I paced the long hall of the basement. I was trying to piece together what was left of a song that I had started the night before. Rose had been up feeling extremely uncomfortable. We were actually getting pretty close to grabbing the hospital bag and heading out. She walked through the discomfort, her phone in hand, with a timer running. Finally, she started to feel better and just wanted to sleep. So I got her back in bed and I couldn’t fall asleep. I sat up and watched her sleep, on top of the covers, on her side, her very round belly, my son resting inside her womb.

Talk about a spark of inspiration.

I went back into my music room where I gave guitar lessons and sat down on a metal folding chair. Reaching for a guitar, I kept running through a set of lyrics that just didn’t feel right.

My phone lit up and began to vibrate against the table.

All my attention went to the phone.

I spun around, my heart in my throat, knowing one of these days it was going to be Rose calling to say the baby was coming.

It wasn’t Rose.

It was Rhett. My brother, Everett.

Things had been touch and go with him since we found out we were brothers and since our father was back in jail, this time for a really long time. What I ended up learning was that our father was using Rhett to help this time. Basically, Rhett had become the new me. Strangely enough, there was a small part of me that was jealous of that. The only time my father talked to me and showed he cared was when I was helping him. At the same time, I knew how much it fucked with Rhett’s head that our father was gone. I did the best I could to talk to him. Keep him focused on his guitar and try to keep him focused on school and his future.

I made it clear that my phone was always on and I would do everything to make sure I answered or called him back. This was no longer me teaching him guitar lessons. This was two brothers trying to figure out what the hell that meant.

“Hey, bro,” I said into the phone.

“Foster?” a voice asked. It wasn’t Rhett’s voice. It was a girl’s voice.

“That’s me,” I said. “Who’s this?”

“This is Carrie.”

“Carrie,” I said. “Where’s Rhett?”

“He needs you,” she said. “Please say you can come and save him.”

“Save him?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

I heard her voice crack. “Foster…”

“Hey, hey, hey. Carrie. Take a deep breath and talk to me.”

“Please come and save him from doing something really stupid.”

* * *

I had the love of my life in her apartment, in bed, trying to rest. She swore she was coming to my gig at the coffeehouse and I wanted her to stay put and relax. She wasn’t on bed rest because of the doctor, but ordered to by me. And there I was, navigating my truck down a dirt road, looking at the all the ghosts from all the parties I used to have in the woods surrounding me.

All Carrie had to say was the ridge and I knew where Rhett was.

He was going to try and hurt himself.

Carrie had managed to get his phone and call me. She said he snuck a bottle of booze from his foster family’s house and was acting crazy. Believe me, the kid wasn’t crazy. He was heartbroken. He was lost.

I parked my truck and jumped out, leaving the door open. I ran through a thicker part of the woods and saw the flicker of a hot pink color ahead. It was Carrie as she hurried to get near me. She was a pretty young girl, and the look of worry on her face reminded me way too much of me and Rose. These two fools were going down that same path. Maybe I should have been more like her stepfather and tried to keep them apart, but face it, when fate puts its finger to the ground, there’s no getting around it.

Carrie damn near jumped into my arms as she cried.

My heart sank, fearing the worst.

“Hey,” I said. “Where is he?”

“He’s up there,” she said. “He keeps saying he’s sorry to me. That he’ll never be anything different.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “Listen to me, Carrie. I want you to go sit in my truck. Okay? It’s still running. Put on the radio. I’ll be back in a few.”

“Foster…”

I gently touched her arms. “Hey. I know exactly how he feels. And I know how you feel. Carrie, I get it. I swear to you, I get it.”

She nodded. “He’s getting moved, Foster. They’re moving him. We’re going to get separated.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something happened and his family doesn’t want him anymore,” she said. “So he’s going to go back into the system and move. He’ll be in a new school. Away from me. I told him I’ll still love him. But he…”

“Shit,” I whispered. “Okay. Just go hang in my truck.”

I started to run.

You wouldn’t think the ridge would be enough to effectively hurt yourself. But there was a good sized drop off on the other side of the ridge. If you went down head first, and the creek was drained enough, those jagged rocks sticking up like eager daggers… yeah, you could hurt yourself.

When I saw Rhett standing there, he looked right at me and started to cry.

That’s when I felt like an asshole. When he was in jail that night, I took off. When I found out he was my brother, I took off. I did the one thing our father had been famous for. Leaving. And even when I came back, the whole brother thing was more of a joke than serious.

I walked toward him, and when I got close enough, I plucked the bottle out of his hand. Without saying a word, I held it up. Luckily, he hadn’t had that much. He wasn’t even drunk. Just buzzed, probably. I threw the bottle by the neck as far as I could.

“Fuck you,” Rhett yelled.

I still didn’t respond. I thought about myself, my life, and what I only ever wanted when I was Rhett’s age. I wanted my love, Rose. And I wanted someone to tell me it would be okay.

I grabbed Rhett by the shirt and pulled him toward me. His eyes went wide, instant terror. I threw my other arm around him and hugged him. My brother. My little brother. The only real family member I had in my life.

I squeezed him tightly and then put him at arms-length. “Rhett. It’s going to be okay.”

He curled his lip, a defiant teenager, just like I had been what felt like yesterday.

“I’m sorry, bro,” I whispered. “For everything. For not being there more when you needed someone. For the piece of shit that we call a father. I can give you the dad speech now about looking to what you have, who loves you, the fact that Carrie followed you here to protect you. But you know all of this already. So why waste my breath?”

“I’m going to lose everything, Foster,” Rhett said. “They don’t want me anymore. I’ve lived there for two years now. It sort of felt like home. But they don’t want me, Foster.”

I felt my heart cut like scissors to paper.

“Fuck those people then,” I said.

“If I move, I’ll lose Carrie.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. You know it too, Foster. The way things go.”

I nodded and swallowed. “Okay. So now you have to figure out how to make it work. You love her?”

“Yeah. And don’t say I’m too…”

“I never would,” I said. “I went through the same thing with Rose. Okay? I would be living with a family, trying to find my way around. Then our father would get out of jail and want me back. I would always end up back with him and then things would get fucked up.”

“He said that to me,” Rhett said. “That he was getting things ready for me. He was going to get an apartment.”

I felt anger boil in the pit of my gut. The same bullshit stuff our father used to say to me.

“I know,” I said. “That’s what he always did. Forget about that. Don’t ever try to drink booze and come up here like you’re going to make some kind of statement. It’s not going to work, Rhett. Your statement would be silence. Is that what you want? Silence? You want me to grieve for you? You want to shatter Carrie’s heart? You want some guy to sweep in and pick up those pieces of her heart and fix her?”

Anger washed over his face. “Don’t ever say that, Foster.”

“Well, look what you’re doing. I get it, bro, you want attention. You want to let this out? The right way? Then you get your guitar and meet me in the basement of the coffeehouse. You practice all the songs to my set tomorrow night. You sleep there. You don’t leave that basement until you’re ready to go.”

“Ready to go?”

“You’re playing with me on stage, bro.”

“What?”

“Yeah. You’re going to let all this shit out.”

Rhett swallowed hard. “Foster…”

“Get on that stage and forget about the world.”

Rhett didn’t speak again. He stood there, staring at me.

“I love you, bro,” I said. “Long before this brother shit came about. You’re a good kid. I trust you and Carrie. I’ll do everything I can to help you both. Sometimes in life, shit doesn’t add up. It doesn’t feel fair. There are rules that are bullshit. Guys like us, Rhett, thrown in and out of the system like a beach ball at a concert. It makes you feel empty, used up, desperate to cling to something. I get it. I need you to give it to me, Rhett. Don’t hold that shit in. Don’t take it out on Carrie. Don’t try to get a bottle and come up here. Carrie loves you. But she’s not going to give up the rest of her life in your memory. I don’t care what anyone says.”

“You don’t think Rose would do that for you?” Rhett asked.

I hadn’t thought of it through my situation.

“Well, no,” I said. “I mean, Rose is crazy enough to try. Maybe Carrie would be too. But imagine that. The woman you love, sitting there, days to weeks to months to years, waiting to die to be with you again. Missing out on their entire life because of you.” I put my finger to Rhett’s chest. “Because of you losing yourself. Forgetting what you have.”

I pushed at Rhett and he stumbled back.

“I need to see her,” he whispered. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

I stepped to the side and he started to run.

I let out a sigh and wished I hadn’t gotten rid of that bottle. What the fuck was I now… a father figure? I was still trying to figure out how to be a father to the baby that was due any day now.

But that was just the beginning.

I stood there and made a decision that would change everyone’s lives.