What happened to you the night of the meeting, Maddox?
“I would have thought it would be obvious to you.”
I paused before typing.
PTSD?
Maddox downed the rest of the alcohol in his glass.
“Textbook case,” he said as he stared into the fire. “Roadside bomb in Mosul. Overturned Humvee, heavy fire, six of my men killed instantly. Three more didn’t last long enough to be evac’d. One guy got out besides me. I’m fucked up in the head, he’s got no legs. Purple Heart medals for both of us. Textbook,” he muttered.
Is that why you don’t drive?
He looked at me in surprise. His first real reaction besides his comment about Isaac.
“How did you know?”
Just a guess, I said, not wanting to get into the details. What are your plans?
When he didn’t answer, I carefully lowered myself to the floor. My hip hadn’t been hurting as much as it had earlier in the winter. It was another reason that taking it easier around the center and splitting the workload with more people would be a good thing.
I’d like to tell you about my plans. But I want to start by telling you something that someone I love very much and who I once hurt very badly told me not long ago.
Maddox read the message and nodded. I felt his eyes on me as I typed.
We’re not the same people we were back then, Maddox. And I believe that if you could change things, you would. I would, too. I would have told you the truth then and there and I would have made sure you believed me instead of letting you walk away. Because you were the most important person in my life. But I chose to let you believe a lie because inside I was still that little kid who wanted to please his parents. It was a lot easier to live that lie than accept the truth. My hope is that you don’t do what I did and start to believe that you deserved what happened to you. My hope is that you don’t relive that day and wonder if there was something you could have or should have done differently. My hope is that you will accept that I forgive you for the things you said and did back then. My hope is that we can one day be brothers again. My hope is that you forgive yourself because I really want back the person who’s always had my back.
As Maddox began reading my message, he nodded a few times. But then his mouth fell and I saw him swallow hard. At one point, he reached up to wipe at his eyes, but when he handed back the phone, he didn’t say anything. Disappointment flared, but just as I started to get to my feet, he reached out to grab my arm. His voice was heavy when he said, “You said you wanted to tell me about your plans.”
Relief went through me and I settled back on the floor. I smiled to myself as I typed an almost identical message to one I’d typed just six short weeks ago.
A message that had changed my life forever.
In the best way.
Do you need a job?
Epilogue
Nolan
Six months later
Exhilaration swept through me as I cleared the last note and the theater broke out into applause. The audience quickly climbed to their feet as several people called out “Bravo!” and “Encore!”
My heart was racing as I bowed to each section of the audience. I tried to spy Dallas through the crowd, but there were too many moving bodies to manage it. I caught a glimpse of my mother in the balcony, but no Dallas. It wasn’t until a good two minutes later as everyone sat back down that I could finally see that Dallas wasn’t sitting next to my mother. My mother sent me a small wave and even from where I was standing, I could see she was beaming. I blew her a kiss and saw her wipe at her eyes.
I still couldn’t get over the fact that she was here.
Not because I didn’t think she wanted to be, but because she’d made such a fuss about not attending any more of my performances if she couldn’t pay for the trip herself. And since her knitting and part-time work at the library were barely covering her regular bills, I’d accepted that the only performance she’d see of mine this year was the first one I’d given in London six weeks earlier.
She’d cried when I’d asked her if she’d wanted to come to that one. Then, like this last time, she’d fought with me about my insistence that Dallas and I would pay for the trip for her. Dallas had been the one to talk her into letting us treat her by turning up the Dallas Kent charm to full wattage. But she’d been a goner when he’d laid the Dallas Kent smile on her.