Page 7 of Her Brother's Keeper

Maren: I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you.

Me: How’s that?

Maren: I mean, it’s late and I’m probably bothering you.

Me: If u were bothering me I would have said so.

She didn’t text back right away, the little dots at the bottom of the screen suspiciously absent, the little message below the blue chat bubble I’d just sent marked ‘read’ though, so I waited; drifting off some before jolting awake when the phone buzzed against my chest.

Maren: Thank you.

Me: For what?

Maren: For listening. It’s been a lot harder than I expected.

Me: Anytime, and I mean that. Ur good, girl. I promise.

Maren: I think I should try to sleep.

Me: OK, keep in touch. I’m here anytime. If I don’t answer right away, I promise I’ll hit u back as soon as I see it. K?

Maren: Okay, thank you again.

Me: Ur welcome.

I lay awake, hands behind my head, staring at the ceiling of my room and the shadows bouncing across them. There was a naked tree out back of the building, and sometimes, when the moon shone just right, the shadow would be cast across my ceiling from the high window over my bed. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d just lay here and count the spaces, or if there was wind or a breeze, like tonight, I’d watch the shadows dance.

I kept playing the text message exchange in my head, and let the wheels do a slow grind. She was a sad girl, wearing her grief with some serious grace. That made her stronger than she knew. She was beautiful, but I wasn’t thinking with my dick. Not at seventeen to my thirty-six. That just wouldn’t be fair to her, so I shelved any notion of anything beyond just friendship and a helping hand right the fuck now.

It was so late that it was early, which made it Christmas Eve. Poor kids, spending their first Christmas as orphans. I was too young to remember my first Christmas without parents, so it’d always been the norm for me. If I had anything resemblingrealparents, it was Grind and Arch. Shit, if I had to be honest, Arch was the onlyreallyresponsible one.

I smirked into the dark. I guess that made Archer the ‘mom’ out of the four of us, because even though the cold bastard hadn’t exactly beennurturinggrowing up, he had been the one to keep us in line, and not with the beatings that Norma Rae and Duncan were used to handing out.

I felt my smirk slide right off my face at the thought of our foster parents. They’d taken on the four of us boys because Norma Rae had known Duncan had a thing for little girls just budding out and hitting puberty. When we’d been coming up, we’d been pulled out of their place once or twice while investigations of this or that went on. Some neighbor turned them in every once in a while. It was too bad, really, that Norma Rae was so smart about it.

Shit, the beatings when we got back though? Fuck me, those weren’t so much fun. Neither was having the four of us crammed in one room for the duration of our lives. We weren’t kids, or people to those fruitcakes. We were a monthly paycheck so they could drown themselves in their booze and cigarettes. Grind was the one who kept the four of us fed, all the way back from the time me and Rush first showed up to when we finally got out of that hell hole by aging out of the fuckin’ system.

That kid knew how to hustle up some groceries, man. He had dumpster diving at the local supermarket down to a science. Would come home, backpack loaded with barely expired or food that was still good if we got it into the freezer that night. You would be fuckin’ amazed at the shit grocery places tossed out. A total fuckin’ waste if you ask me. Homeless folks could eat like motherfuckin' kings every night of the week if only that shit was donated. Seriously, there wasn’t anything wrong withanyof the food Grind came up with.

If it happened to be a week of slim pickings at the supermarket, he would be the first kid in line with a backpack and two reusable grocery bags at the local church’s food pantry. He’d give ‘em a bullshit name and come home with all sorts of shit from there, too.

If it was one thing Grind knew how to do, it was put food on the table, and if it was one thing Arch knew how to do, it was take on some of Grind’s beating when Duncan sobered up enough to catch Grind bringing it in the mobile home. Duncan would beat hisass, boy. He liked to freak the fuck out over Grind ‘stealing’ and when Grind couldn’t take any more of the belt, he would say some sort of code or phrase and Arch would jump in and draw fire. At least until Rush and I got old enough to take our share.

I thought about Maren, about her desperate looks in her brother’s direction when he’d been smarting off and just generally acted like a little entitled asshole earlier that day. He’d come up sheltered by the love of his sister and probably their dad, too. I don’t know how long the dude had been sick, but judging by the state of the house on the outside, and the living room, it’d been a long damn time. It made me wonder how fast Maren’d had to grow up. How long she’d been holding down the fort, so to speak.

I also wondered where their mom was at, but it was pretty clear, dead or alive or whatever, that she’d been out of the picture for a long, long time. I mean, there weren’t but one or two pictures on the walls with her in it, and the ones shewasin? Sage was about my nephew Noah’s age, if not younger, and Maren no older than six or seven.

I sighed and closed my eyes, but all I could see was a luminous pair of somber brown eyes and that envelope trembling between her fingers as she fought not to cry again. Here was to hoping that things would get a little better for her and her brother. We would just have to see what happened.

Chapter 4

Maren

I sat in the wreckage of wrapping paper and boxes and watched Sage work on a wooden Rubik’s cube that had been beautifully crafted and couldn’t be anything less than hand made. I’d certainly never seen anything like it. My small treasure-trove sat in front of me and I was speechless once again, it was too much.

The first gift I had opened was a wooden jewelry box that was hand carved with flowering vines. It was a dark, rich wood that I had no name for and when you opened the hinged top, half of it was set up for rings, little rolls of dark blue velvet ready to hold them. The other half, was parceled into small, square, divided pockets to hold, I think, post earrings. There were two shallow drawers set into the front of the box, and I figured they were for earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. It was beautiful, and likewise to Sage’s Rubik’scube, handmade.

Next had been a box of high-end chocolates from this place I had always wanted to try called Soul Fuel. Almost all of the other senior girls stopped there for coffee on the way to school, but I couldn’t afford five dollars a day for coffee when I could make it at home. That five dollars added up quickly, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, even every once in a while; not when there were things like the water, sewer, garbage, and the ever dreaded electric bill to pay. Plus there were other bills most kids never had to think about, such as their phone bill, car insurance, gas for the car, food for the fridge and pantry, cable, even though ours was basic, and the internet; which Sage and I lived and died by when it came to school and entertainment.

---