I curl a hand against her shoulder, gripping gently.
“I know this is hard on you. You care about him as much as I do. You’re here to see him struggle every day when I’m not. But even if he misses a step here and there, it’s not a total loss. I’m forever grateful he has you to care for him, and the other nurses. You all help him recover lost ground, wherever he’s able.”
Julia gives me a watery smile, her eyes brimming, and squeezes my hand.
“He’ll be thrilled to see you. He asks about you every time he has a clear day.”
Goddamn, that hurts.
I’m so heavy right now the guilt adds another thousand pounds.
The feeling that I’ve abandoned my brother to strangers who are paid to care, instead of doing this myself. I know, deep down, that I’m being ridiculous.
I’m not a trained cognitive and behavioral therapist.
I wouldn’t know the first thing about helping Barrett’s condition from a medical standpoint, and I’d just be banging around this cottage making things worse.
Still, I can’t get so caught up in the work of what I’m doing that I forget the why.
More importantly, the who.
I promise myself I’ll come more often—just as soon as I’ve ripped Vance Haydn’s life out from under him. Then I’ll see Barrett every day.
For now, I give Julia’s shoulder another squeeze, offering her a hollow smile as I let go so I can finally slip inside.
The repetitive one-note piano plinks lead me to the stairs winding up to the loft.
He’s almost always there when I come—as if underneath the damage, the decay, some deep part of his soul remembers that he was always happiest at his piano.
That he was only truly himself with his fingers on the keys, his rollicking voice rising to the rafters.
The piano still calls to him.
For a split second, I feel sick, so overcome with reality it’s hard to keep moving.
How must it feel to sit there and know that you’re reaching for some missing part of yourself, without truly knowing what it is?
Fuck.
My throat feels tighter than a drum by the time I crest the stairs and see him sitting there, hunched over the piano, pressing a single forlorn finger against the same key over and over.
He can’t remember a single scale—let alone an entire song—no matter how hard he tries.
There’s paper in the sheet music stand, only it’s not actual music.
Just large, blocky scribbles that almost form musical notes, but fall short—his own made-up symbols interspersed with a repeated number that looks like §14.2.
I don’t want to believe it’s all gone.
I don’t want to believe there isn’t something of the talented, beautiful soul he used to be left in there.
As my feet creak on the top step and he looks up at me, going tense, I swallow a fucking boulder that slices my throat.
There’s nothing of my brother there.
He wears my brother’s face. Weathered, slightly tanned, a handsome man in his early thirties, his hair the same dark brown as mine but his eyes a brighter, clearer, softer blue. Still full of so much more heart than I ever had.
Inside those eyes, it’s not him.
There’s a stranger.
A little boy trapped in time who doesn’t know me and who regards me warily.
“W-who are you?” he asks carefully, scooting back on the seat, pushing himself with his feet in clunky sneakers with Velcro snaps.
For a second, I can’t speak.
It’s too hard to choke out the words, my lungs refusing to work.
I’m your damn brother, I want to say.
Sometimes, it gets the best of me and I do.
Sometimes, I sit down with him and hold his hands and explain slowly, repeatedly, that a terrible 'accident' made him forget me. I tell him I’m still his big brother and I’ve loved him his entire life and I always will.
Barry always beams at me, so bright and innocent, and throws his bulky arms around my neck and says he’s always wanted a big brother.
But I can’t do it today.
Not when my heart’s too tangled up with fury at Vance Haydn and with the way my thoughts can’t stop straying back to Callie Landry and her brightness, her quirks, her fire.
I can’t sit here and hold back this killing sadness while I beg Barrett to recognize me as his brother without so many words.
So I only force a smile and say, “I’m your new piano instructor.” I step closer, holding out my hand like this is the first time we’ve ever met. “Barrett, right? I’m Roland.”
“It’s Barry.” He didn’t start preferring Barry for the much more mature Barrett until he was in high school, but in his mind, he’s still probably seven or eight years old. Eventually, he offers his hand. “You gonna teach me how to play better, mister?”
“I sure am. They tell me you never miss practice, and practice makes perfect.”