Page 58 of Veiled in Brick

“She left,” Carter pushed on. “And then you left. You were our—our hope. We. Needed. Money, Liam. You could’ve gotten us through it all after she left, but you gave us nothing!”

Liam whimpered, “Dad.”

I hopped down from my stool to stand.

“Get out.”

I pointed to the front door and Carter squinted at me curiously as I stomped past Liam.

“That’s real cute—”

“Get out,” I ordered him more firmly.

He spoke around me now, telling Liam, “If you would have just listened—helped all of us like I said you should—she’d be here.”

Liam uttered a soft, “No.”

I whipped my head back to see him leaning against the island. A hand splayed gently across his diaphragm as if he were about to be sick, his focus stayed steady on the flooring. Just like many months ago when I had woken Liam from a nightmare that used to be his reality, he held a far-away gaze, signifying that his mind was in an entirely different place. His shoulders shook as his breathing turned ragged, and Carter pushed on.

“If you would have just done what I told you to, you wouldn’t have had to watch her put a goddamn bullet in her brain—”

Liam groaned as if he had been punched in the gut and his hands went to his face, covering his eyes as he sank down to the ground.

The realization of the traumatic nature of Liam’s mother’s death—of what he had witnessed—dawned on me, and I rounded back on Carter, yelling, “Get the fuck out!”

“I’m not finished here.” I heard more than saw Carter speak the sentence because my legs were moving underneath me so quickly, it seemed as if my brain didn’t even tell them to. It was pure instinct that I wound up in the kitchen, opened one of Liam’s cupboards, snatched the heaviest looking glass that was within reach, and stormed back to Carter. I wielded the glass above my head as if it were a weapon as I walked, and Carter said, “Really?”

I threw it with all the force I had in me. If he wouldn’t have ducked, it would have been a direct hit but, unfortunately, it shattered on the door behind his head. His arms flew up to cover his face as the glass rained down, and my vocal cords strained in my throat as I shrieked:

“GET THE FUCK OUT!”

Carter muttered a slurry of profanities as he crunched through the glass and scurried out the front door. I ran to where he once was, carefully stepping around broken shards on the floor, and flipped the deadbolt shut before returning back to Liam to crouch down to his level. His knees were to his chest, palms pressed to his eyes as if he were trying to erase a vivid memory.

“Liam?” I breathed his name. He made a small, pained noise that was so heart-wrenching, my throat constricted. I coughed to clear it, but my voice still cracked when I reached to touch his hands and called to him again. “Lee?” His fingers were damp with tears, and I tugged at them gently. “Liam, please.” Instead of prying his hands off his face or begging him to respond to me any further, I kneeled next to his side and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He shifted slightly, his hands falling away as he rested his head on my chest. I sat back, leaning against the island wall, and he went with me. His body shook softly, the evidence from his crying seeping into my shirt, and I whispered, “I got you, you’re fine.”

Carter’s incantation of, ‘You wouldn’t have had to watch her put a goddamn bullet in her brain,’ played in my mind on repeat, and it made me clench my jaw to subdue the urge to vomit. Eventually, it was shortened to, ‘You wouldn’t have had to watch,’ and then, just, ‘Watch.’ The single word chanted in my brain, for it was apparent in Liam’s visceral reaction that it was true.

I sat with Liam’s head on my chest for a long while. So long that the horrid repetitive monologue in my mind had withered down to nothing. So long that I wondered if the minutes had turned to hours, though the exact span of time didn’t bother me in the least. At some point, I had begun to slowly stroke his hair—I wasn’t sure why I had done so. I had never been one to physically comfort another, but the subconscious raking of my nails back and forth along his scalp seemed to be helping ease his anguish, so I continued on. His breathing slowed, his shaking ceased, and Liam finally spoke, his voice raw and full of grit.

“You didn’t have to do all that.”

“Yeah, I did,” I replied. “You okay?” He hummed back a semblance of agreement, and I felt the need to say, “You know that no matter what that fucker says, nothing that happened was your fault.”

“I—yeah. I know, he’s um…he just knows my buttons. I was used to it before—any time he’d figure out where I was, y’know? He’d say he deserves money, I’d tell him to fuck off, and he’d bring up…the usual. All that. It’s been years, though…guess I forgot what it felt like.” Liam cleared his throat and followed it with a deep sigh. “Sent me…somewhere else. Like…like I was there again.”

I didn’t have to ask where there was—with the way that he said it, it was clear that he was referencing the trauma of his mother’s death.

“Is that what that was?” I asked quietly.

Liam nodded and inhaled deeply before stating on the exhale, “PTSD, or so I’m told.” He shook his head. “I dunno. Fuckin’ crackpot therapists all said that.”

I didn’t inquire about the diagnosis, for it didn’t matter. All that was clear was that he was transported back in time for a moment—flashed back to a memory that was so haunting that it damn near caused him to collapse. My throat tightened once again at the thought.

“Are you back now?” I whispered.

He wiped at his face with the backside of his hands roughly and looked up at me, my hand still running through his hair as he said, “Yeah.” His eyes were red-rimmed as he scanned my face and asked, “Um—why did you do that, Zoey?”

“I care about you too damn much to—” I hesitated in what I was saying, wondering where to go with it, instead landing on, “I just care about you, Lee.”

---