They were both athletic, though their skill sets in any given sport were different. Jack started wearing glasses in kindergarten, and Tucker’s hearing in his right ear was compromised enough that he had a completely charming way of holding his head when you talked to him, as though whatever you were saying was the most important thing in the world at that moment.
Jack couldn’t remember how old he was when they found out they had different mothers, only that their grandmother had taken great pains to tell them Jack had belonged to Janice, Tucker to Ellen.
Victor Llewellyn had been, by nearly everyone’s estimation, a loser. Jack, after watching Leave It to Beaver reruns, had once referred to him as a modern-day Eddie Haskell. Tucker had responded by saying that was an insult to Eddie. Ellen had sent them to their rooms, making them write “I will be respectful” five hundred times each. She’d also called them Wally and the Beave the rest of the day.
Ellen had never spoken ill of Victor, no matter how much reason she had, but both boys had known early on that being his son was more of a cross to bear than a source of familial pride. Margaret’s most scathing riposte to any disagreement from her grandsons had been “You’re just like your father.”
Sitting at the Anything Goes Grill, nursing the oatmeal stout the familiar-looking bartender had recommended, Jack wondered if they’d both ended up believing it. If that was why neither of them was married. The strongest relationship in Jack’s life was with Charlie, a fact for which he was grateful. But he would like there to be more. He’d like to fall in love with someone, maybe even share a home sometime.
Jack felt more than heard Tucker’s presence when his brother entered the bar. Even after they found out they were born of separate mothers, they’d referred to themselves as Irish twins because their birth dates were within a year of each other. Their empathy alarm system had been nearly infallible. They joked that they could never donate kidneys to each other because they’d both have failure at the same time.
Walking away from his brother, even though he’d thought it was the right thing to do, had been as hard as leaving Arlie. They’d spent more time together the past few days than they had in years—although Charlie spent summer weekends and the occasional spring break in Tennessee.
“What he’s having.”
Even the voice sounded like his own. Tucker’s hands, where they rested on the mahogany bar, could have been his. Jack knew when he looked at the man who’d come to sit beside him, he’d see his own blue eyes and straight nose mirrored. Only their mouths were different. Tucker didn’t wear glasses or a beard, either.
The stud in Tucker’s left ear was a tiny gold wishbone. Jack had bought it for him for Christmas their senior year—a few weeks after they had got their left ears pierced—because Miniagua High School’s football team had used the wishbone offense instead of the more common I formation.
“How’s your mother?”
“Fine. She wants you to bring Charlie to England.”
Maybe it had been long enough that Jack could give normal life a shot. Maybe the occasional depression and anger weren’t signs that he shared his mother’s mental illness after all. He’d never been truly angry with Charlie, had never wanted to hurt him, though he was still afraid to be alone with him that much.
Jack was ten years older than his mother had been when she died, driven by the demons of mental illness. What little he knew of her family history wasn’t encouraging, and he’d feared the inheritance of manic depression his whole life. What if he’d been wrong? What if he’d exiled himself from everyone and everything he loved for no good reason at all?
That was more than he could bear to think about. “Maybe next summer.”
“Good.” There was humor in Tucker’s voice, but it was dark. “I might even go with you. Take you right down into the remotest area of the Cotswolds and leave you there.”
Jack turned and looked at his brother. Tucker’s eyes were clear and smiling in a way Jack knew his own were not.
Tucker leaned on the bar and was silent a moment, looking down at his hands. “I get that you’re afraid you’ll inherit Janice’s mental illness. I know... I’ve always known that was one of the reasons you left. You left because you thought it would be better for Arlie. For me. For all of Miniagua, for that matter.” His gaze grabbed and held Jack’s as surely as if there was a string of invisible glue between them. “I respected your wishes. I’m not doing that this time. If a scene is what you want, that’s what you’ll get, but I’m not leaving the lake until I have a brother again, and worthless as you are at it, you’re the only one I want.”
Jack looked away, focusing on the liquor bottles reflected in the mirror behind the bar. He had to try twice to speak. The words stuck in his throat, where they’d been for all the years since he’d walked away. “I can’t be sure,” he said, sounding as though he’d swallowed a handful of pea gravel from out on South Lake Road. He drank slowly, draining the glass, and then he set it down carefully because he was afraid he’d drop it. He turned it in a slow circle on the bar napkin, keeping it within the same round wet spot.
“Can’t be sure of what?”
“That I don’t have it, too. What if I’d married Arlie and then hurt her or any kids we had or offed myself? What if you got married and I decided I didn’t like you or the girl you married anymore? What then? Charlie wasn’t supposed to be part of my life at all, and instead he is my life and I’m scared out of my mind that I’ll hurt him.”
His throat closed. He wasn’t sure if he could say the words that had to come next. “My mother took her own life, Tuck. She took enough pills to do the job three times over. Dad and I fought the night of the prom, the night he died, and he told me she tried to take me with her. She took me into the closed garage with her and started the car. He said it was too bad she’d failed at that. I knew even when he said it that he was drunk and didn’t mean it, but I was mad. I didn’t take the keys of the limo. Do you understand now? I could have stopped him from taking the car that night and I didn’t. I didn’t.”
* * *
“YOU PROMISED.”
Arlie followed Holly to Gianna’s dinner table, carrying a platter full of garlic bread. “A good sister wouldn’t hold me to it.”
Holly set the silverware beside the plates with a clatter. “No, ma’am, you’re right. A good sister would let you drive that van until it dies some night in a snowstorm out there in the cornfields between Miniagua and Sawyer. There you’d be with a dead cell phone and nothing in the car except cleaning rags and a mop bucket. We’d find you frozen stiff the next morning. You’d probably leave a note. You know, saying something like, ‘You were right, Holly. I should have kept my promise.’ There’d be tears frozen solid on your cold, hard cheeks.” She smiled beatifically. “What do you think?”
Arlie stared at her. “What a flair you have for the dramatic and the absurd. It’s no wonder you write books.”
“And what an alarming capacity you have for burying your head in the sand. A replacement van, no more than three years old and with four good tires on it, or I’m going to announce to the whole world that your name is really Arletta Marquetta Brigetta.”
“It’s not!” Arlie threw a piece of bread at her. “Gianna, she’s telling lies.”
“You two need to straighten up.” Gianna brought the chicken marsala to the table, laughter making her dark eyes twinkle. “But I’m with Holly on this one. I don’t want you driving that van anymore. Worry’s starting to give me lines and we’re just not having that. Everyone knows you girls were born while I was still in elementary school.”
Arlie poured ice water into glasses, deliberately sloshing Holly’s over the top. “Can the business afford another