Get your bloody head in the game, Asher.

That's what my father would say if he knew the kind of doubts and guilt I was having. In all honesty, I had no idea what was happening to me. I didn't second guess, I didn't feel bad. Those emotions and actions were for weak people, and the one thing I had been modeled not to do was be that.

Dreadfulness gnaws at my stomach as I watch Ed bully someone on the video game he’s playing.

“You bloody wanker, I’ll gut you!” He fires some kind of automatic weapon at his opponent’s body.

“Do you have to yell?” I roll my eyes and go back to my phone, staring at the text messages Nora has sent over the past two days.

I haven’t answered, and although I’ve been tempted, something changed for me that night in Vienna. Maybe it was because I’d taken care of her, instead of letting her embarrass herself. Or maybe it was because I was thinking about what might have happened if she hadn’t gotten sick. The way her eyes had held so much heat and promise. Or maybe it was because of Evelyn and me pushing her away.

Probably a combination of the three, and other underlying feelings. I’d gone through my life an arrogant git, and now at the most critical time my conscience had raised its ugly head.

“Well mate, what do you want to do instead?” Ed throws down the controller, spreading himself over the big leather couch in the only room in my house with a TV.

“I don’t know.” I practically growl.

“What’s got your knickers in a twist? You’re as cuddly as a cactus today. Not that you’re much better any other day of the week.” He gives me a smarmy grin.

“If you’re going to be a tosser, you can get out.” I sulk on the big velvet glider next to the couch.

“Or I could just guess what’s wrong. Hm, let’s see … it started about the time you took little miss princess upstairs at the opera, and came down looking like someone pissed on your toast.” He taps his finger to his chin. “And now you are opting to hang out with me instead of being with her, which seems to be the only thing you do these days. Wait a minute! Did she break up with you? Did Nora Randolph break up with you?”

Ed is way too giddy in his supposed revelation, and it makes fury and bile crawl up my throat. “We’re not even dating, you git. You know I’m not a big enough wanker to get feelings for some bird.”

He laughs, his head tilting back like I’ve just told the world’s funniest joke. “Come off it, mate. You like her, and you spend all of your time with only one girl. You’re practically married.”

I want to hurl that video game controller at his head. “Get out of my house.”

“Nothing to be ashamed about, Asher. I actually rather like Nora, she’s different.”

And that word right there grates on my nerves even more. Because she is different, and I fancy her because of it.

“Listen, why don’t you two kiss and make up, and then we can all go somewhere this weekend. How about Ibiza? The Canary Islands? Oh, we could go to Santorini …”

I don’t feel like listening to his little spoiled brat antics right now. Ed knew nothing about sacrifice or struggle, he’d grown up with not a care in the world and a silver spoon up his arse. Walking out, I took the stairs two at a time. He didn’t bother to follow, for all I knew he was showing himself out or trying to nab some food from the kitchen staff.

There is a room at the end of the hall on the third floor of our brownstone that I never venture into. Sometimes locked, always with the door closed, it was my mother’s room. The one that still houses her baby grand piano, dusted and maintained but never played. It hasn’t played a note in ten years.

I’m not sure why, but today I keep going, I don’t turn off into another room even when my stomach drops out, even when I feel like I might punch a hole through the door.

Slowly, I open it. I’ve only come in here twice since her death, but I strain to smell her scent. Lilies and vanilla, she was always so elegant and put together. But, just like her image, the scent has vanished from my mind. Nothing looks familiar, and I can’t conjure up a memory of her sitting at the bench, practicing her playing in rhythm with the metronome.

As the years have progressed, I’ve been able to picture her face less and less. Sure, there are still the odd assortments of photographs I find myself mesmerized by, but if I sit in the dark and just think about my mother, it is exceedingly hard to recall her features. Her green eyes, the same as mine, her dark brown hair always perfectly done in one of those buns on the back of her neck. That tiny gold necklace she always used to wear, the one with the locket and her parent’s pictures inside.

What I can remember, always toward the end of her life, was that deep, depressive sadness that sat in her eyes like a mourning veil.

The room is a light blue, with pictures of different blue flowers all over the wall. It’s the only place in the house that still has some sort of feminine touch, and all of her keepsakes are still in here … as if one day she’ll be returning for them.

Sitting on the bench of the piano, I have to bite my fist to keep from screaming. I feel like someone coming unleashed, like the fabric of my soul is being torn apart and I can’t decide which way to follow it.

Glancing up, my mother’s picture stares back at me. She’s young, probably caught in a moment in time before I was even born. In the photo, she’s laughing on the beach, looking at something behind the camera.

I can’t ever remember her that happy.

According to my father, shortly after I’d turned two she started her affair with Bennett McAlister. They’d been childhood sweethearts, and then she’d met my dad and fate had turned out differently. But once she’d seen Bennett again, it was all over.

I may not remember much about her life, but I was fully knowledgeable on her death. The way the papers reported her blood alcohol level, twice the legal limit to drive an automobile. They questioned why she’d been on the bridge that night, so late when no one even saw her make a splash into the frigid Thames. It wasn’t until two hours later, when the men who cleaned up the streets of London, came out for their five a.m. route and saw the mangled metal where she’d driven over.

Resolve settles in my gut, and I know that I have to continue.

“Ed!” I yell, hoping he’s still in the house.

“Yeah, mate?” he calls up the stairs.

“We’re going skiing.”

“Righto!”

Pulling out my phone, I finally open the messages I’ve been avoiding for two days.