Chapter 9: Christmas

I came down the narrow stairs barefoot, in Corbin's blue shirt and nothing else.

I should have put on my jeans. I didn't think of it until much later.

Corbin was standing at the front door with his hand on the knob and a coffee mug in the other hand.

He looked back at me once.

"Go upstairs," he said quietly.

"No."

He sighed and opened the door.

Brennan stood on the porch in yesterday's suit.

He hadn't shaved. His eyes were red. His car was parked crooked across the end of the driveway, one wheel in the beach grass.

He looked at his uncle, in jeans and a T-shirt with a coffee mug.

Then he looked past him, at me.

At my bare legs. At the shirt. At my hair, which looked exactly like what had happened to it.

His face did something I'd never seen it do in seven years.

It fell apart.

"So Mother was right," he said.

"Brennan," Corbin said.

"Since Christmas." Brennan laughed, high and awful. "Since Christmas, and I sat at that table with both of you. Every Sunday."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Don't." He pointed at me. "You don't get to do that anymore. Look at you."

Corbin stepped into the doorway, between us.

"You need to go home and sleep," he said. "Whatever this is, we'll talk when you're sober."

"I'm not drunk," he said. "I wish I were."

Down at the road, a car had stopped.

A man got out with a camera with a long lens.

He'd followed Brennan, or he'd been waiting at the house all night. It didn't matter which.

"Brennan, there's a photographer," I said.

"Good," Brennan said. "Let him get this."

He swung at Corbin.

It wasn't a good punch. Brennan had never hit anyone in his life.

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