Security(35)

“Slow down,” Tessa says.

“I can’t. I’ve gotta get this all out, or—I didn’t understand why, what this bug up his butt was about the triple. I asked him, I said, ‘Mitch, do a f*cking double,’ because that was high--risk enough. A single is high risk. But Mitch told me he’d been offered fifty grand, so he had to do it. And that made no sense. I knew his finances were a mess, but I was covering him.” Brian’s mouth opens to say more, but his voice stalls. It croaks. His words won’t come out.

Tessa says, “What can I do?”

Brian closes his eyes, takes her hands, and places them on either side of his throat. He holds them there. “Our bank accounts were separate. But I forgot we set up your college money in a joint fund.”

Tessa transforms, slowly, into a close imitation of Munch’s The Scream.

Brian doesn’t see the transformation. He doesn’t want to. “I forgot until Mitch under--rotated on the second turn going into the third, and I could see, and everybody could see, how he was going to land, and it occurred to me right then—Oh yeah. Tess’s college money.” Brian opens his eyes and takes in Tessa’s profound and boundless horror. Brian takes it in like he deserves it, because, “I should have thought of that earlier. I could have told him we’d make it up. I’d make it up. But he didn’t want me to know, cuz that was the worst thing either of us could have ever imagined doing. We promised you. We told you you’d go to college on us. We swore it, and Mitch was so proud we could do that for you. The day we showed you the paperwork—remember? Your seventeenth? You and me and Mitch at the Lone Spur Grill. You cried, and you never cry.” Brian takes a handkerchief—a handkerchief?—from his jeans pocket and dries Tessa’s face. “Mitch told me that night—before he fell asleep, he told me he was going to marry you someday. And then about a year later, he’s dying on a dirt ramp because he drained your college money down to nothing. He drained it to nothing, and then he borrowed to put it back and he drained it again. And he’s dying, and he’s looking up at me, his big brother—by eight minutes, but still his big brother—and he’s telling me, ‘Make it up, Bri. You gotta make it up, okay?’ And he keeps saying that and saying that, and I’m telling him I will but he needs to hold on, we’ll make it up together. But then his breathing gets short, and before it gets so bad he can’t talk anymore, the last thing he says to me, the very last thing is—‘Don’t tell Tess.’ ”

Tessa makes an appalling noise. A child in a sadist’s strong grip might make this noise. She covers her mouth with both palms. Tears fill and flood. Her complexion is hectic with color.

Brian is nodding at her, but he keeps talking, like his words are rocks and speech is their momentum down a hillside. “The promoters didn’t even wait till after the funeral. They quoted me a hundred grand to do the stunt. The day before the wake, remember? Remember that call I got when you were helping me pick out what he should wear?” Tessa looks down at the glowing green stone. “I wanted to tell you. Tess, you can’t know how badly I wanted to tell you.” He takes her shoulders. She stares at the stone. “You were the only person who felt him being gone like I did. You were the only other one who knew how good he was, how he wasn’t just some fun--time jerk. He was more than a party; he was good. I knew—Mitch didn’t know, but I knew—you could handle hearing it, the whole truth, and you’d come out the other side still loving him, exactly the same as before, better. Tess, you’ve gotta look at me for this last part. I swear on Mitch’s grave, it’s the last time I’ll make you look at me ever again, but please, please do it.”

Tessa does. It’s the whole world’s misery. Asking why, why it has to be this way.

Brian reels. He holds the angle of her neck. He says, “When you got down on your knees, grabbed the sleeves of my best shirt, and begged me—right after the funeral—to stay with you, and help you, and take care of you, keep you safe . . . there aren’t words in any human language for what was going on in my mind. It was like Mitch was on a loop in my head—‘Don’t tell Tess. Don’t tell her.’ So I said I was leaving but I’d be back. I had to do some stunts, I had to do the one that killed Mitch, but I’d visit.” Brian finally breaks. “And you looked just like this, and I almost told you, I came so close, you can’t even—so when I landed the triple and paid off Mitch’s debt and had enough for your first semester, I decided I’d keep going, go a little longer without seeing you, make enough for your sophomore year. Then I went a little longer and a little longer after that, but you have to understand, it never got easy. It should have, but it didn’t. It got harder and harder. The longer I went, the more sure I got that the next time I saw you, I’d tell you everything. I’d tell you Mitch loved you, and so did I, and we had about a dozen drunk conversations where we fought about who should be with you when you were grown up, and Mitch always won by telling me I could keep it together without having you to keep it together for, but he couldn’t.” Brian’s and Tessa’s commingled sobs fill the pool with ghostly echoes. Brian talks through his and says, “So I stayed away half because I thought of you as his, and half because he used the last breath in his broken body to tell me not to tell you he was weak.” Brian wills himself calm again, brushing Tessa’s hair back from her moist cheeks and staring at her with the focused heat that they’ve both been trying to throw ice water on all evening. “But he was weak,” Brian says. “And so am I. So I’m here. If I’m too late, then that’s okay. That’s what I deserve. But you have to tell me I’m too late.”