doing it ourselves.

     journal writing. and here he’d thought that only came from his mother. the timing lines up so that when nate meets his eyes, it’s a gaze already leveled. it’s not an uncomfortable look, not like the kind he gets from strangers all the time; it’s weightier than that. the sentiment has him feeling too exposed, too open, too aware of his own skin. he feels like the starfish, the one chloe was dissecting while he made notes and drew pictures. journaling. a scratch of pen against paper. sunlight coming in through a window. 

     when the photo’s offered to him again, he takes it without thinking. he takes it so he can drop his focus to it instead and try to force a thick swallow down a throat that’s suddenly tighter than before. 

     “i don’t w— i’m not gonna keep it. if it’s the only one you’ve got or whatever. you don’t — you don’t have to do that. don’t worry about it.” 

     but he stays holding it anyway. 

     evelyn’s disapproval seems somehow fitting, even though he only spoke to the woman once, five years ago, in the minutes leading up to her death. he’d seen the letters, the ones from her family. her estranged family. that’s fitting now, too. 

     “if, uh …” another swallow. his thumb runs gently along the edge of the photograph. “if it makes you feel better, evelyn pulled a gun on us — on me ‘n sam — before she knew who we were. we didn’t kill her, by the way,” he adds, with a brief upward glance that for a split - second is almost defensive. “i mean, i don’t know how much you heard, or — uh, or read, about what happened that night, but it wasn’t us. she had a heart attack. ‘n from the looks of her place, she’d been sick for a while. ironic, right?” 

       the instinct to tell him he can keep it, he insists, is bitten back because it sounds pushy and desperate. in ways he can’t explain. alex simply nods, wringing his hands together and cracking his knuckles. the action stops abruptly. speaking on cassandra is one thing, speaking on the rumors and whispers he heard about his sons is another. there’s a sharpness to his gaze, but it isn’t directed at nate. in many ways, he seems only half present.

      he’d heard the news first. a juvenile and an adult, murder. the death of evelyn. the taste in his mouth at the time had been his own bile and when he reached out to father duffy, his worst fears were confirmed. in spite of that, he didn’t believe what he heard. not really, not about that. not about them.

      they were just kids. just kids. just kids that he hadn’t seen for years and weren’t the same age anymore, weren’t even close. and he’d left them. he’d left them. alex clears his throat for the hundredth time and the corners of his mouth pull into a characteristic frown.

      “i heard about it,” he admits, swallowing down a lump in his throat. “i didn’t think it was you two. not the way they told it. not ... not my boys and not like that. i knew it was you looking for your mother’s things, but not looking to hurt anyone in the process.”

    briefly, his gaze searches nate’s. or attempts to.

     it’s like osmosis, the way he absorbs every word with his eyes still locked on the photo. his other hand is tight around the paper towel. he listens, smiles without realizing it, because she looks exactly like the type who could knock a whole room full of people on their asses just by walking in. there’s no possible way that he would remember the sound of her laughter, but he’s hit with a flashbulb sensation regardless; something distant, out of reach. something half - imagined. they always kept her laughing. 

     “— sam likes to think he’s the funny one,” nate says. “which is a total travesty. my jokes are always better than his. he just gets really dramatic if i don’t humor him — no pun intended.” 

     he sucks in a corner of his lower lip and gnaws at it for a beat. then, finally, with a reluctance he’s barely conscious of, he offers the photo back out to alex. finally, too, he reaches for that soda bottle and twists off the cap to take a long swig.

     a buzz from the phone tucked into his jeans pocket goes unacknowledged. 

     one hurdle at a time.

     “you said, uh … you said you were meeting her to ask her questions — ? what, like an interview? evelyn made it sound like she was kind of a big deal.”

      “yeah, i can ... i can see how you probably inherited my humor,” the set up is like a tease, but it lands off center. it’s too emotional to be funny and he doesn’t want to scare his son away. not after they’ve come at least this far. once more, alex clears his throat, thumbing over the picture of his wife. he doesn’t put it away, leaving her out and smiling in his palm.

      “an interview of sorts. i was in the process of writing something and needed a historian’s expert opinion. word on the streets was she was one of the best. evelyn... was a lot of things, i don’t think she approved of me from the get go, not for a long time, but she was right about that,” he glances up from the picture of nate’s mother and lets the weight of it settle on nate himself. he said it before, but he meant it. near spitting image of cassandra. 

     alex smiles.

     “... that was the real reason i was talking to her. the excuse was i had to write an article about her. a guy has to make money to pay bills and journal writing, the cut and dry kind, pays well if you know where to look. it led me to her.” 

    alex hesitates for only a second before holding her picture back out to nate. “i know it’s not in great shape, but ... you can keep it, if you’d like.” 

     from the second he’d asked the question, nate’s been utterly fixated on its answer. hungry for it, a greedy, pulse - racing need that’s so consuming it takes him a minute to even understand what the paper towel is for. he didn’t feel the sting. doesn’t feel it now but presses the damp compress against it anyway. his eyes follow alex’s every movement. guarded, still; still in survival mode but something just as visceral keeps him seated. 

     he looks exactly like her. sam never told him that, either. it occurs to him that sam rarely, if ever, brought cassandra up at all. the part about her letting alex win — dad, that’s his dad — makes him exhale the smallest laugh in spite of everything else he’s feeling. or not feeling. or trying not to feel. 

     the first time nate let his brother win at anything, he was seven. 

     bits and pieces of his own identity start to grow clearer, like a heavily pixellated image cleaned up. smart. she was smart. you are too smart for your own good, you know that?

     his free hand reaches for the photograph. 

     even though it’s worn, even though it’s old and creased and faded, he can see it. the life in her. the color of her eyes.

     her front teeth look like his. 

     “i bet she was pissed you made her lose her train of thought,” he says, and it’s quiet again, it stays quiet because he’s afraid that if he tries for a normal volume he won’t be able to stop it from shaking. “man, i hate that.”

     another minute passes and he doesn’t hand the photo back. he’s studying it, committing every detail to memory. that opens the door for another, sunlight filtering through a window, a spill of dark hair over bowed shoulders, the scratch of a pen against paper. maybe he dreamed that. he was too young to remember that. 

     there was music playing somewhere and he can’t think of the song. 

     “— so, mom was a heartbreaker.” she’s beautiful, is what he means. was beautiful. “knew i must’ve gotten it from somewhere.” 

        the moment is so simple, but so fragile, alex is afraid to breathe. cassandra would’ve handled all of this better. she always handled everything better. she would’ve known what to say to nate in this moment. she would’ve known what to say to sam. she should be here. it isn’t a foreign thought; he has it every day. but it hits him with the weight he can’t begin to comprehend and when he finally exhales its louder than he means it to be. thankfully, it runs right in to his laugh. a small, awkward sounding bark of a laugh. 

       “there’s a small part of me that thinks i should be offended, but ... no, you definitely got your mom’s genes doing you favors,” once more, the lopsided quirk of his mouth is colored and etched in fondness. in adoration. in that unfathomable love he has for his kids, even still. for his family. and that makes this feel a little easier now. he’s always been good at this — loving his wife. loving his boys. 

       “it’s cheesy, really... really cheesy, but the moment i saw her, she kind of knocked the air out of me. i was meeting her to ask her questions and talk to her and i think she thought i had a stroke. she went from smiling to looking vaguely concerned in a few seconds. i might’ve forgotten my name. who does that, right?” he rubs the center of his palm with his thumb, grounding himself.

      for years now, he’s had that photo tucked away. something to remember his wife by, of course, but it was more. it was one of the only things he still had from her. talking to her didn’t start immediately. commentary here and there to the air, but when he lost the boys, he couldn’t stop. updating her. checking in with her. reminding himself through reminding her that he was going to pull himself back up.

     and he hasn’t been able to stop since.

     he has a lot to tell her after this conversation.

     it’s a slow bleed, the way he starts to shut down a little at a time until he’s sinking onto the edge of the couch. that outburst of childish indignation rattled him but didn’t last; it fades to a dull ringing in both ears. it fades and the room gets dimmer and his hands crawl into fists, nails digging crescents into the meat of each palm. sam hadn’t told him that. sam hadn’t told him any of that. 

     his first thought is, maybe he didn’t know. but nate knows his brother. past the rose - colored glasses, the picture is dark and tinted red. not always malicious, not on purpose, just … 

     “i don’t even remember what she looked like.” 

     he has no idea what prompted that, why those are the first words that come out of his mouth. quiet. eye contact traded to focus on one of his hands as it turns to face upward and uncurls, tiny streaks of crimson on his skin.

     your mother. he thinks of evelyn, then. evelyn leaning forward in her chair, cigarette between gnarled fingers. your mother was the most brilliant historian that i have ever met. there’s a spark of something like desperation in his eyes when he looks up again, a fire like twin coals. 

     he thinks of the off - white leather journal and the handwriting that was so much like his own. 

     “— what was she like? before.” 

       it’s subtle and slow until it isn’t. a man becomes a boy and anger becomes grief. maybe alex doesn’t know the man nate’s become or is on the verge of becoming, but he knows his boy. whatever he’s feeling is set aside because at least he remembers cassandra. at least he has his memories to hold tight to. nate was too young. alex’s movements are slow, to prevent startling nate, but he goes to what’s supposed to be the small kitchen area in this little room and grabs a paper towel. 

       “she looked exactly like you,” he says, wetting the paper towel in the sink and wringing it out so nothing drips when he takes it back to his son. rather than pressing the paper to his wounds like he would’ve when he was little — scraped knees and owies and dinosaur bandaids — he holds it out to him. stifling all urges to take his hand or take hold of his shoulder or anything. “dark hair, kind eyes. smart as a whip. every time we played trivial pursuit, she beat me. without trying. any time i won, i knew she was throwing the game. she could walk in to a room and size anyone up immediately. and i — actually, hang on.” 

      alex reaches into his back pocket, pulling a wallet out. it’s seen better days. carefully, he rifles through the folded, crinkled bills to a photo he has tucked safely in place. it’s bent into the curve of the wallet and isn’t as clear as it use to be. time has worn it through. his thumb has worn it through. a beat is spent staring at it, trying to smooth out the corner that was accidentally dog-eared, but then he holds that out, too. he swallows past the lump in his throat, clearing it away with a forced cough. the twinge from before comes back, knotting in on itself and tightening.

     "you tried?” that’s the knee - jerk response, the immediate takeaway that has him springing back up into a stand. restless agitation rolls off him in waves. he paces, looks everywhere and nowhere, and he could swear he sees the walls starting to close in as if they’ve been rigged since before he’d stepped foot inside. 

     it’s a lot. it’s too much to process at once and he can’t find solid ground, keeps falling between the fragments that surround him like debris after an explosion.

     father duffy. the state. a system like that … nate wants to spit back that he has no idea what they’re capable of handling, what they’ve had to handle — that no force on earth could ever keep them apart for long because sam never let that happen. sam came back. sam always came back. 

     nate stops pacing and finally makes eye contact, a flush of color in his cheeks that matches the new heat in his voice. 

     “we left that place five years ago, man. do the math. that good man didn’t stop ‘em from kicking sam’s ass to the curb — you think we jumped ship ‘cause we wanted to? we didn’t have a goddamn choice. he tracked down mom’s shit — the shit you sold, all her journals, everything. what the hell did you expect him to do? you think he was gonna — just — forget, how you threw it away like you did to us? you left him to pick up the pieces from what you broke, and — what, you thought he was gonna be happy to see you? water under the bridge, let’s hug it out, what? you —”

     he’s tripping over his words and his thoughts feel crammed against the inside of his skull, pressure building like water trying to break through a dam. 

     “i wanna believe you. i do. but when somethin’ sounds too good to be true, it’s a lie. you had plenty of time to show up before we disappeared ‘n you know it. you should’ve tried harder.”

       two words. nate starts with two words and alex knows he’s messed up, he’s said the wrong thing, he’s tipped the scale so far out of his favor that the threads of what could had been unravel even faster. but it was truth. all of it was truth. and as defensive as he instinctively wants to be, this isn’t the place. he listens, he listens and it’s only when he finishes does alex lift his hands up, almost on the defense. then he nods. nate’s right, of course. he should’ve tried harder.

       “i meant it when i said i didn’t come here expecting anything. no hugs, no big speeches, no... anything. i didn’t even know if you’d hear me out. i know it’s hard to believe. i get it, okay? i get that ... there are things i missed and coming to you at all isn’t fair. but you deserved to hear what happened, what really happened. and i wish it could’ve been sooner, but here we are.” alex drops his hands, his shoulders drop, too. the rest comes out in a rush, a messy ramble of words that he tries to contextualize. because if he doesn’t say it now, he might not be heard.

      “your mother asked me to sell her things. she was worried the medical bills and everything was... going to be too much. she was always thinking ahead, thinking logically. that’s what ... i wasn’t good at that kind of stuff. never have been. evelyn seemed like the best choice. she respected cass’ things, her work, her.” he didn’t want to sell anything, but he doesn’t say that. “it wasn’t enough. god, it wasn’t even close to enough. all that hardwork and everything she loved and you’d think it would amount to even a ...” he rolls his shoulders, drawing himself away. to another path. another explanation. “i should’ve tried harder. you’re right, nate. you’re right. at the end of the day, that’s the bottom line. i let you down. i let sam down.” 

     i let your mother down. what an opportune time to really notice the ring necklace around his neck. he heard about that, too. he pauses for only a second, voice softer when he speaks again. and his breath rattles in his chest.

     something moves in him, like a rocky lakebed stirring with a gentle current. butterflies and moths. butterflies and moths aren’t the same. his legs swinging from a chair that was too tall for him until his dad came to pick him up, not mad but smiling. proud. they went out for ice cream. 

     an echo of that same pride touches his eyes when he tells nate about it now and it’s soft, sentimental, bittersweet nostalgia that he wants to dismantle so that it’s hard and fake and wrought with ulterior motive instead. his chest is tight and the soda bottle suddenly feels a lot more throwable than drinkable. he puts it down, pushes a hand through his hair. starts tugging at the ring on its cord around his neck because he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

     “jesus, you make it sound like we’ve just been —” he starts, then stops, then shakes his head and starts again. “don’t do that. don’t — don’t tell me bullshit stories about preschool like that’s gonna change anything. you ditched us. ‘n hey, y’know what, maybe i get it — maybe i get why you couldn’t hack it by yourself with a couple of kids and a dead wife. talk about lifetime, right? but you could’ve come back. you had twelve goddamn years to come back, and you didn’t. so why now?”

     foot in mouth. it is, but it isn’t. he’s here reminiscing with his son about a long gone past and that isn’t what he should be doing. alex sets aside his water bottle and steels himself. whatever he intended to say wasn’t going to cut it. there was only here and now. 

     i’m sorry, cassandra. 

    “i tried,” he starts, but it sounds like excuses. it sounds like the sickly sweet stuff the doctors had told him and cassandra when things were looking dire. alex runs his hand through his hair and tries again. “father duffy and i ... he told me he’d look after you boys while i figured out some odds and ends. the state was looking to take you and your brother away. a system like that? it’d eat you two alive, probably would’ve separated you and i couldn’t do that. not after — duffy’s a good man. an honest one. i didn’t...” 

    he bites the inside of his cheek, picking through the remnants and ruins of conversations over a decade old. does any of this matter now? what’s done is done. but it does matter. looking at nate now, it does matter. he deserves to know what happened, why it happened. he deserves to know why alex failed him when he should’ve been the one person he could’ve counted on to get through it all. 

     the night they’d broken into evelyn’s house, sam had gestured at a stack of boxes and asked if it reminded him of anything. every place they’d lived after mom died, he’d said. dad telling them not to bother unpacking. dad telling them they would be moving again soon. always the asshole, sam had muttered. but that’s the thing about hindsight. that wasn’t his memory. thinking back on it now, he doesn’t remember the boxes at all. he remembers sam telling him about the boxes. he remembers sam telling him about a lot of things.

     he remembers jumping a boy twice his size at st. francis’ for pressing on a bruise that stayed fresh because sam never let it heal. that wasn’t his anger. 

     it wasn’t, and then it was. 

     is … ? 

     anger would certainly be easier. hating this man for leaving is easier than maybe finding out why he’d really left. 

     because you were worthless. 

     nate’s jaw hardens a little again and he reaches for the soda, but he holds it like a dog waiting for a toy to start moving by itself. like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with it. his brows pinch together in the middle. 

     “that’s what you wanna talk about? school?” he blows out a breath that sounds closer to a scoff than he means it to. “okay. sure. i’m barely graduating, ‘n that’s only if i don’t land back in juvie before then. if you were hopin’ for some speech about my big plans for the future, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

       he expected barbs. he expected barbs and punches and callous words because how could he not? but that was with sam. that was with sam and alex can see the ways in which nate has grown to fit in his brother’s shadow; puffing out his chest and holding himself in a way that makes it seem like it’s almost his own. almost. but the edges aren’t as sharp or jagged and he doesn’t look at alex like he hates him. maybe he lost time, but he can see the struggle there, too. even if he can’t read it, even if he doesn’t know where to begin trying to understand the person nate’s become. 

        juvie. arrests. sam did time. drake. they’re the drakes now.

        “heh. i remember,” he starts, tripping over sepia toned memories of right before cassandra was a ghost. “when you corrected your pre-school teacher for saying moths and butterflies were the same,” alex opens and closes the bottle of water he’s left holding. he doesn’t drink from it either. and maybe it’s foulplay to slip into a memory, but it’s all he has. “almost got put in time out for it, too. or ... not time out, the corner. but you told her it wasn’t your fault you’re smart,” alex finishes, fondness touching at the corners of his mouth, but that’s when he chooses to drink. chooses to drown down the well up of sentiment and everything that makes this messier than it already is.

      “look, we don’t have to talk about school. we can talk about whatever you want. and you can ask whatever you want. no holds barred. i just ... i like hearing about what you’ve been up to. no speech.” 

     just to talk. that’s it, except that’s not it — but it’s why he doubled back, right? why he nodded tightly in agreement to meet, somewhere between sam throwing the first punch and nate hauling him off to prevent a second, when sam was retreating the way they’d come and nate was hesitating. somewhere between the clipped fuck this and the louder c’mon, nathan, we’re leavin’.

     he doesn’t get why hearing his own name now hits like he’s the one who took a punch. or why that stupid quip makes him want to scream. 

     he doesn’t, but he does. 

     “the least you could do is offer me a beer.” that’s a quip, too. maybe it runs in the family. the thought flickers through him half - formed and when he swallows, it’s too thick in his throat. “… whatever. yeah. i can do a few minutes.”

        alex pulls a face. the toddler with the messy hair and bright eyes vanishes. his hair swoops now and his eyes are still bright, but there’s shadow beneath. there’s a pool of things beneath the surface and alex is stranger to all of it. played out any other way, this would’ve been a beautiful father-son bonding moment. a chuckle, a ruffle of the hair, and a don’t tell your mother as they share a beer together. that was taken from them, too. any sort of future. at least, that’s how it felt. but his son didn’t march out, didn’t leave him with his offer. alex wasn’t going to spend another however many years searching for them again once they left this place. 

       it’s a sliver of hope, but it’s something. 

      a wounded sort of something he clings to to stave off mourning the five-year-old boy he has to let go.

     it isn’t fair. nothing about this is. nothing about this has been fair since the day cassandra willfully took herself from her family and felt as if there were no choice. finding the boys again had felt like a pipe dream. a series of dead ends and dead names and a trail of myths and hearsay. and now alex is here. now he’s here looking at a young man in the making. a young man he had nothing to do with since the boy was five. in a lot of ways, he looks unrecognizable. in still more, he looks exactly like his mother.

     alex feels that twinge in his chest times two. guilt feels like a battering ram against his ribcage.

     “hey, i know how this looks,” there’s the easy pull to one corner of his mouth, but it isn’t out of humor. nerves, perhaps. more like. “guy shows up out of the blue and lifetime would have you believing in miracles. i’m not ... i’m not asking for anything, nathan. just a few minutes. just to talk, that’s it.” and he means it. even if he wants more, he can’t expect anything. so he doesn’t.