Bryan

Despite the pain and the hatred and the destruction, my heart was strangely calm. Hailey was sobbing in front of me, her face in her hands while I simply sat back in my seat. I finally knew what happened to my brother from beginning to end, the entire story. I allowed her words to sink in as I silently watched her shoulders shake. In all reality, Hailey was sitting in the exact same position I was. She was holding onto guilt for a situation that took place with a man she’d come to know, respect, and love.

“I believe you,” I said.

My eyes went from the wall to her, and the moment she raised her reddened gaze, I felt my guilt overtake my entire system. The way she was looking at me, it was like she was searching for my forgiveness. She felt as if she was a murderer finally confessing her crimes to the family she’d hurt, except none of that was true, not a damn word of it.

“I believe everything you’ve told me,” I said.

“You do?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Even the-the part about how I tried?” she asked.

“Especially that part.”

She sat there, her eyes confused while they danced all along my body. I could tell she was trying to read me and figure out what in the world had changed. All this time I’d spent hating her was under the premise that she was a liar, a manipulator. Someone who used me to get what they wanted. I figured she’d used me to heal herself or to build her gallery for cheap or to simply quell her lonely presence, but none of that was true.

She had been searching for relief from John’s death like I was.

“It’s shocking to me that my brother was clean, but I believe you. That argument we had a couple months before his death, it was over him moving back and moving in with me. I had no idea that he felt—”

I swallowed hard and tossed my gaze back over her shoulder. I had no idea my brother felt like he had disappointed me. Had I realized he’d felt so ashamed, I would’ve moved to him in a heartbeat. I would’ve supported his art and done anything and everything I could’ve to help get it off the ground.

“John and I never fought, and he never raised his voice. So, when it happened, I assumed he was using again. I would’ve never dreamed he yelled at me because he felt ashamed,” I said.

“Your brother loved you so much,” Hailey said, sniffling.

“I know,” I said. “I know he did. Look, all I ever wanted to know was what happened to my brother. When it came to light you knew and kept it from me, I was infuriated. It was like you were holding back my healing, holding back my relief. I started thinking you enjoyed seeing me in pain. Seeing me sad. Seeing me hurt. Like I was one of your charity cases, but you would only be useful if I was sad or angry.”

“Never,” she said breathlessly. “That was never my—”

“I know that now,” I said as my eyes connected with hers. “I know that now.”

We stared at each other for quite some time. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she’d started picking at her hands again. I’d never noticed that nervous tick before, but then again, I supposed she’d never been nervous around me.

Not until now.

“There are a lot of people to blame for what happened. Your student for selling those drugs. The police for not believing you. My parents for casting John out because he fell into drugs in the first place. Society for putting such a stigma on art and addiction. But not you, Hailey. Never you.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “Had I come from around that corner and done something. Had I called for help a little bit sooner—”

“Had you jumped from around that corner with those two thugs, they would’ve killed you. On the spot. Without question. Calling nine one one in a place like L.A. is as much of a gamble as anywhere else. You are to blame for none of this. You saw my brother on the street, and you wanted to help him. You gave him a piece of your six-hundred-square-foot haven in the hopes that you could save him just like you saved me.”

“What?” she asked.

I could see the confusion on her face, and I couldn’t blame her. With the way I’d treated her these past few weeks coming off the love we had for one another over the summer, I could only imagine the way she was feeling right now. In her mind, she was a murderer who was being pardoned by the family she helped destroy.

I had to convince her she wasn’t a murderer at all.

“John was on the way to destruction before you found him, Hailey. Before your art gallery found him. You pulled him out of a gutter he didn’t even know he was traveling down. Because of you, he died sober. Because of you, he died a man with a purpose and a dream, living in his own place instead of on the street. He risked his life to protect you, something I didn’t even know my brother was capable of, and that’s because of you. Because of the release you gave him. Because of the hope you planted in his life. You’re not a murderer, Hailey. You’re a life giver.”

I watched silent tears pour down her face as her lips parted in shock. I felt my jaw trembling as I tried to play out the scene in my head. The little space where those men had ripped Hailey from her bed. Holding her beautiful body in the air like a rag doll before my brother came charging at them. I smirked a bit at the idea of him running right into them, knocking Hailey free before getting them out of her little space.

Out of the little home she’d created for her and my brother.

“I spent years angry with myself,” I said. “I spent years loathing myself, wondering what I could’ve done and how I could’ve helped. What I could’ve said or offered. I spent years kicking myself for not moving to L.A. or dragging him back kicking and screaming. But really, I also spent years mad at my brother for dying the way he did and for not recognizing the path he was traveling and how destructive it was to those who loved him. I spent years being angry at him because I thought he didn’t care enough about me to try and get better and to try and be better. But because of you, he was. He did get better, and he did strive for more, and he wanted to be better. My brother proved he was a man in the moments leading up to his death.”

“He was the best man I’ve ever known, Bryan,” Hailey said.

“Honestly, if I’m really looking for someone to blame, it’s my parents,” I said. “When he first started experimenting with drugs, it was because they were withholding his art from him. I spun it into architecture, so I got lots of pencil and stencil sets for birthdays and shit, but he didn’t get anything like that. He’d ... he’d sneak into my room and beg—fucking beg—to use my stuff so he could draw.”

“That’s awful,” she said. “I am so sorry, Bryan.”

“Not your fault,” I said, shrugging. “My parents aren’t quite like yours. They didn’t have some life plan we had to fall in line with. They just knew what we shouldn’t have been wasting our time on, and art was one of them. Artistic venture was only palatable to them if it served a furthering purpose into some blue-collar, lucrative-as-hell job.”

“You’d be surprised how much that sounds like my parents,” she said.

“He started using drugs because of his depression. He couldn’t use art as an outlet because of the lengths my parents went to in order to keep him away from it, so he used. Had they done more, hell, had they just fucking let the boy paint, you wouldn’t have had to save him. It wouldn’t have fallen on your shoulders. I know I’ve been angry with you, and I’ve done disgusting things to you, but the only thing I owe you at this point is gratitude, not anger.”

I could see the shock roll over her face at my last statement, and it killed the last part of my heart that was still beating. She was shocked that she didn’t deserve what I’d done to her. She’d convinced herself that everything I’d done, from blocking her number to tossing her out after sex, was all somehow deserved on her part.

She wasn’t the disgusting one. I was.

“I didn’t kill John,” she said breathlessly.

“Nowhere near it,” I said.

“Oh, my gosh. I didn’t kill John.”

She placed her head back into her hands and began to sob again, only this time scooted my chair close to her and wrapped my arms around her. I stroked her head, trying desperately to get her body to stop shaking as I felt her heave into my chest. I could feel her tears dripping on the thighs of my jeans while her beautiful body broke down against me, and all I could do was think about John, about how disgusted he would be for the way I’d treated his guardian angel.

Even years after his death, my brother inspired us. Even after all he’d been through and the way he’d died, he had somehow linked me with the one woman who’d brought so much love and light into my life for the first time since high school. Even in his death, he somehow knew what I needed, and he brought it to me in the form of this woman.

This trembling woman whose hair I continued to stroke.

I thought about how wonderful my brother had been. His life had seemed so full, even in the last few months of it. I thought about how Hailey’s entire gallery was inspired by what she’d experienced with my brother. She’d helped him, even though she was only now understanding she hadn’t killed him herself. I thought about how my brother had been my initial inspiration to dip into the homeless community, and I could feel the tether between Hailey and me growing stronger.

Without thinking, I dipped my lips to Hailey’s head and planted a small kiss on top of it.

“How’s your head feeling?” I asked.

“It hurts,” she said.

I wrapped my arms around her further and pulled her into my lap, her head finding its natural home in the crook of my neck as her sobbing finally died down. I held her close, kissing her pounding head as I simply soaked up the beauty of her art gallery. The bareness of the walls and how that communicated a success that probably still shocked Hailey to her core.

John would’ve loved this place.

“Can you stand to shut down the gallery for a little while?” I asked.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’ve got some migraine medication at my house. You’re more than welcome to it. I just don’t have it with me right now.”

She lifted her head while her swollen eyes searched mine. I could see her eye wincing with every pound her head took, and all I wanted to do was make sure she was better.

“I’ve gotta hang these paintings before I can go,” she said.

“Then sit in this chair and tell me where to put them,” I said.

“What?”

I moved, grasping her in my arms while I stood. I got up and placed her in the seat I had been sitting in, and I heard her sigh into its warmth. She allowed her head to tip off to the side, her eyes closed and her hands curling tightly around the armrests of the chair.

Then, I picked up the first painting and began to describe it to her.

“There’s a painting of a black horse in the middle of a field. Looks like it might be a dusk setting. There’s an apple tree off to the side.”

“Put that one on the wall over there,” she said as she pointed. “The third slot in from the right.”