Samantha
When I was eight my father married again. My mom had died not long after I was born of an asthma attack. She had the condition severely and on the day it happened, she was standing at a bus stop on a busy road, surrounded by pollution and other irritants, and she’d left her inhaler in another purse. By the time the ambulance reached her she was already gone.
Thinking about her makes my chest feel tight, partly because I spent so much time as a child imagining what it would be like to die that way, gasping for a breath that was impossible to force into your damaged lungs.
My stepmom was a lovely woman who took me under her wing immediately. She had a son who was two years older than me and we hit it off straight away.
I was a sporty kid, so Brandon and I spent hours in our yard with bats and balls, challenging each other to races across the field behind our home. Brandon was always faster but he never gloated when he beat me. Instead, he’d look down at his watch and compliment me on my timing, or nod his head and tell me my technique was improving.
At night we’d camp out in our tent and eat marshmallows and his mom’s chewy home-made cookies, never running out of things to talk about. He loved nature and would tell me all about the obscure animals he’d been reading about. To this day I think I know more about native Australian mammals than anyone else I’ve ever met, barring Brandon. A couple of years ago I travelled to Sydney and spent a whole day at the zoo there, marveling at the wombats, koalas and bilbies, wishing he was with me to see them.
He’d wanted to be a zoo keeper when he grew up so he could work with animals. He wanted to research their native environments and find better ways to house them that were closer to the places they came from. Brandon had a love of people and animals, a soft-heartedness that his mother nurtured with a stream of pets. He looked after each one as though it was the most precious thing in his life, but it was Wombat, his brown mongrel puppy, that he loved the best. Wombat would sleep between us in the tent, guarding his precious owner as he slipped into his dreams.
Even as a nine year old I thought Brandon was beautiful. Not in a perfect-looks way but because he had so much light inside him which seemed to flow through his face. His eyes were a soft blue-green with gold flecks around the center, the color of the lake we used so swim in on hot days when our parents would take us for rambling picnics. He had long, light-brown eyelashes that were fairer at the roots and darker at the tips. They made him look angelic when he was sleeping. In the summer freckles would appear on this cheeks as though the warm weather sprinkled him with glitter.
I loved him deeply; my best friend, my brother and so much a part of my home that I couldn’t recall what it had been like before he arrived with his mom.
We had two blissful years together, full of innocent fun, before tragedy struck our family and blew it all apart.
I have the memory of the ten year old Brandon sleeping curled around Wombat in my mind when I walk through the door to the interview room. The man sitting at the table is big and broad, sitting with his body slumped down in chair, legs spread wide and arms folded across his chest. Time seems to stand still as his eyes scan over me, starting at my feet and rising slowly, seductively, as though he wants to turn me into something he is in control of rather than the other way around. When he finally looks me in the eye I see the flash of recognition. It’s like a spark of electricity between us. This rugged, shorn-haired, thuggish man is my Brandon Ford and I can’t take it in. I rest my hand on the back of the chair that I’m supposed to be sitting on, suddenly feeling like I might teeter in my heels. His eyes close, just for a second, but it’s enough for me to see that he knows and is trying to pull himself together.
“Brandon?” I say, my voice filled with emotion, and when he opens his eyes it’s as though he’s dropped the shutters over the feelings I had seen a glimpse of.
He turns to the officer and says, “I want another attorney.”
“No,” I blurt out. “Why?”
Brandon shakes his head and leans forward, resting his strong forearms on the table, telling me with his body language to back down and do as he wishes. My stepbrother wasn’t anything like this man, with his brutish mannerisms and aggressive posturing, but we have too much history for me to walk out of here without finding out more. I want to talk to him so badly.
“Because this isn’t any place for you, Sammie.”
His use of the nickname he gave me throws me off guard for a second, taking me back to those sweet times when he would whisper through the crack in my door to see if I was awake. The nights when he’d sneak into my bed so we could read comics feel an eon away.
“I’m a defense attorney,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm and unaffected. I hold eye contact with him and he doesn’t look away, but I do when I see him clenching and unclenching his bloodied fist. “You need to get that seen to,” I say and look over to the officer. “My client requires medical treatment for the injuries to his hands. Please can you arrange for a nurse to attend to them?”
The officer raises his eyebrows and so do I. If he thinks I’m a pushover he’s got another think coming.
I pull the chair out from under the table and lower myself to sit in it, putting my purse on the table and finding my notepad and pen.
“I said I don’t want you,” Brandon hisses, leaning even further across the table.
The officer is hanging around behind me, as if he doesn’t know what to do. I need to get Brandon to back down, otherwise I’m out of here.
“Brandon, your friend has paid me a retainer to act on your behalf. Can I ask that you let me do my job for now, and once we have dealt with the current matter, then you talk to your friend and decide whether or not you want to seek alternative representation?”
Brandon stares at me with his blue-green lake eyes, framed by long soft-brown lashes that are just the same in a way that is unnerving. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me after all these years. I know it must be disconcerting for him too.
“Please,” I say, wanting so desperately to spend time with him and learn who he is now and what his life has been like. He’s changed so much but he’s still beautiful to me, so much so that I feel my heart skip a little as I take in the size of him, the sheer masculinity.
“No,” he says in such a firm voice I know I’m not going to get anywhere. I feel wounded; I can’t understand why he doesn’t want me to represent him. Does he think I won’t do a good job? Does he think I’m incompetent? My face feels hot, as my battered pride boils to the surface. Brandon must see my reaction because he leans back and crosses his arms again, his eyes softening. “I don’t want you involved in this, Sammie. Trust me.”
Maybe it’s crazy but I do trust him, even after all these years and despite the fact I can see the evidence of violence marring his hands. I look towards the officer who is lurking behind me in front of the closed door, and then back at Brandon. “I’ll send someone else from my firm,” I say, and he shakes his head.
“Take this number down.” He nods towards my pad and pen and I do as he says, jotting the number and the name ‘Adam’ as instructed. When I’ve finished, I look up and catch an expression on Brandon’s face that sends a tingle all the way up my spine. It’s the same look he used to give me when we would lie next to each other in our tent and whisper secrets, filled with intensity and warmth. For seconds we just study each other, Sammie and Bran-bran, best friends again. And then, like a fog has passed between us, it’s gone. “You should go,” he says, looking towards the door and the officer.
I pull a card out of the front pocket of my purse and slide it across the table to him. “Call me when you get out,” I say but he doesn’t reach to take the card.
“You take care, Sammie,” he says, and that’s it.
Conversation over.
Reunion terminated.
I stand and pack my things, my throat burning with a rush of emotion that feels too much for the situation. With so many years between us I shouldn’t want to cry at what feels like rejection, but I do. I’m back in the body of my younger self, watching my favorite person in the world leave me behind.
“Bye, Brandon,” I say, the words catching in my tight throat, and I know I should turn to leave but I just can’t stand the idea that this might be it. I might never see him again. I rack my memory trying to find something to say that might remind him of how things used to be between us, and that might make me feel less of a stranger to him. “I went to Australia,” I say. “I held a real wombat.”
The police officer clears his throat behind me but I don’t care if he thinks I’m a freak because Brandon is looking at me like he remembers.
“I’ll speak to you soon then?” I say with a half-smile that is all I can manage, and then I turn quickly before I lose all composure, and am led back out of the station by the officer.
In the waiting area I sit down to rest my trembling legs. I can’t believe it’s him.
My Brandon.
My boy.
My stepbrother.
I swipe at my face, needing to get it together. First I call my office and inform my assistant of what has happened. Then I call Adam.
The phone is answered on the first ring but no one speaks.
“Hello, this is Samantha Corrigan.”
“Did you see your client?” the deep, dangerous sounding voice asks.
“Yes,” I reply, “But he doesn’t want me to represent him.”
“Why?” he asks crossly, as though he isn’t used to anyone questioning his wishes.
“He asked for me to call you and let you know you will need to send someone else,” I say. “I have the retainer. Can you send someone to come and collect it?”
“Connor will be there in twenty minutes,” Adam says and hangs up.
I look at my phone feeling a little stunned and a whole lot relieved. I’m glad that I won’t have to deal with Adam again. He gives me the shivers over the phone so I can’t imagine what he would be like in person.
True to his word, Connor arrives within twenty minutes and takes the money. I stand and leave the station but once I’m outside I can’t bring myself to go and never come back.
Brandon isn’t going to call me, I know this.
If I go back to my office now I might never see him again. He didn’t keep in touch the first time and that rejection stings just as much now as it did then.
If I want to see Brandon, I’m gonna have to force the issue.