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  “Andy’s not home, he’s at work. But he said I could go next door and wait for him. He’ll be home as soon as he can get a ride.” Bennett stared at his great-grandma, who’d fallen back, panting softly. “Nan, you’ll be okay.”

  Nan’s head turned toward him. Incredibly, she managed a smile. She held out her hand, and Bennett, God love him, took it. Janelle had never been prouder of her boy than at that moment, when he gently squeezed Nan’s fingers despite the mess and smell. He stayed with her until the ambulance came ten minutes later.

  “You stay at the Tierneys’ until Gabe or Andy gets home, okay?” Janelle said from the back of the ambulance as the EMTs pushed Nan, strapped to the gurney, inside. “You call me when Andy gets there. No. Just text me, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. And I’ll call or text you—”

  “Ma’am, we have to go.” The EMT said it respectfully, but without much patience.

  “Go,” Janelle said, and the ambulance doors closed off the sight of her son.

  FIFTY

  Then

  AFTER THE SCUFFLE in the twins’ room, the old man goes out and doesn’t come back for two days. Andy locks himself in his room and doesn’t go to work. Mike calls in for him, says he’s sick. Gabe doesn’t miss work—it’s a shitty job but it’s all he has until he can get out of this place. He knocks on the door the third morning and opens it even when Andy doesn’t tell him to come in.

  His brother sits at the window, still cracked but not broken, and stares outside. He doesn’t even turn to look around when Gabe comes in. His shoulders rise and fall with every breath, but other than that, he might as well be a statue.

  “You going to work today?”

  Andy says nothing.

  Gabe tries again, moving closer. He even puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder, but it’s like touching wood or stone or metal. Unmovable.

  “C’mon, Andy. You have to...you should go to work.”

  Andy says nothing.

  Gabe sighs and tries again. Mike got a job in the church office for the summer, but Andy’s working at the plant, same as Gabe. Same as their dad. “They’ll fire you.”

  His brother looks at him then, blue eyes shuttered, mouth closed tight against whatever words might be trying to make their escape. Andy’s always been a jokester, the silly one, a cut-up. Class clown. Just now it looks as if he’s never smiled in his life.

  “I couldn’t do it,” Andy says. “I tried. I wanted to. But I just couldn’t do it.”

  Gabe’s fingers squeeze. He thinks of Janelle and what she was willing to do for him, and he wants to punch a hole in the wall. She’s gone, and it’s too late to make things better. “It’s okay. Lots of guys have trouble the first time.”

  Andy blinks. Then again. And finally, brilliantly, he smiles.

  “No,” he says. “Not that. I wanted to kill the old man, and I couldn’t do it. When it came right down to it, I just couldn’t.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  IT WAS CLOSE to the end, and there was nothing to do but wait. It shouldn’t even have come as a surprise, but apparently things like this always did. That was what the doctor said, anyway. A young guy, he looked tired. He told Janelle they’d done everything they could for her grandmother, but with the cancer and her age...

  “I know,” Janelle said. She felt somehow as though she needed to reassure him, instead of the other way around.

  Nan had stabilized. They’d given her a cocktail of medications—some for the nausea and pain, some to prevent more seizures. Her blood pressure was completely out of control.

  “They doped me up,” Nan said in a wavery voice, her hand searching for Janelle’s.

  “I know, Nan. Just to keep you comfortable.”

  Nan nodded after a second or so, and closed her eyes. She kept them shut for so long that Janelle thought she’d fallen asleep; the rise and fall of her chest, however slight, told her she was still alive. She opened them when Janelle started to pull her hand free.

  “I expect you’ve made the phone calls.”

  Janelle nodded. Bobby and Donna were on the road, but wouldn’t get here for another few hours. Same with John and Lisa. “Yes. Joey and Deb will be here pretty soon. Marty and Kathy, too.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to tell them to come,” Nan protested, but weakly. Then she changed her mind and gave Janelle a trembling smile. “Well. I guess they should come, shouldn’t they? Will they let the children in, do you think?”

  “I’m not sure.” It was long past visiting hours, but this close to the end, and surely it was the end, wouldn’t someone have compassion?

  Nan closed her eyes again. “I b’lieve I’ll sleep for a little while. Would you... Will you bring Bennett?”

  “Yes. I think that would be a good idea.” Janelle waited another minute, but Nan’s soft, even breathing didn’t catch or stop. She didn’t open her eyes, either.

  In the hall, Janelle scrubbed at her face and waited to dissolve into tears, but found herself dry-eyed. Her stomach churned, and the idea of even sipping at a mug of gross hospital coffee made her throat sting with bile. She took her phone into the lobby to call Bennett, who didn’t answer. Nor did Andy when she tried his number.

  Janelle tried Bennett again. Then Andy. Again, neither picked up. She rang Nan’s house phone, thinking maybe they’d pick up, but there was no answer there, either. Worried now, she tapped her fingers against the phone and thought about what to do. She didn’t want to leave the hospital, she wanted to get her son, but without a way to get in touch with him...

  She dialed the only other number she could think of. When he answered, he sounded both so wary and so hopeful, it broke her heart. “Gabe,” she said. “I need you.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Then

  THE KITCHEN STINKS of sour milk. Garbage overflows the pail. Gabe remembers the days when Mrs. Moser would be there waiting with fresh cookies and milk when he got home from school, but of course, it’s been years since she came to take care of them.

  It’s not time for him to be home yet, but he told the plant nurse he’d puked. When she left him with the thermometer, he pulled the old trick of holding it to the lamp to mimic a fever. He’s pretty sure she knows he was faking, but she sends him home, anyway.

  The kitchen is disgusting. If the old man comes home and sees it this way, there will be hell to pay. Gabe doesn’t care so much about that, nor about the fact that his father hasn’t been back in three days. If they’re really lucky, he thinks, maybe the old man won’t ever come home.

  He knew, Gabe thinks. The old man knew how close he’d come to pushing Andy over the edge. Maybe it scared him, just enough.

  Gabe thinks about washing the dishes and taking out the trash, but first he wants to check on his brothers. He climbs the stairs and pushes open his brothers’ bedroom door, prepared for a hundred different things except an empty room.

  The beds are perfectly made. Their identical desks are both cleared off, which isn’t strange for Mike’s, but is definitely out of character for Andy. A piece of lined paper on the dresser flutters when Gabe passes it; the breeze picks it up and carries it under the bed, where he’ll have to get on his hands and knees to pull it out.

  He almost doesn’t.

  But something tells him this piece of paper is important, and that even though he doesn’t want to know what it says, he’d better find out. He snags it with his fingertips and pulls it toward him. He knows Mike’s handwriting, which slants slightly to the left and is sloppy, considering how neat and tidy Mike is about everything else. The writing is Mike’s, but the words are Andy’s.

  If it can’t end one way, it has to another.

  Gabe crumples the note. Shoves it in his pocket. He looks in the closet for the guns, but already knows they aren’t there.

  And then he runs for his truck.

  The drive takes too long and at the end of it, he runs along the curving path strewn so thick with pine needles the thud of his sneakers barely registers. He can’t bre