Curtis shut down the engine of his Range Rover but remained in the plush cream leather seat. A more than comfortable enough place to sit and spend some time, but it wasn’t his fondness of the car that caused him to pause. His eyes moved across the windows of his home, the redbrick-fronted house as handsome as ever, and his pride at the building belonging to him as strong as ever too.
He and Rachel had bought the place only six months ago, a cut-price deal considering the location and its size, reflecting the amount of work it needed. They’d already spent a small fortune as they began the process of turning it into their dream home. Sash windows renovated, roof and cladding replaced, internal walls and ceilings stripped and made good, and they’d restored tiles and hardwood floors to their original glory.
Curtis loved his home, so why was he finding it so hard to go inside?
He glanced at the clock on the dash before he put his hand to the door and stepped out into the cold evening. Just gone 8 p.m. The night was chilly, even though spring had apparently arrived.
He headed over to the front door, opened it and went inside.
‘Rachel?’
‘In here.’
Kitchen.
He took off his jacket and shoes and walked across the patterned tiles to the back of the house and the sprawling kitchen – the only room they hadn’t yet remodeled downstairs. The worn wooden cabinets, the drab brown walls, the dated appliances; everything looked and smelled of oldness in here, even if it remained useable enough and had undoubtedly cost a fortune when installed a couple of decades ago.
For some reason Curtis felt daunted about the prospect of turning this space around now, nothing like the excitement that had filled both him and Rachel not long back.
His wife was sitting at the kitchen counter, facing away from him, with her head tilted to look up at the small TV on the wall.
He approached her and kissed her on the cheek. She had the remains of a plate of food in front of her and a full glass of white wine. The now-empty bottle it had come from stood across the counter.
‘I started without you,’ she said, not looking at him.
‘I can see.’
‘I tried calling.’
‘I was…’
He didn’t bother to finish the sentence. In the middle of something he almost said, but what did those bland words help to explain exactly? Anyway, missed calls between them were par for the course these days, both of them continuously under the cosh, sleepwalking to middle age one seventy-hour work week at a time.
‘It’s in the fridge,’ she said. ‘Just a microwave meal.’
He opened the fridge door. The huge space was practically empty except for butter, beer, wine, his favorite collection of hot sauces, and a chicken parmigiana. Last night he’d suggested they go to a restaurant this evening. Or get takeout. Or that he could even make something. But quite honestly, after the day he’d had, and how late he’d arrived home, this was his preferred option now anyway.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
He plonked the plastic container in the microwave and set it on high for five minutes.
‘How was your day?’ he asked, as he snapped the cap off a beer.
Not that he really was interested in the answer, but he knew Rachel liked to vent, and it was the done thing, right? Married couples telling each other about their days, the highs and lows. Curtis hated it. Hated having to go through it all in his mind a second time.
Rachel swiveled around on the stool, glass in hand, a couple of fingers of her wine already gone. Her face was still made up from a day in the office, but she looked seriously tired, her eyes glazed, a little bloodshot. Probably exactly how he looked.
‘Bellamy has been on my back all day,’ she said. ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘He still doesn’t think you should go to trial?’
‘Doesn’t think it? It’s more than that. It’s like his life is threatened by the prospect. I don’t know what his game is anymore. Maybe it’s all just to screw me over.’
‘Why would he want that?’
She didn’t answer as she took another sip of her wine. Well, more of a glug, really.
‘I told you before,’ Curtis said. ‘Stick to your guns. If you think the deal is bullshit then don’t accept it.’
‘That’s easy for you to say, isn’t it?’
The words snapped out of her mouth like shotgun pellets, her bitterness evident. But that was simply the way she saw their work. She was the overworked defense attorney, ‘living the dream’ by being the type of lawyer everyone saw depicted in movies, but earning nowhere near what her talent and hard work deserved, not to mention the stress. Meanwhile, he had ‘sold out’ to work as a corporate lawyer serving rich clients.
As irritated as that view made him, Curtis still bit back a response.
And after all, it was their respective careers which had brought them together in the first place. He’d first met her when one of his clients had been on trial for fraud. They’d worked together for months preparing, getting closer all the time, had slept together for the first time three nights before his client was cleared.
Their lives had seemed so similar then, not just their careers but a sense of shared pain that brought them closer, him meeting her only a few years after his mom’s death when he was still finding comfort for his grief by dedicating his heart and soul to his work. Head in the sand, perhaps. Rachel, on the other hand, was an only child and didn’t have the added complication of an estranged sibling like him, but her dad had died when she was in her teens. She’d hated him. Hated how he’d abused both her and her mom, but she’d also become distant from her mom in the aftermath. Perhaps guilt of some sort, or perhaps because she’d felt her mom should have done more to protect her.
Her mom lived near Seattle now, thousands of miles away, and had remarried. Rachel hardly ever spoke to her, saw her even less. When Curtis and Rachel had met, they’d both had so little emotional support around them, which he knew explained why they’d both tied themselves, tied their lives, so closely to their work back then.
Except now, years later, that same work ethic no longer brought them closer together, it only pushed them further and further apart.
He downed half of his beer in two large gulps. The alcohol provided immediate relief to his weary mind. He put the bottle down and went over to his wife again. She barely moved as he put his arms around her and brought her close.
‘Why don’t we do something this weekend?’ he said. ‘We could both do with the break. A night away to get our minds off work?’
She didn’t answer. A few moments later she pulled back from the embrace.
‘I told Bellamy I’d go in Saturday morning,’ she said. ‘Just for half a day.’
‘Meal out Friday night then?’
‘Everywhere good’ll be booked.’
She finished the remainder of her wine.
‘I can try?’ Curtis said. ‘We haven’t been to Valentino’s for months.’
She stood up from the stool.
‘Maybe, but I was trying to get a dinner date with Anne and Russ, remember?’
No, he didn’t remember. And the idea didn’t appeal at all, even if Russ was technically his friend.
She headed over to the fridge. Curtis glanced at the TV. The news. Something a bit more light-hearted would have been better after the toil of a working day. The scrolling banner on the screen and the report itself both carried the same story, about an armed attack near the Capitol Building in which several people had been injured and ‘at least’ three attackers were dead.
‘Do you want some?’ Rachel said.
Curtis glanced over his shoulder. She held a bottle of Crémant in her hand.
‘What are we celebrating?’
The humph she gave showed she really didn’t appreciate the jovial comment.
‘Yeah, please,’ he added quickly.
‘It’s almost a good news story for once,’ she said, nodding toward the TV. Curtis flinched when the cork popped out of the bottle.
‘Good news?’ he said, his eyes now firmly fixed on the screen. He’d heard about the incident several times throughout the afternoon – news alert on his watch, the top story on his phone’s news feed – but he hadn’t paid it any real attention until now. How sad was that? That a major incident in which multiple people had lost their lives was seemingly so commonplace that it drew little more than a cursory reaction from him.
‘Some guy stopped the attack,’ Rachel said. ‘A random passerby.’
‘Yeah?’ Curtis said, only half-listening to her.
Over the top of the newscaster’s voice, shaky cellphone footage played of the apparent moment the passerby first intervened.
‘Elliott Charlton?’ Curtis said. ‘The senator?’
‘The intended target, apparently.’
She handed him a flute of sparkling wine and chinked his glass.
‘So just who is the mystery hero?’ the newscaster said, as the screen paused on an out-of-focus image of the man. ‘That is the question on a nation’s lips tonight.’
Blue jacket. Jeans. Tall, lean. Cap covering his face.
Most of his face, anyway.
Curtis stared as the world around him blurred, and a year-old memory stirred.
The last time he’d seen his brother…
The sun’s rays blasted through the wide windows, making the room feel uncomfortably stuffy and airless. Curtis stared down at the photograph on the dresser. The only photograph, the only knick-knack of any kind, left on display in the bedroom now. He’d deliberately left this one until last.
The dresser itself – five drawers high, old dark-stained pinewood that was scratched and worn and marked, but in a way which somehow gave it a hearty charm – was something of a family hand-me-down, having come from Curtis’s great aunt to his grandmother, then finally to his mother over fifteen years ago.
Three families, even more house moves. In many ways he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see the piece of furniture ever again, though he’d already decided he’d take it with him today, if it fitted in the back of his car. Just one more thing he was unable to let go of.
He picked up the photo frame, holding it gently like it was an injured baby bird whose newly formed wings were as delicate as sugar paper.
Four smiles beamed back at him. Himself, nine years old, Finn, seven, and his mum and dad in their early forties. He remembered the day. Their first vacation after moving from England to Georgia. The bright sunshine. The smell of the pine trees that surrounded the lakeside cabin. The glistening blue pool with the seahorse mural at the bottom that he and Finn had challenged each other to dive down to and touch. The endless fun they’d had jumping in and out of the water for hours on end until their fingers were like prunes and their ears sloshed with trapped pool water.
Yet, as familiar as the still image had become, as vivid as the whole day burned in his mind, looking at the picture now he barely recognized his parents.
They looked so young and full of life…
Why couldn’t he grasp that image of them – that version of them – in his head?
He heard the faint clunk of a car door outside. He moved to the window and peered down below. Finn stood by the front gate, arms folded, looking up. He spotted Curtis and motioned to him.
Curtis sighed and, picture still in his hand, headed down the stairs and out to his brother.
The warm sunshine, the blue sky – such a contrast to the mood of the day. Curtis would much rather it was cold, wet and dreary.
‘You’re leaving already?’ Curtis said, as he looked from his brother to the car where Finn’s girlfriend, Emily, was already seated in the passenger seat, phone in hand.
‘We’ve got a long journey.’
‘I thought you wanted to help me.’
‘I thought I had?’
‘The movers haven’t even arrived yet.’
Curtis glanced at his watch. They were half an hour late. Typical.
Finn sighed. ‘What else can we do? We’ve got everything that means anything. The rest is…’
‘Junk?’
‘The rest will be put to good use for people who need it.’
‘You want this?’ Curtis said.
He held the photo out. Finn set his eyes on it and for a few moments said nothing. Then he took it from Curtis and smiled.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘So where are you off to this time?’ Curtis asked.
‘Dubai.’
Curtis said nothing but the scathing look he received from Finn suggested his brother had read his thoughts.
‘It might not be your lifestyle of choice,’ Finn said, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.’
Curtis glanced over to Emily, still focused on her phone. He’d only met her for the first time at the funeral two days ago. She seemed nice enough, even if he knew next to nothing about her, other than that Finn had met her a few months previously. As smitten as she seemed, Curtis had doubts as to how much longer she had left on Finn’s merry-go-round of life.
Finn reached out and put his hand on Curtis’s shoulder.
‘I know it’s been harder for you. You’ve been stuck so close to—’
‘Stuck?’
Curtis glared at his brother and the conciliatory look on Finn’s face dropped away.
‘Seriously, what do you mean by stuck?’ Curtis said. ‘Do you mean for the past six months I’ve been our mom’s daily carer? The one of us by her side as she wasted away. Is that what you mean?’
‘No,’ Finn responded, his tone just as hard as Curtis’s, as though he was the aggrieved party. ‘But I’m not going to stand here and make a problem when there isn’t one. It’s hardly appropriate.’
‘Appropriate? What about—’
‘I only mean… I… Isn’t it now time to think about yourself? I loved Mom just as much as you did, I loved them both, but I can see the burden on you—’
‘A burden? They were our parents.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do I? So you know the burden’s been on me, yet you still stayed away.’
Finn shoved the picture back into Curtis’s chest. ‘You know what? Screw this.’
Curtis took the photo back as Finn turned and strode to his car.
‘Running away again?’ Curtis shouted after him.
Finn grabbed the door handle then paused and turned back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to live my life. Perhaps you should try it. Don’t you think they would have wanted you to?’
He got into the driver’s seat. The engine fired up and a moment later revved freely as the car shot down the street.
As if on cue, from the opposite direction, the removal truck came to a rocking halt. The driver wound down his window.
‘Sorry, mister. Lousy traffic.’
Curtis didn’t say anything, he was still too busy replaying his brother’s words in his mind.
‘Mister?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ Curtis said. ‘Whatever. Follow me.’
Picture in hand, he turned and headed back inside.
* * *
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Curtis snapped from his thoughts with a jolt. His eyes remained fixed on the TV. The news report had finished, the screen now taken over by a weather map showing the sunny forecast for the next day. He looked over to the microwave, then caught Rachel’s eye. Her wine glass was already empty. She stared at him curiously.
‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a—’
‘That smells damn good,’ he said, getting up from the stool.
Look like I’ve seen a what? he thought as he moved over to the microwave.
A ghost?
Well, she wasn’t far wrong.