Page 5 of Our Last Resort

My throat tightens. I don’t want to talk about any of it with Gabriel: Sabrina and William Brenner; husbands and the things they do to their wives.

It’s what kicked him out of my life almost nine years ago.

We’ve been finding our way back to each other. Still, in our four days at the Ara, there have been moments when he’s slipped away. Retreating to our suite in the middle of an afternoon by the pool. Untethering from our dinner conversation and gazing into the distance.

Just yesterday, he skipped a morning hike, invoking a migraine. I believed him. Gabriel has had migraines since wewere both fifteen. But I also remember something he told me years ago, once he’d found the right treatment: “Now I only get the migraines that my body wants me to have.”

Which meant the timing of his migraines was no longer random. He got them when he worked too hard, or when he was depressed. They became his body’s way of forcing him to rest, of bailing him out of moments he wanted to avoid.

Like yesterday’s hike.

We came here to talk. But we haven’t discussed it yet—the documentary, the thing that brought us here. I’ve tried to bring it up a couple of times, but Gabriel wriggled out of the conversation. He had a phone call to make, a question to ask at the front desk.

There are layers between us. Things unsaid, embraces that were never given.

But I’m trying.

“Our neighbors,” I say. “The Brenners. The old guy and his wife.”

“What about them?”

Gabriel’s voice is warm, patient.

“They were arguing,” I tell him. “Fighting.”

“It happens.”

I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. “This was different. Bad. It reminded me of—”

My voice disappears at the back of my throat.

There are things I can’t say. Not even to my brother, not even in the dark.

“Come over here,” he says.

A mental picture from our childhood: me on the top bunk, Gabriel on the bottom one. Back when I was the braveone.

I slide down to the floor and feel my way toward him. There, I sit, the wood of his bed frame digging between my shoulders.

“Everything’s fine,” he says.

“Sabrina Brenner,” I tell him. “There’s something wrong with her husband.”

“There’s something wrong with most husbands.”

Before I can ask him what he means, before I can insist,No, really, Gabriel, I’m not kidding,my brother shifts under his blanket.

“We’re okay,” he says, his last word swallowed by a yawn. “It’s all going to be okay.”

Just like that, he’s asleep again.

I stay seated by his bed. In other circumstances, I’d fall asleep right here, the regular pattern of Gabriel’s breath like a lullaby.

Not tonight.

I sit, eyes open. Listening. Standing guard.

It’s nothing I haven’t done before.

---