. Like, I'm alive right now while writing it, but … fuck, man, remember how you used to get those feelings about shit? Like, you knew something was going to happen, something bad? That's how I feel. I've felt it for a while. I've felt it ever since this new kid rode in. I took one look at his face, and I don't know how else to explain it other than to say it was like seeing the Grim Reaper in the flesh. This fucking chill went straight down my spine, man. Gave me the fucking creeps from the get-go, and you know what's even crazier than that? I like him. I like being around him. Actually, he reminds me of you, which probably sounds like a big slap in the face to you right now since I just described him as the Grim Reaper. But you know what I mean. He's got this lost thing about him, like he needs a friend, someone to take him under their wing. Nobody else would, and I just kept thinking, what if that was Charlie? So, he's my friend, and I like him. But I also think he's gonna be the end of me, too, which is why I'm writing this now.

First of all, chances are, if you're reading this, you probably already know that Mel and I got back together. Surprise! Actually, we officially got back together a little before you hit the road. I wanted to tell you the last time I saw you. I had planned on it, and I thought it'd make you happy. But then I saw this look in your eyes, like you were finally done with this place, and it hit me like a ton of fucking bricks that, in that moment, my happiness couldn't trump your chance at finding your own. You needed to leave. I needed to make sure you left. I had a feeling about that too. I knew you'd find a life—more of one—up in Salem.

You wanna know something absolutely insane? I actually had a dream recently that you were gonna meet a chick with a shitload of piercings and tattoos. I saw you guys riding around on the bike, and I was just watching you like some weirdo, smoking a cigarette between the trees in a fucking graveyard. Like, I couldn't say anything to you, but I could watch, and I could see that you were happy. Actually, I think I was dead in the dream, but anyway, I woke up, just knowing I had done the right thing by letting you go without telling you about me and Mel. And I'm not sorry for it, for the record, in case you're pissed about it.

We have three kids. Can you believe that shit? If you had told me ten years ago that, one day, I'd not only be in prison, but also married to my dream girl and a father to three boys, I would've said you were fucking insane. But that's how it is. And I'm not gonna lie to you … it fucking sucks. No, not that I have her back or that we have the boys, but most days, I don't feel like I have them at all. I feel like I'm wasting her life. I feel like the biggest piece of shit on the planet that I not only convinced her to marry me again, but that she just kept getting pregnant. And, yeah, sure, she had a say in the matter. She could've said no. She could've not sent me that first letter altogether—I'm assuming you already know that we were pen pals for a while. She could've insisted on birth control instead of insisting we didn't use anything at all. I mean, fuck, Charlie, you know what she said? She said she had always wanted babies with me. She said she had never stopped wanting them. She said she wanted her house—our house—full of pieces of the two of us, and I wanted to say no, but I couldn't because I wanted that too. I didn't want her to be alone, and I guess I thought that, if she had our kids, she wouldn't be. And she's not. She's the best mother on the fucking planet, and I love my family more than I've ever loved anything. Hell, I didn't know I was this capable of loving anything so much. But, holy shit, I miss them. I miss them all the fucking time, and I wish I hadn't killed Ritchie.

I wish I had listened to you, Charlie.

I wish I had never gone to that fucking movie. I wish, more than anything in the world, that I had gone to see Mel instead because she was single then. She was out there, missing me and wishing I would call or show up or whatever the hell, and instead of cleaning up my shit and doing the right thing, I had to go ahead and kill someone. Jesus fucking Christ, I killed someone. I took Ritchie's life, and, yeah, he was an asshole. He had always been an asshole, and the world is better without him. But I wish I could find a reason why it happened because right now, I feel like … he didn't deserve to die . He didn't deserve that. Tommy didn't deserve it. Their mom didn't deserve it. God, Charlie, you didn't deserve it either. You more than anyone. You were always this innocent bystander to all of this shit, caught in a crossfire of my stupid fucking mistakes, and you have no idea how much I regret that. You have no idea how much I wish I could take it all back. But we make our beds, don’t we?

Anyway, since I'm dead, I need you to do a few things for me.

First and foremost, sign the house over to Mel. Let it be hers. She doesn't need money, and she doesn't want it. But she needs the house. She and her parents have already done a shitload of work on it—I'm assuming you've already been back, if you have this letter—and she's already made it hers. I want my kids to have my roof over their heads—that's all. I want them to at least feel connected to me in that way.

Second, I want you to be in their lives, and I don't mean as that uncle who sends a card every once in a while when you remember a birthday. I want them to know you. Be weird, creepy Uncle Charlie. I want them to know me through you. They're gonna need it because if this feeling I have is right, they're not gonna have me for much longer, and our youngest … he's only a couple of days old, man. He doesn't even know me now. How the hell is he going to know me ten years down the road if it isn't through you? And, sure, he'll have Mel, of course, but … the thing is—and I've told her this—I don't want her to be married to my memory forever. If something happens to me, I want her to move on. I want her to find someone who will actually be there for my kids. I want her to finally find the man she's always deserved, and you and I both know that's not me. I fucking love her, and for some reason, she loves me, but I am not in a million years who she deserves. He's out there somewhere, and I want her to find him once I'm gone. But that only makes your presence more important in their lives because you'll be the only connection between my kids and me. They'll know me through you, and you'll see me in them, and I don't know if I'm just losing my mind or what, but I feel like, one day, you're both gonna need that. So, just be there, okay? Please. Whenever you can, be there.

Third, if that dream was a premonition and you happen to find a woman as creepy as you with a shitload of piercings and tattoos, don't let her go and don't run away. Happiness looks good on you, man. I always knew it would.

I'll be smoking a cigarette and watching from between the trees.

Love you, bro.

—Luke