I Died Afraid My Broken Arm Burdened Them novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: What Bram Paid

My brother waited until it was dark.

He drove my mother home himself, and neither of them said a word.

Dale followed in his own car as far as the gates and sat with the engine running until the lights in the house came on.

That night my mother set me on the desk in the blue room, next to the watch nobody had touched.

She sat on the bed in her coat.

Bram stood in the doorway.

He had brought the brown envelope from the funeral home. He took out the paint stirrer, laid it flat on the desk beside the urn, and straightened it with two fingers.

"Mom," he said. "I need to tell you something. I need you to let me finish."

"You knew that man," my mother said. "On Larkspur Lane. You knew his club."

"Yes."

"The friend with the rule. That was you."

"Yes."

She did not move.

"Tell me."

He leaned against the doorframe.

"I was fourteen," he said. "I'd come home early from school. You and Dad were in the study."

I went still.

"I heard Dad say Ellis's name. I heard him say the test was working. That he'd stay on the street until he reached three million dollars, and the day he did, it was over, and he came home."

"Bram..."

"I asked him that night. I asked him how long that would take. He ran the numbers on the back of an envelope."

My brother laughed once, without any breath in it.

"Forty years. At what a kid like that could make, forty years. I was fourteen, and I did the math in my head, and I knew he'd be nearly fifty before they let him out."

I looked at him standing in the doorway.

He had not been wasting money. He had been counting.

"I told Dad I'd tell him. Dad said if I did, the test would reset. Start over with new rules. And Ellis wouldn't forgive any of us."

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