The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [104]
“You do! You and your self-obsessed, woe-is-me-and-my-poor-lifestyle whine-fest!” Charlie explodes. “This isn’t about you, Oliver—and if you ever stopped to realize that, you might actually notice the things that’re going on under your own damn roof!”
“What’re you talking about?”
“The guy was an asshole, Ollie. A complete asshole. Doesn’t that make you wonder why mom dated him for so long?”
“What’re you saying?”
“Did you know she was terrified you’d lose your job? Or that she hated him after month two, but was worried that without the paycheck you wouldn’t make it through the semester? You can bury your past under all the résumé paper you want, but back home, she was the one putting up with the abuse.”
I stop, completely lost. “W-Whattya mean abuse?” I ask.
“Uh-oh, someone’s using his old Brooklyn accent…”
“What abuse, Charlie? He hit her?”
“She never said it, but I heard their arguments—you know how thin our walls are.”
“That’s not the question,” I insist. “Did you ever see him hit her?”
For once, Charlie doesn’t fight back. “I walked in, and they were in the kitchen,” he begins. “She was crying; he was using a tone that was more heated than anything you’d want directed at your mother. He spun around to see if I’d back off. I told him if he didn’t get out, I’d use his larynx as my own personal jump rope. Mom started crying even harder, but she didn’t stop him from leaving. We never saw him again. And that was your buddy Mr. Dellacosta.”
Teetering in place, I feel like my chest’s about to shatter. My chin quivers and I look at Charlie like I’ve never seen him before. All this time, I thought I had the hard part. All this time, I had it wrong. “Charlie, I didn’t know…”
“Don’t say it,” he warns, in no mood to listen. Hopping into bed, he turns away and pulls the mangy fuzzy blanket we found in the closet up over his head. The cigarette smell on the fuzz has to be worse than the bug spray, but for Charlie, it’s clearly a lot better than dealing with me. “Just remember what I said about Gillian,” he calls out as he disappears under the covers. “Divide and conquer—that’s always how it works.”
46
I can’t sleep. I’m not good at it. Even when we were little—when Charlie and I used to take turns telling each other horror stories about Old Man Kelly and the creepy people who lived in our building—Charlie was always the first one snoring. It’s no different tonight.
Staring up at the jagged black fissure in our popcorn-stucco ceiling, I still hear the echoes of my mom crying. And Dellacosta leaving. Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me? Still wrestling with the answer, I listen to the rise and fall of Charlie’s labored breathing. When he was sick, it was much worse—a wet hacking wheeze that used to have me watching over him like a human heart monitor. It’s a sound that’ll forever haunt—like the sound of my mom’s sobs—but as I turn over and face Charlie—as the minutes tick by and his breathing falls into its steady rhythm, I try to take comfort in the feeling that we’re finally getting a break. Between the photos and the nondisclosure agreement and the leads at Five Points Capital, there’s actually a pinhole at the end of the tunnel. And then, out of nowhere, it’s stolen away by a slight tapping against the front window.
I bolt up in bed.
The tapping stops. I don’t move. And then it starts again. The persistent rap of a knuckle hitting glass.
“Charlie, get up,” I whisper.
He doesn’t budge.
“Oliver,” a voice comes from outside.
I jump out of bed, struggling to be silent. If I yell, they’ll know we’re awake. I reach back to pull the covers off my brother—
“Oliver, are you there?” the voice asks.
Spinning around, I let go of the blanket. That’s not just any voice…
“Oliver, it’s me.”
… that’s a voice I know. Racing to the door, I ram my eye toward the peephole, just to be safe.
“Open up…”