The Only Brother Read Online Free Page B

hat… something that reminded him of Will. I kept quiet; I didn’t want to get sucked into the gloom. I know it hurts him a lot, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Will, and I shouldn’t always have his ghost haunting me.
    Don’t know how much I’ll forget, though.
    And then, Will’s old room, stacked with boxes I hadn’t had a chance to go through yet. It was easier when Mum was off selling homes. I could sneak out trash, keep the saleable stuff and put the pictures to the side. I knew what really would mean memories to the olds, what they could live without and what we could just throw away.
    Mum, on the other hand, didn’t have any idea what was worth saving and what was trash. She would have bought another house to keep everything. ‘No! It was his!’ Like throwing anything out was like throwing away a precious memory.
    Mum pulled at the painting. I let it go, not wanting to deal with the fallout if it ripped. It was finger paints on paper, ragged on one edge where Will tore it out of the big pad of paper. The head on the dog twisted impossibly off the black and grey stick figure body, blue ears and yellow teeth and not much else. Next to it stood a kennel, straight and tall with perfect angles and perspective, drawn in fine-lined ink. Under both pictures was Will’s illegible scrawl of asignature, sloppy even for a seven-year-old boy.
    Mum brushed it smooth, placing the painting carefully in a manila folder. This, she set aside, just like the sloppy fired clay pot, the sloppy tie-dye T-shirt Will made at a party as a kid, and the sloppy first draft of his university thesis written in four different pen-inks and stained with soy sauce. She didn’t care where she set it aside, not even noticing that it was in the way. I had to sort all of this, and get all the stuff sold, but that didn’t matter to her.
    ‘Mum, we don’t have the space for all of this…’
    ‘Nonsense,’ Mum shushed me, ‘I’ll find a spot. I always find a space for everything.’
    ‘What, so we can live in a house sale? Mum, there’s too much stuff to keep…’
    Mum sat down slowly and rested her head in her hands. She shuddered and then cried, her head shaking. I stepped away,not sure what to do. At the funeral, I hadn’t been able to get my head around the idea of hugging Mum, or holding her hand, or anything, really. Still can’t do it now after these few months. It just doesn’t feel right for me to do it. Like I said, I never really was a touchy-feely person.
    I didn’t even notice Dad in the doorway of the room. He moved quickly to Mum, wrapping his arms around her. She turned to him, holding on, shaking and sobbing.
    Why couldn’t I understand this? I just didn’t feel the same way about them as they claimed to feel about me. I thought about hugging them, or saying I cared, but then realised that I couldn’t say any of those things. How do you care about people that don’t care back? How do you care about people who always had a favourite, and it wasn’t you, not by a long shot? You don’t. You go, and to places where you are wanted, to people who want you just as much as you want them.
    Trevor was my ticket. He had a job and, more importantly, was old enough to drive.I gave him a quick ring, music blasting out of my phone when he picked up.
    ‘Andrew!’ Trevor’s solid Geordie accent boomed out of my phone, shaking my hand. Sara said it was like ‘an Irishman whispering’.
    ‘Quiet,’ I shushed him over the phone. ‘I need you to pick me up quick.’
    ‘I got a few in me, like, but I’m good to drive I think. We’re going to watch some footie. Hope Newcastle kick Sunderland’s ass!’ I covered my phone again as I loaded my laptop and drawing tablet into one of my bags. I had so much work to do and wasn’t getting any of it done.
    ‘It’s one in the afternoon on a Saturday, Trevor.’
    ‘Been drinking since ten. Like you said, it’s a Saturday. What have you been doing?’
    ‘Sorting through my