The Deceiving Look (Shepard & Gray), page 26
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
Ethan left, and Solomon was alone, standing in the doorway. He felt like he was disconnected from his body, and his thoughts were floating aimlessly, like they belonged to someone else.
From outside, Ethan said, “Come on, baby bro. We got things to do.”
Solomon hesitated and then followed him out.
The black car blended in with the darkness of the night. Solomon cautiously climbed into the passenger seat and scanned the interior before settling in. As Ethan started the engine and fastened his seat belt, he gestured toward Solomon’s seat belt and said, “Safety first.”
Solomon was in a daze, his mind elsewhere. He didn’t move, and Ethan noticed, so he reached over and grabbed the seat belt, pulled it over Solomon’s chest, and buckled it securely. Solomon barely registered the movement, his mind still lost in his thoughts.
“Where we going?” Solomon asked.
Ethan backed up and then flipped around. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s not.”
“Why not?”
“If you wanted to, you would have by now.”
He nodded. “Sound reasoning.” Ethan looked at him again. “You look really thin. And pale. Are you sick?”
Solomon didn’t respond as he stared out the window.
“Sorry for chasing you in the car, baby bro. I just wanted to have a little bit of fun. Keep you on your toes.”
Solomon didn’t move his gaze from the window. “Where are we going, Ethan?”
“Relax. You’ll like it.”
Solomon had never seen the bar before. It was small and tucked away behind a restaurant, surrounded by tall trees, with no signage to indicate its presence. The place had a certain grime to it and had seen better days.
“What is this place?”
“A bar.”
“I don’t want to go to a bar, Ethan.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a Grumpy Gus. We haven’t seen each other in, what, thirty years? I’ve been dreaming about having a beer with my long-lost baby bro forever, Solomon.”
Solomon didn’t say anything and didn’t look at him.
“Okay,” Ethan said, “well, I’m going in and having some expensive foreign beer to celebrate. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, so if you want them answered, I’ll be inside.”
Solomon hesitated as Ethan got out of the car and walked into the small unmarked bar. He pulled out his phone but paused before calling Billie. What would happen if the police arrived before he had a chance to talk to Ethan? He couldn’t bear the thought of his own brother facing the death penalty. Instead, Solomon considered talking to Ethan and trying to convince him to turn himself in. If he could persuade the interim DA to take the death penalty off the table and avoid a federal case, there might be a chance to save Ethan’s life.
He opened the door and got out.
As Ethan disappeared into the bar, Solomon took a deep breath and followed him inside.
The interior was poorly lit, but the warm glow of neon beer signs and several televisions flickering with various sports made up for it. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol and sweat, but there was also a faint scent of wood that mingled with it. Solomon assumed it was from the open windows that allowed the night air to seep in. Despite it being a weekday night, the place was surprisingly packed, and Solomon felt uneasy as he scanned the crowd.
Ethan was sitting at a booth with two beers in front of him. As Solomon approached the booth, he could hear Ethan humming along to the pop-country song that was playing. The booth was in the back of the bar, and the dim lighting and the crowded atmosphere made it feel like a secret place. Ethan’s grin was inviting, and Solomon felt a sense of familiarity in his brother’s expression.
The table was sticky with spilled drinks. Solomon’s eyes darted around the bar, and he saw a few men in the corner playing pool.
Ethan said, “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack. Do I really scare you that much?”
Solomon wasn’t about to tell him it had nothing to do with him, but more to do with the fact that he was in a crowded bar. He hadn’t been around this many people crowded into a tight space in half a decade, and he had no idea that his reaction would be so severe.
“I can’t be in here,” he said, rising.
“Easy,” Ethan said, grabbing his arm as he wobbled. “It’s the crowd, right? They have a patio with heaters. Come on.”
Ethan led him to a table directly under a heater, and they both sat down. He placed two bottles of beer on the table and slid one over to Solomon.
“You look like you could use it.”
Solomon’s throat felt like he’d swallowed sandpaper, and despite wanting to turn down anything Ethan offered him, he took a few sips of the beer.
“It’s good, right?”
Solomon felt his heart calming, the acid in his stomach dissipating. He took a breath before saying, “What makes you think I didn’t just call the police?”
“Because if you wanted to see me with a needle in my arm, you would’ve told Billie where you were going.”
Hearing Billie’s name from Ethan’s mouth sent revulsion through Solomon, and of all the emotions he was able to keep in check, revulsion was the one that he couldn’t. His face must’ve twisted in an odd way because Ethan laughed and said, “Don’t like that I know about how close you two are, huh? Are you in love with her?”
Solomon ignored his question and said, “Did you take that girl?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
Ethan looked down to his beer as he played with the lip of the bottle. “Do you know that Harold died?”
“Dad’s brother?”
He nodded. “He was the last one, Solomon. The Shepard line is now officially you and me. It lives or dies with us.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been that way if Mom hadn’t died,” Solomon said with a subtle meaning that only his brother could have picked up.
He scoffed, “Yeah. That. Do you know what it’s like, Solomon, to be fourteen years old, to have lost both your parents, and to sit in a cold room with two male detectives grilling you for twenty hours?” He looked up from his beer. “Twenty hours, because my little brother decided to tell them that I had something to do with her death.”
“Did you?”
“I think if you really believed that, you would have brought the police with you.”
Solomon shifted his gaze toward the waitress approaching their table. He nodded in response to her question and requested a glass of water, his throat parched. Ethan tapped the nearly empty bottle of beer and gestured for another. The waitress jotted down their orders and walked away, leaving them in a brief moment of silence.
“So, I saw you never married,” Ethan said, “but are there any little Solomons running around?”
“No. But you already knew that. I’m guessing you know everything about me.”
He nodded as he took a drink. “Good guess. This has been a long time in the making. I’m still a little shocked it’s happening right now. That you’re actually sitting here in front of me.”
Solomon just managed to swallow down the taste of bile. The fake civility he was showing made him uncomfortable. All he remembered about Ethan was cruelty and little else.
“Why? Why would you kill innocent people to get my attention?”
“What was I supposed to do? Walk up to your house and say, ‘Hey, it’s the brother who grew up in a mental institution that you accused of killing our mother. Wanna grab a beer?’”
“Yes, Ethan. That’s exactly what a normal person would have done.”
He grinned a wicked grin. “We’re anything but normal, you and I.” Ethan drank down some more beer and sent a mischievous smile to a woman at another table who smiled at him. “We both know it would have to be something grand to get your attention. I wasn’t expecting a thank-you, but a little gratitude would be nice.”
“Gratitude? For what? Killing my friends?”
He laughed. “Friends? Mayor Yang and Roger were your friends, huh? I went back and looked at the video from the attack in court that day. You know what I saw?”
Solomon’s guts turned to ice. All the courtrooms in that building were equipped with sound and video, and court proceedings, unless changed by some policy or court ruling, were available to the public . . . but he had never gone back and watched the video of his attack. Never even thought to.
Ethan leaned closer and said in a softer voice, “I saw a killer. A lawyer that knew his client was going down and told him to do something crazy. And then you get stabbed. You think that man was your friend?”
“He couldn’t have known his client would attack me.”
“Maybe. He at least could’ve shouted, there was enough time. He just sat there . . . interesting. Roger’s the same. How many times did he try to get you fired or would write up infractions against you, or try to get you arrested? At least a dozen from what I saw.”
“Those records are work product of the DA’s office. How’d you see those?”
“Oh, I have ways. Not sure if you’ve ever tried to look up anything about me, but I was a cop. When I turned eighteen, I ran out of that institution as fast as I could and into the arms of Uncle Sam. USMC, oorah!” He took a sip of beer. “Joined the MPs and did my time, and then bounced around from department to department. Police work is really the most exciting type of work, don’t you agree? Living in the underbelly of the city you’re supposed to protect . . . there’s something kinda romantic about it.”
“So, you left police work and decided deranged serial killer was a nice profession to go into?”
He laughed. “They weren’t the first to die.”
“Who was? Our mother?”
He lowered his beer and held Solomon’s gaze.
“I’ll ask you again,” Solomon said, his voice stern. “What do you want?”
Ethan sighed. “We’re not just bonded by blood, you know. You don’t go through the types of childhoods like we went through and not develop some . . . let’s call them traits.”
Solomon ignored his comments. “Dennis Yang had two children. Did you know that? His daughter’s pregnant with her first child, his first grandchild. You took that from both of them.”
“Who gives a shit?” he said with a wave of his hand.
“I give a shit,” Solomon said angrily.
Ethan clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That is a shame. I really had hoped you would appreciate the artistry of it.”
“That’s not art. It’s just chaos.”
He nodded with a smile. “Order and chaos. You still remember Dad’s little lectures, huh? I mean, when he wasn’t drunk and beating the shit outta us. You really did dodge a bullet by being Mom’s favorite. She would at least try to protect you from him, but not me. He had to beat somebody, and I was always there. She never protected me.”
“Do you know what it must’ve been like to raise you? You were doing nothing but hurting other kids and animals, stealing, starting fires . . . that woman did everything she could for you.”
Anger burst out of Ethan, and his eyes darkened again. “She didn’t do shit!”
It lasted only a moment but didn’t fade away like other people’s anger. It was like he chose to stop feeling it, and instantly the anger went away. His ability to suddenly gain control was as scary as his ability to instantly lose it.
“Did you ever wonder why she hated me?”
Solomon opened his mouth to defend his mother, but the look in Ethan’s eyes told him that any words in her defense would fall on deaf ears. The truth was that his mother had done everything she could for Ethan. Solomon could still hear his mother’s sobs as she cried herself to sleep at night, knowing that Ethan had been arrested again, or when someone’s pet disappeared and the neighbors came over to accuse her, or when a store was burglarized and the police showed up at their door to question Ethan.
Solomon had watched as it slowly wore down his mother until she could barely get out of bed.
“I,” Ethan said, “was not our father’s child. Did you ever figure that out?”
Solomon hesitated.
“Oh, so you did know.”
“Not at the time. When I became a prosecutor, I had certain resources, and I used them to look into their lives. You were adopted.”
“Not just adopted, I was the product of our mother’s inability to keep her panties on. I think my father was just a one-night stand for her. I sometimes wonder what he was like. Probably a piece of garbage, like her. Maybe that’s why our dear old dad hated me so much. I was a constant reminder of her betrayal.”
Solomon felt his lip curl slightly and quickly smoothed it, but Ethan leaned forward, his eyes open, taking in everything, and he observed the reaction and smiled.
“Don’t like to hear that, Sally?”
Solomon felt his body tense up as the name Sally reached his ears, sending a sharp jolt of fear and anger through him. It was a name that had been used to torment and humiliate him in his youth, and hearing it now made him feel small and vulnerable, like a scared child all over again.
His jaw muscles clenched, and Ethan chuckled. “See? I knew that was in there somewhere.” He took a sip of beer but without taking his eyes off Solomon. “What else did you learn? Anything about who my father was?”
He shook his head. “There’s no information on him. I did learn that my father was a professor of literature in the ’70s.”
He laughed. “I always thought he was just an unemployed bum. But he was smart, I’ll give him that.” He glanced at the waitress who brought a fresh beer and Solomon’s water. “Did you ever try to find me?”
Solomon shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“By the time I had the ability to find you, I’d done a lot of healing. I couldn’t go back there. Not to any of the places or the people.”
Ethan kept his eyes down and then looked up when he said, “Did you read about what happened to me after?”
Solomon nodded. “Lakeview.”
“Not just Lakeview, it’s called the Sanctuary at Lakeview. You gotta get the full name, because none of the staff called it Lakeview. They called it the Sanctuary to convince us that it was someplace safe. What do you think, Solomon? What do you think happens to a strapping young man of fourteen in a psychiatric facility filled with boys that stick bunnies in microwaves and stab their parents?”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was our mother’s fault. She didn’t care enough to list a single family member or friend we could’ve gone to if anything happened to both of them.”
“You wanna blame them, fine. But I remember things differently, Ethan. Our parents went bankrupt trying to help you. They ruined their marriage, their health, and finally they both lost their minds. One to alcohol and the other to—”
“Suicide? Or murder?”
“I was going to say to madness. That woman broke mentally and physically trying to save you.”
Calmly, as though pointing out something obvious, he said, “That woman died how she deserved.”
“How is that? With you cutting her femoral arteries and convincing everyone it was suicide?”
“Believe whatever you want, Solomon,” he said, glancing at a woman’s butt as she walked by, “but I didn’t come here to play the blame game. I came because you’re the only family I got left, and I’m the only family you got left.”
“You murdered two innocent men.”
“Don’t you have a soul, Solomon? Can you truly not appreciate the beauty of it? I dedicated two men’s lives, two men that had harmed you, to you. I paid homage to our mother, who is the reason we’re both where we are. Me, a wandering nomad jumping in and out of psychiatric facilities my whole life, and you locked away like a hermit in some cave you inherited. To be honest, I kinda hoped you swindled her out of the house. It would’ve at least made you more interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“That’s all life is, little brother. Interesting and uninteresting.”
Solomon leaned forward, his voice softening. “Do you see what you’re doing? Interesting and uninteresting. That’s trauma talking. Black-and-white thinking. That’s not life.”
“Trauma . . . do you really know trauma, Solomon? Hmm? You went into foster care, where at least you had someone from Social Services coming and checking up on you. You know who I had? I had the Fridge.”
“The Fridge?”
He nodded. “He was one of the orderlies at Lakeview. The most senior one. They called him Fridge because he was a square giant. Shoulders like four feet across, big poofy hair . . . sometimes he would wear fancy coats with scarves, trying to look like a mob boss. He was always quoting Mafia movies. Thought he was a real tough guy. He used to make us hold up buckets of water as a punishment, one in each hand held out horizontally. Whoever dropped their arms first went into the hole. It wasn’t really a hole, of course, it was a closet. A little space the Fridge had made to keep troublemakers in line.”
Ethan zoned out, his eyes glazing over as he went back to someplace else. “I can’t tell you how many days I would spend in the dark in that little closet. I froze the first time I was there and wet my pants.” He let out a breath. “How sad that must’ve been. A little boy shaking in the dark with piss running down his leg.”
Solomon swallowed. “What did you do to Fridge?”
Ethan’s eyes came up and met his. “When I was out, I waited a bit, and then I got the sharpest box cutter I could find, snuck into his house while he was sleeping . . . and slit his throat. Solomon,” he said, shaking his head as though a shot of pleasure had gone through him, “he opened his eyes and looked at me before he died. He knew it was me that did that to him . . . and it was the greatest feeling in my life.”
“You have to see what that means that the best moment of your life has been slitting a sleeping man’s throat. You’re sick, Ethan. It’s a type of sickness they can’t treat, but they can put you someplace where the symptoms won’t dominate your life.”
“Someplace like Lakeview?”
Ethan left, and Solomon was alone, standing in the doorway. He felt like he was disconnected from his body, and his thoughts were floating aimlessly, like they belonged to someone else.
From outside, Ethan said, “Come on, baby bro. We got things to do.”
Solomon hesitated and then followed him out.
The black car blended in with the darkness of the night. Solomon cautiously climbed into the passenger seat and scanned the interior before settling in. As Ethan started the engine and fastened his seat belt, he gestured toward Solomon’s seat belt and said, “Safety first.”
Solomon was in a daze, his mind elsewhere. He didn’t move, and Ethan noticed, so he reached over and grabbed the seat belt, pulled it over Solomon’s chest, and buckled it securely. Solomon barely registered the movement, his mind still lost in his thoughts.
“Where we going?” Solomon asked.
Ethan backed up and then flipped around. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s not.”
“Why not?”
“If you wanted to, you would have by now.”
He nodded. “Sound reasoning.” Ethan looked at him again. “You look really thin. And pale. Are you sick?”
Solomon didn’t respond as he stared out the window.
“Sorry for chasing you in the car, baby bro. I just wanted to have a little bit of fun. Keep you on your toes.”
Solomon didn’t move his gaze from the window. “Where are we going, Ethan?”
“Relax. You’ll like it.”
Solomon had never seen the bar before. It was small and tucked away behind a restaurant, surrounded by tall trees, with no signage to indicate its presence. The place had a certain grime to it and had seen better days.
“What is this place?”
“A bar.”
“I don’t want to go to a bar, Ethan.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a Grumpy Gus. We haven’t seen each other in, what, thirty years? I’ve been dreaming about having a beer with my long-lost baby bro forever, Solomon.”
Solomon didn’t say anything and didn’t look at him.
“Okay,” Ethan said, “well, I’m going in and having some expensive foreign beer to celebrate. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, so if you want them answered, I’ll be inside.”
Solomon hesitated as Ethan got out of the car and walked into the small unmarked bar. He pulled out his phone but paused before calling Billie. What would happen if the police arrived before he had a chance to talk to Ethan? He couldn’t bear the thought of his own brother facing the death penalty. Instead, Solomon considered talking to Ethan and trying to convince him to turn himself in. If he could persuade the interim DA to take the death penalty off the table and avoid a federal case, there might be a chance to save Ethan’s life.
He opened the door and got out.
As Ethan disappeared into the bar, Solomon took a deep breath and followed him inside.
The interior was poorly lit, but the warm glow of neon beer signs and several televisions flickering with various sports made up for it. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol and sweat, but there was also a faint scent of wood that mingled with it. Solomon assumed it was from the open windows that allowed the night air to seep in. Despite it being a weekday night, the place was surprisingly packed, and Solomon felt uneasy as he scanned the crowd.
Ethan was sitting at a booth with two beers in front of him. As Solomon approached the booth, he could hear Ethan humming along to the pop-country song that was playing. The booth was in the back of the bar, and the dim lighting and the crowded atmosphere made it feel like a secret place. Ethan’s grin was inviting, and Solomon felt a sense of familiarity in his brother’s expression.
The table was sticky with spilled drinks. Solomon’s eyes darted around the bar, and he saw a few men in the corner playing pool.
Ethan said, “You look like you’re about to have a panic attack. Do I really scare you that much?”
Solomon wasn’t about to tell him it had nothing to do with him, but more to do with the fact that he was in a crowded bar. He hadn’t been around this many people crowded into a tight space in half a decade, and he had no idea that his reaction would be so severe.
“I can’t be in here,” he said, rising.
“Easy,” Ethan said, grabbing his arm as he wobbled. “It’s the crowd, right? They have a patio with heaters. Come on.”
Ethan led him to a table directly under a heater, and they both sat down. He placed two bottles of beer on the table and slid one over to Solomon.
“You look like you could use it.”
Solomon’s throat felt like he’d swallowed sandpaper, and despite wanting to turn down anything Ethan offered him, he took a few sips of the beer.
“It’s good, right?”
Solomon felt his heart calming, the acid in his stomach dissipating. He took a breath before saying, “What makes you think I didn’t just call the police?”
“Because if you wanted to see me with a needle in my arm, you would’ve told Billie where you were going.”
Hearing Billie’s name from Ethan’s mouth sent revulsion through Solomon, and of all the emotions he was able to keep in check, revulsion was the one that he couldn’t. His face must’ve twisted in an odd way because Ethan laughed and said, “Don’t like that I know about how close you two are, huh? Are you in love with her?”
Solomon ignored his question and said, “Did you take that girl?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
Ethan looked down to his beer as he played with the lip of the bottle. “Do you know that Harold died?”
“Dad’s brother?”
He nodded. “He was the last one, Solomon. The Shepard line is now officially you and me. It lives or dies with us.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been that way if Mom hadn’t died,” Solomon said with a subtle meaning that only his brother could have picked up.
He scoffed, “Yeah. That. Do you know what it’s like, Solomon, to be fourteen years old, to have lost both your parents, and to sit in a cold room with two male detectives grilling you for twenty hours?” He looked up from his beer. “Twenty hours, because my little brother decided to tell them that I had something to do with her death.”
“Did you?”
“I think if you really believed that, you would have brought the police with you.”
Solomon shifted his gaze toward the waitress approaching their table. He nodded in response to her question and requested a glass of water, his throat parched. Ethan tapped the nearly empty bottle of beer and gestured for another. The waitress jotted down their orders and walked away, leaving them in a brief moment of silence.
“So, I saw you never married,” Ethan said, “but are there any little Solomons running around?”
“No. But you already knew that. I’m guessing you know everything about me.”
He nodded as he took a drink. “Good guess. This has been a long time in the making. I’m still a little shocked it’s happening right now. That you’re actually sitting here in front of me.”
Solomon just managed to swallow down the taste of bile. The fake civility he was showing made him uncomfortable. All he remembered about Ethan was cruelty and little else.
“Why? Why would you kill innocent people to get my attention?”
“What was I supposed to do? Walk up to your house and say, ‘Hey, it’s the brother who grew up in a mental institution that you accused of killing our mother. Wanna grab a beer?’”
“Yes, Ethan. That’s exactly what a normal person would have done.”
He grinned a wicked grin. “We’re anything but normal, you and I.” Ethan drank down some more beer and sent a mischievous smile to a woman at another table who smiled at him. “We both know it would have to be something grand to get your attention. I wasn’t expecting a thank-you, but a little gratitude would be nice.”
“Gratitude? For what? Killing my friends?”
He laughed. “Friends? Mayor Yang and Roger were your friends, huh? I went back and looked at the video from the attack in court that day. You know what I saw?”
Solomon’s guts turned to ice. All the courtrooms in that building were equipped with sound and video, and court proceedings, unless changed by some policy or court ruling, were available to the public . . . but he had never gone back and watched the video of his attack. Never even thought to.
Ethan leaned closer and said in a softer voice, “I saw a killer. A lawyer that knew his client was going down and told him to do something crazy. And then you get stabbed. You think that man was your friend?”
“He couldn’t have known his client would attack me.”
“Maybe. He at least could’ve shouted, there was enough time. He just sat there . . . interesting. Roger’s the same. How many times did he try to get you fired or would write up infractions against you, or try to get you arrested? At least a dozen from what I saw.”
“Those records are work product of the DA’s office. How’d you see those?”
“Oh, I have ways. Not sure if you’ve ever tried to look up anything about me, but I was a cop. When I turned eighteen, I ran out of that institution as fast as I could and into the arms of Uncle Sam. USMC, oorah!” He took a sip of beer. “Joined the MPs and did my time, and then bounced around from department to department. Police work is really the most exciting type of work, don’t you agree? Living in the underbelly of the city you’re supposed to protect . . . there’s something kinda romantic about it.”
“So, you left police work and decided deranged serial killer was a nice profession to go into?”
He laughed. “They weren’t the first to die.”
“Who was? Our mother?”
He lowered his beer and held Solomon’s gaze.
“I’ll ask you again,” Solomon said, his voice stern. “What do you want?”
Ethan sighed. “We’re not just bonded by blood, you know. You don’t go through the types of childhoods like we went through and not develop some . . . let’s call them traits.”
Solomon ignored his comments. “Dennis Yang had two children. Did you know that? His daughter’s pregnant with her first child, his first grandchild. You took that from both of them.”
“Who gives a shit?” he said with a wave of his hand.
“I give a shit,” Solomon said angrily.
Ethan clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That is a shame. I really had hoped you would appreciate the artistry of it.”
“That’s not art. It’s just chaos.”
He nodded with a smile. “Order and chaos. You still remember Dad’s little lectures, huh? I mean, when he wasn’t drunk and beating the shit outta us. You really did dodge a bullet by being Mom’s favorite. She would at least try to protect you from him, but not me. He had to beat somebody, and I was always there. She never protected me.”
“Do you know what it must’ve been like to raise you? You were doing nothing but hurting other kids and animals, stealing, starting fires . . . that woman did everything she could for you.”
Anger burst out of Ethan, and his eyes darkened again. “She didn’t do shit!”
It lasted only a moment but didn’t fade away like other people’s anger. It was like he chose to stop feeling it, and instantly the anger went away. His ability to suddenly gain control was as scary as his ability to instantly lose it.
“Did you ever wonder why she hated me?”
Solomon opened his mouth to defend his mother, but the look in Ethan’s eyes told him that any words in her defense would fall on deaf ears. The truth was that his mother had done everything she could for Ethan. Solomon could still hear his mother’s sobs as she cried herself to sleep at night, knowing that Ethan had been arrested again, or when someone’s pet disappeared and the neighbors came over to accuse her, or when a store was burglarized and the police showed up at their door to question Ethan.
Solomon had watched as it slowly wore down his mother until she could barely get out of bed.
“I,” Ethan said, “was not our father’s child. Did you ever figure that out?”
Solomon hesitated.
“Oh, so you did know.”
“Not at the time. When I became a prosecutor, I had certain resources, and I used them to look into their lives. You were adopted.”
“Not just adopted, I was the product of our mother’s inability to keep her panties on. I think my father was just a one-night stand for her. I sometimes wonder what he was like. Probably a piece of garbage, like her. Maybe that’s why our dear old dad hated me so much. I was a constant reminder of her betrayal.”
Solomon felt his lip curl slightly and quickly smoothed it, but Ethan leaned forward, his eyes open, taking in everything, and he observed the reaction and smiled.
“Don’t like to hear that, Sally?”
Solomon felt his body tense up as the name Sally reached his ears, sending a sharp jolt of fear and anger through him. It was a name that had been used to torment and humiliate him in his youth, and hearing it now made him feel small and vulnerable, like a scared child all over again.
His jaw muscles clenched, and Ethan chuckled. “See? I knew that was in there somewhere.” He took a sip of beer but without taking his eyes off Solomon. “What else did you learn? Anything about who my father was?”
He shook his head. “There’s no information on him. I did learn that my father was a professor of literature in the ’70s.”
He laughed. “I always thought he was just an unemployed bum. But he was smart, I’ll give him that.” He glanced at the waitress who brought a fresh beer and Solomon’s water. “Did you ever try to find me?”
Solomon shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“By the time I had the ability to find you, I’d done a lot of healing. I couldn’t go back there. Not to any of the places or the people.”
Ethan kept his eyes down and then looked up when he said, “Did you read about what happened to me after?”
Solomon nodded. “Lakeview.”
“Not just Lakeview, it’s called the Sanctuary at Lakeview. You gotta get the full name, because none of the staff called it Lakeview. They called it the Sanctuary to convince us that it was someplace safe. What do you think, Solomon? What do you think happens to a strapping young man of fourteen in a psychiatric facility filled with boys that stick bunnies in microwaves and stab their parents?”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was our mother’s fault. She didn’t care enough to list a single family member or friend we could’ve gone to if anything happened to both of them.”
“You wanna blame them, fine. But I remember things differently, Ethan. Our parents went bankrupt trying to help you. They ruined their marriage, their health, and finally they both lost their minds. One to alcohol and the other to—”
“Suicide? Or murder?”
“I was going to say to madness. That woman broke mentally and physically trying to save you.”
Calmly, as though pointing out something obvious, he said, “That woman died how she deserved.”
“How is that? With you cutting her femoral arteries and convincing everyone it was suicide?”
“Believe whatever you want, Solomon,” he said, glancing at a woman’s butt as she walked by, “but I didn’t come here to play the blame game. I came because you’re the only family I got left, and I’m the only family you got left.”
“You murdered two innocent men.”
“Don’t you have a soul, Solomon? Can you truly not appreciate the beauty of it? I dedicated two men’s lives, two men that had harmed you, to you. I paid homage to our mother, who is the reason we’re both where we are. Me, a wandering nomad jumping in and out of psychiatric facilities my whole life, and you locked away like a hermit in some cave you inherited. To be honest, I kinda hoped you swindled her out of the house. It would’ve at least made you more interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“That’s all life is, little brother. Interesting and uninteresting.”
Solomon leaned forward, his voice softening. “Do you see what you’re doing? Interesting and uninteresting. That’s trauma talking. Black-and-white thinking. That’s not life.”
“Trauma . . . do you really know trauma, Solomon? Hmm? You went into foster care, where at least you had someone from Social Services coming and checking up on you. You know who I had? I had the Fridge.”
“The Fridge?”
He nodded. “He was one of the orderlies at Lakeview. The most senior one. They called him Fridge because he was a square giant. Shoulders like four feet across, big poofy hair . . . sometimes he would wear fancy coats with scarves, trying to look like a mob boss. He was always quoting Mafia movies. Thought he was a real tough guy. He used to make us hold up buckets of water as a punishment, one in each hand held out horizontally. Whoever dropped their arms first went into the hole. It wasn’t really a hole, of course, it was a closet. A little space the Fridge had made to keep troublemakers in line.”
Ethan zoned out, his eyes glazing over as he went back to someplace else. “I can’t tell you how many days I would spend in the dark in that little closet. I froze the first time I was there and wet my pants.” He let out a breath. “How sad that must’ve been. A little boy shaking in the dark with piss running down his leg.”
Solomon swallowed. “What did you do to Fridge?”
Ethan’s eyes came up and met his. “When I was out, I waited a bit, and then I got the sharpest box cutter I could find, snuck into his house while he was sleeping . . . and slit his throat. Solomon,” he said, shaking his head as though a shot of pleasure had gone through him, “he opened his eyes and looked at me before he died. He knew it was me that did that to him . . . and it was the greatest feeling in my life.”
“You have to see what that means that the best moment of your life has been slitting a sleeping man’s throat. You’re sick, Ethan. It’s a type of sickness they can’t treat, but they can put you someplace where the symptoms won’t dominate your life.”
“Someplace like Lakeview?”
