Secret Brother Read online

  “What happened to him?” I asked, sniffing back my tears.

  “They say he was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned?”

  “With arsenic. They don’t know if it was done deliberately or if he was eating something meant for rats.”

  I grimaced. I was close to heaving up everything I had eaten all day as it was.

  I looked up at my grandfather and saw something different in his face. The terror, anger, and horrible sadness that had been there from the moment we had driven off to the hospital suddenly were gone, replaced with this look of awe and interest I had seen in him only occasionally since my parents’ deaths and especially since Grandma Arnold’s death. He always seemed impervious. It was as if he had a new limit to how deeply he would smile or laugh and how tightly he would hold on to the reins of his curiosity, especially about people. He did what he had to do for Willie and me, but I couldn’t help feeling that he was moving about robotically most of the time and that we were very dependent on Myra to care for us.

  I waited a moment to see what my grandfather wanted to do now. Why were we looking in on this little boy, anyway? How would this make what happened to Willie different? There was nothing that could make it any better.

  “He was dumped off here,” my grandfather said, his eyes still fixed on the doctor’s and nurse’s actions around the boy.

  “Dumped?”

  He looked down at me. “Like the doctor told us when we first arrived, someone brought him to the hospital and left him without giving any names or telling what had happened. They said it all happened so quickly that no one could do anything about it.”

  “But what does this have to do with Willie and Myra, Grandpa?” I asked.

  He looked at me but didn’t answer. He just looked back at the boy and nodded as if he heard someone else speaking.

  “Where is Willie?” I asked, sounding annoyed. Why didn’t my grandfather take us to Willie’s room instead of this little boy’s room? Was he already too terrible to look at, his face distorted by death? I wanted so much to look at him, to touch him. Maybe if he knew I was there beside him, he would come back to life. I still believed in miracles.

  “They’re taking him to a place in the hospital where he’ll be until the funeral director comes for him,” he said. Now his voice was thinner, his throat closing up. His lips and hands had that tremble again.

  The word “funeral” brought an intense rush of heat to my face. I felt like a blowup of myself losing air quickly. My body seemed to be sinking in on me, collapsing.

  “No,” I said, very softly at first, so softly that Grandpa Arnold didn’t hear it. It was all taking a firmer grip on me. “No,” I repeated, much louder. He turned and looked down at me. He was still holding my hand. “No!” I screamed, squatting and pounding my hands against the sides of my body. “No! Willie can’t be dead! No!” The nurse and the doctor stopped working on the little boy and looked at us.

  Grandpa reached down and lifted me up. I realized immediately how silly that looked, a sixteen-year-old girl picked up like a child half her age. To him, it was just the natural thing to do, I guess. For a moment, that took my breath away.

  “Shh,” Grandpa said, stroking my hair. He lowered me and then he turned with me, and we headed back to the lobby to wait for more news about Myra.

  I slumped over in the chair, my head resting against my grandfather’s shoulder. My emotional outburst had drained me of so much energy that I didn’t think I’d be able to get up on my own when the nurse came to tell us Myra was ready and we could take her home.

  I felt Grandpa’s strong arm around my waist. He literally lifted me to my feet. Then he took my hand. The nurse, a woman who reminded me a little of my mother, put her hand on my shoulder and stroked my hair.

  “I’m so sorry about your brother,” she said. “You have to be strong for everyone now,” she added.

  Strong for everyone? What language was she speaking? How could I be strong for anyone now?

  Tears were frozen in my eyes. I thought I probably looked as comatose as that little boy with the flaxen hair. We walked back toward the exam rooms, where the nurse led us to another exit. Myra was in a wheelchair. An attendant was waiting to wheel her out to Grandpa’s car.

  “She’s under some pain sedation,” the nurse told Grandpa.

  Myra looked terrible. Her eyes were mostly closed, there was a bad bruise on her left cheekbone, and her mouth hung open as if her jaw had been broken, too. The cast looked twice as big as her arm. Looking like this, a way I had never seen her, she seemed much older to me and quite small. I wondered if she knew about Willie. As the attendant wheeled her out with the nurse accompanying them, I tugged on my grandfather’s hand.

  “Does she know about Willie?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Wait,” he said. He rushed forward to help get her into the backseat.

  The nurse gave my grandfather a prescription for Myra’s pain medication. He took it and then nodded for me to get into the backseat with her.

  “Don’t let her fall over or anything, Clara Sue,” he said. “She’s very unsteady.”

  Myra groaned and opened her eyes more. “Where’s Willie?” she asked me.

  I didn’t have to say anything. My tears did all the talking.

  She uttered a horrible moan, and I put my arm around her and buried my forehead against her shoulder. Grandpa drove off silently. I lifted my head quickly and looked back at the hospital.

  We’re leaving Willie, I thought. We’re leaving Willie.

  Myra cried softly in my arms as we rode back to Grandpa’s estate. Everyone came out when we drove through the opened gate. Jimmy Wilson practically lunged at the car, and when Myra was helped out, he lifted her in his arms like a baby to carry her into the house. I could see that everyone had heard the news and had been crying. The person who would take it almost worse than me was our cook, Faith Richards. No one spoiled or loved Willie more than she did.

  Myra was becoming more alert. “Put me down. I can walk!” she cried. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Jimmy paused in the doorway and let her down gently. She glared at him, trying to be angry about it, but anyone could see she was putting it on.

  “Got your bed all ready, Myra,” My Faith said. My grandmother used to refer to her as “My Faith,” and Willie and I did, too.

  “I don’t need to go to bed.”

  “You need to go to bed and rest,” Grandpa said sternly. “No back talk,” he added.

  It was the first thing he had said since we left the hospital. Myra took one look at him and started to head to her room, which was next to My Faith’s at the rear of the estate. Then she paused and looked at me. I knew she didn’t want to be alone, and neither did I. I hurried to her side, and we walked through the wide hallway, past the kitchen and into the corridor that led to her and My Faith’s rooms, all the while not looking at anyone. I was afraid that if I looked at any of them, I would burst into hysterical sobs.

  I was in that place between a nightmare and just waking up, this time fighting against waking up but also pushing away the nightmare. How could all of this be happening to us? How could any of it be?

  We lived in Prescott, Virginia, a community thirty-five miles northeast of Charlottesville that seemed to have been created for millionaires. If you were a resident, it was easy to believe you lived in a protective bubble, which made any misfortune happening to you or your neighbors seem impossible to imagine and even more impossible to accept.

  “Fires don’t kill rich people, you know, love,” I heard Myra tell My Faith one day. “Rich people don’t go to jail. Rich people always get saved in the best hospitals by the most expensive and brilliant doctors. Maybe rich people go to a higher class of heaven when they die, and they’re always supposed to die in their sleep without pain, don’t you know. That’s how Lady Willowsby died. She closed h
er eyes, began dreaming of biscuits and tea, and never woke up.”

  Myra concluded, “That’s in the English Constitution, passed in the House of Lords.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, I bet,” My Faith said. They both laughed about it. I was always intrigued by how easily My Faith could get Myra to laugh. Except for Grandma Arnold and Willie, she was the only one who could.

  It didn’t surprise me that I recalled that conversation so vividly at this moment. I had heard this before my parents died, and I believed we were all so special that nothing bad would ever happen to us. Everything seemed to tell us so.

  Before our parents’ fatal boat accident, whenever Willie and I visited our grandparents, we went to bed soaking in security and comfort. New toys and bedding with images of our favorite cartoon characters were always in the immaculately kept rooms reserved for us. There were children’s movie characters on the wallpaper. There were dressers and mirrors so shiny and clean that they looked just bought, carpets as soft as marshmallow, and curtains on the windows that looked like the curtains that opened and closed on theater stages. When Myra opened our curtains in the morning, we half-expected to hear music and see a puppet show.

  Willie and I imagined we were sleeping in a castle surrounded by high walls and moats, a place that evil creatures and nightmares could only glance at from the outside and then move on from, never daring to enter and certainly never daring to touch us while we were here. Maybe it was all my doing. I wove stories of knights and dragons, always ending with us being protected. It was important to me to be sure my little brother was safe and unafraid, especially after our parents died.

  But it was easy to create such a fairy-tale view of the world when you lived in Prescott. Almost every house was a custom-built estate with a minimum of five acres, walled in with elaborate stonework, tall hedges, or high scrolled gates. When we drove by one, I would tell Willie it belonged to this prince or that princess. Some estates had small ponds on the property, and all had foliage and fountains, flowers and bushes designed by well-known landscape artists.

  In late spring, there was a competition to determine who had the most beautiful grounds, and the prize was awarded at the public park. People dressed up as if they were going to the Kentucky Derby, and there were musicians and singers, and a few dignitaries made speeches that Myra said were so full of soap that if we looked closely, we’d see bubbles coming out of their mouths. It helped keep us interested.

  Willie loved attending, even when he was barely three. There were balloons and ice cream, and circulating among the attendees were magicians, jugglers, and clowns. Myra said it was Prescott’s version of Covent Garden in London. People came from everywhere, even those who lived outside of Prescott. There was always an impressive trophy for the winner. Grandpa had won twice in the last seven years. We did have the most impressive estate.

  Because of the restrictive zoning, there were no apartment buildings in Prescott, no middle-class people, and especially no low-income people sleeping here unless they were in-house employees. All the residents were influential business and political people who had, through those zoning ordinances, made it almost impossible for anyone of more moderate means to build a home and settle in this small community. They were also able to keep all fast-food restaurants out. The only businesses approved within Prescott’s borders were convenience stores attached to gas stations. The restaurants in Prescott that “didn’t raise the king’s eyebrows,” as Myra put it—and there were only six—were all gourmet places with chefs who graduated from prestigious culinary institutes. Some Prescott residents were investors in these restaurants.

  Rich people and people splurging on dinners for special occasions came from miles away to the restaurants in Prescott. All of them were in beautiful buildings. The moment you walked into one, you knew you were going to spend a lot of money. They all had immaculately dressed waiters, waitresses, and busboys and maître d’s who knew most of the customers by name.

  What wasn’t perfect in Prescott?

  However, I had heard a joke about Prescott that a newspaper reporter told my grandpa at the landscape competition. The reporter joked that the nondenominational cemetery should be entered in the contest, too, because it truly was the most beautiful property within its boundaries.

  “You do more for the dead here than you do for the living, Mr. Arnold,” he said, “and you don’t get paid for it until you join them.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The burial sites and the monuments were as carefully designed and as full of restrictions as the houses of the living. Myra said that the trees and the landscaping, the fountains, and the chapel looked like they were all part of a property owned by the British royals or something: “You’d think you had entered Buckingham Palace.” Graves were dug only at night so it appeared as if the ground simply had opened up with perfect proportions to gently accept the newly departed the following day. I even heard Myra tell My Faith that you practically needed an invitation from the Queen of England to get in.

  But, as my grandpa and I now too painfully understood, being rich, even as rich as we were, really didn’t bring us immunity from tragedy. Everyone knew that was true, but here in Prescott, there was an attempt to get back at death by creating a cemetery so elaborate and attractive that a popular joke outsiders supposedly cracked was “Prescott residents are dying to get in there.”

  Well, Willie hadn’t been, I thought, and neither were my parents or Grandma Arnold.

  My Faith and I sat with Myra until she fell asleep, and then My Faith rose quickly and said she had better get into the kitchen and start to prepare food.

  “I’m not hungry. I’ll never eat again,” I said.

  She smiled and stroked my hair. “You will, darlin’,” she said. “But we’ll need food ’cause all your grandpa’s friends will be comin’ to pay their respects as soon as . . . as they know,” she said, and walked off, mumbling about how quickly bad news can travel.

  I sat there. Of course, she was right. I remembered how it had been after the news about my parents spread and especially after Grandma Arnold died.

  Our house, a Greek Revival mansion, had already been indelibly stained with the weight of those tragedies. Willie’s death was just going to make it all darker, heavier. Already, to me, there were shadows now where once there had never been. I sat fixed and afraid to leave Myra’s side, because I was sure the vast rooms would seem terribly empty to me, despite the elaborate and expensive furniture and large classical paintings on the walls. From now on, voices would always echo, footsteps would hang longer in the air, and in a few hours, people would be whispering. Maybe they would never stop whispering.

  Myra moaned in her sleep. I looked at her, afraid to touch her because she had been so broken. Maybe she hurt all over now. I certainly did. I rose slowly, confused about where I should go and what I should do. I really was afraid of the house, afraid of how much smaller I would feel in it now that Willie was no longer to be with me. No matter how annoying he could be sometimes or how demanding of attention, he was still like the other half of me.

  I left Myra’s room and walked slowly back to the kitchen to look in on My Faith. She and one of the maids were working quickly to prepare dishes, sobbing and dabbing their eyes as they worked. They paused when they saw me, but I walked away. I didn’t want to be any part of that or even admit to myself that it was going on.

  I thought about calling Lila, but just the idea of doing something I would normally do sickened me. The world should have stopped. Clocks shouldn’t be ticking. No one should be working or playing. Certainly, no one should be laughing, anywhere. I walked past the living room and paused at the doorway of Grandpa’s office. He was behind his desk, his big, strong hands pressed against his temples, and he was leaning over and staring down at what I knew was his favorite picture of my mother. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there. Finally, he looked up and realized I was there.

&
nbsp; “How’s Myra?” he asked.

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Good. I had Jimmy go for her medicine.” He sat back. “I called your other grandmother,” he said. He always called my father’s mother my “other” grandmother. He never used her name, which was my name, Sanders. She was Patricia Sanders. “She’ll be coming with her sister Sally to the funeral. Seems that’s the only time we ever see her, eh? Funerals,” he said bitterly. “Death has had a feast here.”

  He had his hands clenched into fists. I didn’t know what to say. He looked like he would spring up out of his chair and start swinging at anything and everything. I supposed the expression on my face softened him. He unclenched his fists and stood.

  “My secretary, Mrs. Mallen, is on her way here. She’ll oversee what has to be done. Your uncle Bobby is on his way, too,” he said, but not with much enthusiasm.

  I looked up with more interest. Both Willie and I loved Uncle Bobby, but Uncle Bobby and Grandpa had never really gotten along as well as a father and a son should, and I don’t think it was only because Uncle Bobby didn’t want anything to do with the business Grandpa had created.

  In looks, he resembled my grandmother more than my grandfather. He was tall and lean, with much more diminutive facial features. He had my grandmother’s sea-blue eyes and her more feminine high cheekbones. My grandfather was burly, muscular, someone who would be cast faster as a bartender or a bouncer than as the owner of a multimillion-dollar business, often wearing a suit and tie.

  From what I knew, Uncle Bobby was always more interested in music and dramatics than in running a trucking company. His goal was to become a Broadway choreographer. Currently, he was on the road with a new production, a revival of Anything Goes. My grandfather had attended some of his performances in high school but never any in college and only went to a Broadway show my uncle was in because the whole family went. Grandma Arnold and my mother followed Uncle Bobby’s career but were careful not to talk about it too much in front of Grandpa. Most of the time, he would simply get up and walk out of the room.