“The joke was mine,” I say gruffly. “Poor taste.”
“That’s easier to believe than the idea that I would sleep with her,” Dad says with a sour face.
“You’d be lucky to sleep with me, buddy,” Marie shoots back.
“That’s right,” Jason mutters. “Wait. No,” he backpedals.
“Everyone’s having sex but me,” I say under my breath. Shannon kicks my ankle.
“Hold on, hold on. Go back. Why was Marie talking with you at your mother’s grave?” Dad asks. There’s a look of genuine concern in his eyes, at least, the part of his eyes that I can see. His right eye took some kind of graze and it’s swelling up.
“I went to talk to Mom,” I say, keeping it simple.
“You mother is dead,” Dad says with great skepticism.
“I never said she talked back.”
Silence.
Broken by—who else?—Marie. “Declan told me the story of how Elena died. How Andrew nearly died. And how Declan had to make an impossible choice. Defy his mother’s wishes or let his brother die.”
Everyone seems stunned. They are stunned. She summed it up quite well.
“And how does that relate to my ‘cruel parenting,’ as you called it?” Dad asks Marie in a cold voice.
“You made Declan feel like he killed his mother,” Marie says, chin up, eyes locked on Dad’s. “He didn’t. He saved his brother. He did what he was told by Elena, who loved her children so much she sacrificed herself for Andrew. That’s what a good, loving parent does.”
Dad looks like someone slapped him. He actually does—there’s a red imprint of Jason’s hand on the side of his face, but his expression is also one of shocked reflection.
Andrew slips quietly into the room, the two security guards and Becky behind him and a gaggle of office workers huddling in the hallway, rubbernecking.
“Of course you didn’t kill your mother,” Dad says quietly, turning to me. “I know that. The wasps did.”
Shannon winds her arm through mine, as if she needs to hold me up. She doesn’t, but the warmth of her body reinforces me. Like having backup troops appear at the height of battle. You probably don’t need them, but just in case...
Dad’s bemused look teleports me back eleven years to a very different expression on his face. Back when his eyes were dead and the only feeling he seemed capable of expressing was anger.
I’m eighteen again (this is getting old...) but in the space of a few breaths I realize that’s wrong.
I’m a grown man.
“You told me,” I say with deliberate elocution, as if saying each syllable perfectly will drive home the emotional truth, “that it was my fault Mom died.”
The room becomes an icehouse. Jason’s head jolts and he looks first at Dad, then at me. His eyes fill with compassion.
The hardest part is accepting that.
“I never said that,” Dad protests.
After closing the door behind him and waving Becky away, Andrew says softly, “Yes, Dad. You did.”
Everyone is looking at Dad. I try to catch Andrew’s eye but he won’t even glance over here. Showing any emotion now, or giving a tell that makes him vulnerable, can’t be allowed.
But he can be my ally. Testify. Validate.
“I don’t remember ever saying that,” Dad says slowly, looking at the floor as if trying to recall a memory. “Perhaps I said something else and Declan misunderstood.”
“Declan didn’t misunderstand anything, Dad. I remember. I was in the hospital and was recovering and you were making funeral home arrangements for Mom’s body.”
Dad goes pale. I feel my own face go cold. Moments like this don’t happen in our family. We don’t reminisce, or process events, or talk about feelings. There’s no playbook for how to act. We’re all winging it.
Me most of all.
“The doctor came in to review my case and you asked whether I’d really needed the EpiPen. Whether Declan could have just injected Mom and if I’d have been okay with what the EMTs had once they got to us.”
“I was trying to understand the facts, Andrew,” Dad says in a rough voice. “Trying to make sense of the whole situation.”
Andrew acts like he was never interrupted. “And the doctor said maybe. Maybe. That no one can predict how these reactions work, and that while my throat had closed up and I’d lost consciousness, perhaps...maybe...it was possible...nothing could be ruled out....” Andrew uses a sing-songy voice that is so uncharacteristic it seems like mocking.
Dad looks up sharply and stares at Andrew, but his face is anything but comedic.
“And then you lost it when Dec came into the room. You screamed at him so much that hospital security called the chaplain, and she had to take you to her private office.”
His eyes are downcast but not in submission. In anger. “You were drugged up, Andrew, full of all the medications they threw into your body to manage the anaphylaxis. I was bouncing between the morgue and your hospital bed. I’m sure you misremember.”
“Why do you assume that everyone but you has a faulty memory of that day, James?” Shannon asks.
“Because...I...” James McCormick doesn’t get flustered. Andrew and I look away. It’s like seeing Dad naked.
Jason, Marie and Shannon are all looking at Dad, and while Jason’s look is still one of general annoyance, it’s Marie and Shannon who are most interesting to watch right now. They’re both calm, heads titled to the left like they synchronized it, and they’re compassionate. Interested. Non-judgmental right now.