“All I ask is that you join me to greet my mum and yours on her birthday; that’s right, she was your mother, even though she was never allowed to tell you that. Instead she had to watch as you turned away from her and removed her from your lives, although that wasn’t your fault. She never blamed you for that; she knew you didn’t know any better. Maybe now we can together offer her an apology for not being there when she needed us most, and to promise her we’ll try and do better by the people in our lives than she ever got from the people in hers.”
“I have waited for far too long already to come and see her; I left her behind, and it will always tear at my heart that I didn’t do enough to save her. I know and freely accept I bear a heavy portion of the guilt for her death; if I had only pulled her onto the train with me that night, maybe she would still be alive today, and that is the burden of guilt I can never put down, that I didn’t try hard enough to save her, that I left her to die alone. All the contrition in this world won’t absolve me of my part in her death; I know this; I feel it every day of my life. Her blood may not flow in my veins, but it’s on my hands, and I can never wash it away, nor should I.
“Perhaps both of you will come one day to realise that Barbara really was our mum. She brought me up, she kept me safe, she loved me unquestioningly, and she would have done the same for you in a heartbeat, but you were taken from her, and she was never allowed to have what she wanted most in the world: to be your mother again. In every possible way that matters, she was the best thing in our lives, but we stood back and let her go far too easily, and far too soon.”
“However, the past is what it is; none of what happened can be recalled, or undone now, and the hurt has cut too deep to ever sponge it away, but perhaps we can start again, this time as adults, brothers with a common loss and maybe after all this time, a common grief. I will be there whether or not you decide to come. I hope to see you there, but I will understand if you don’t, because, after all, perhaps not that much has changed for you.”
“I do know one thing though: regardless of how you feel about her, I know Barbara will always watch over you; even if you never honoured her, she still mourned her loss of you. In her heart she was always your mother, both of you, and because you were once part of her, perhaps one day you will hear her, as I did, and finally understand that she loved and needed you, and never let you go, despite what life and her family had done to her. I hope that one day you will come to realise just how much we threw away, and for that hope, and for our loss, and for her sake, I make this request. Please be there if you can.
“Your brother
“Nicky”
Yaz put down the letter and looked at us, tears on her cheeks.
“After all this time, he’s still hurting so much! Poor Nicky, so much guilt and pain, and for nothing! He went away again thinking you didn’t care, after he tried to reach out to you one last time, all that hurt and loss…!”
Rick tried to put his arm around her to comfort her, but she shook him off.
“No Ricky, don’t… don’t touch me, just don’t! You did this to him, you and Bobby; he was alone, you left him out, you left him out every time and hurt him and hurt him, and yet look! He came back and he still thought of you! You never once tried to help him, and you let him leave! He was your brother, he’s my big brother, he’s still hurting so much, after all this time he’s hurting and he’s not here, and it’s your fault! Shari…!”
Rick looked at me in bafflement, but I think I understood where Yaz was right now; Rick and I, we’d been the architects of so much of Nicky’s misfortune, our father’s puppets, who’d stood by and laughed while so much evil happened right under our noses. Right now, compared to him, we were looking pretty shoddy and worthless. He knew we’d done nothing to help our mother, or tried in any way to save her, and he’d expected no less from us, and so he’d taken the guilt for that failing on himself, because he loved her and thought he’d failed her. And yet, even though he believed nothing had changed for us, he’d still tried to reach out, he’d even invoked his beloved Barbara to watch over us, her two despicable sons. This was why we needed him back: he was the heart and conscience of our family, and Yaz had seen that.
Shari took a sobbing Yaz into the other room so she could compose herself again, while Rick and I stared guiltily at each other; the same thought uppermost in both our minds, I’m sure; if we’d received that letter in time, would we have gone? The answer that scuttled and scurried around in my mind was “No”. Last summer I was still too busy being a morose prick to have ever considered any kind of rapprochement with Nicky, and that was the shameful truth that hurt the most. That letter would have made no difference to me.
Rick, of course, was nowhere to be found when that letter was mailed, otherwise things might have been very different; his change had already happened, but I had still been alone and sunk in bitterness.
Now, with my newly-awakened conscience and Shari showing me how to be a proper person, it would have been so different, but by the time I found her (or she found me) it was already too late; he’d been and gone again, and he’d left finally knowing once and for all that we truly were what he’d always believed we were. It was ironic, and not in an amusing way, that the morning I had accepted that Shari was what I needed, the morning I had apologised to Yaz for scaring and rejecting her, the morning I had finally realised just what a complete fool I had been, the morning I accepted that my family really was the most important thing in my life, that was the morning Nicky and his family were there alone, placing flowers on my mother’s grave.
Something clicked, and I picked up the letter, scanning quickly through the first paragraph to what I’d heard.
“Nicky has a daughter; he’s got a wife and a baby daughter. We have a niece!” I stated in astonishment, Rick’s eyebrows suddenly going up as he took that in as well.
Then Shari was standing at the doorway with Yaz, who flung herself on Rick, burying her face in his neck as she hugged him tightly.
“I’m sorry baby, so sorry, it wasn’t just you, you didn’t know any better, it’s just… I was so sad for him, he’s one of us and he’s still in so much pain, he didn’t do anything except try to help her, and yet he feels so guilty, poor Nicky, there’s still so much hurt and loss, and it’s not fair, it shouldn’t be him, we have to find him and make it right with him, promise me we will, Ricky, promise me!”
Rick soothed her, nuzzling her neck as she cried for her lost brother.
“I promise, baby, we’ll find Nicky, and I swear, we’ll make it right with him; with him, and his wife, and his baby, our niece; do you remember reading that? We have a baby niece!”
Shari came and took my arm.
“I heard that bit, I was wondering when you’d pick up on it,” she smiled. “Under the circumstances, I think we need to ramp-up the search for Nicky. This letter came from Albany, which I know is the capital of New York State, so he must live or work there or somewhere near there. At least now we have a location, it should make finding him a little easier. I think we need to make finding our big brother our priority; this property business can wait; family comes first.”
*
The following day, Rick and Shari went shopping, and Yaz took me into town so I could buy something for Shari for Christmas. It was a strange experience for me; I’d never been Christmas shopping, so I’d never actually been in one of the department stores at Christmas-time; I’d never had a reason to, and I was almost overwhelmed by the colour, the glitter, the decorations and displays, and the Christmas music playing everywhere.
Yaz piloted me to the things she knew Shari would like, and helped me pick out a suitable present for her, then turned her back while I bought something for her as well, something to give my little sister on Christmas Day, and then Yaz parked me with all the bags and boxes while she went off to do a little shopping of her own. I also managed to buy a couple of other presents, then, laden down, we made our way home. I was enthralled; Christmas shopping made me feel, for the first time, that there was a special time happening in the world and I was part of it. Yaz made me stop on the way home to have my picture taken at a coin-op Photo-booth. When I asked why she just replied, “Ask Shari…”
Rick and Shari were also burdened down with bags and packages, and we spent that evening in a frenzy of wrapping and labelling the things we’d bought for each other, and stacking them under the tree. Shari had also stopped in at the post office and picked up passport application forms for Rick and me, which was why they’d made us take our pictures, reminding me that our priority was to find Nicky, and our starting point looked like this “Albany” place in New York.
Christmas Day was quiet but happy: we’d made a start on finding Nicky, we were getting our passports straight so we could go find him, and we were happy as a family as well as the couples we’d turned into. Shari gave me a warm jacket, fleecy gloves, and a handful of warm sweaters, plus some nice dressy shirts, and Yaz gave me a digital camera, so I spent Christmas morning making my beautiful sisters pose for me in their pyjamas while I snapped away. I’d bought Shari a new laptop with the very last of the money I’d saved from that thankless job I’d had (plus some other gifts I hoped she’d show me after bedtime…), and we’d all clubbed together and given Yaz an iPad. Shari and Yaz had given Rick warm clothing, boots, shirts, and underwear. The sight of Rick in his sleep sweats with a pair of silk Mickey Mouse boxers pulled on over the top was something to behold, although it’s an image I’m trying to forget…
I think the present that meant the most to us, though, was one that Shari gave to Rick and me. She’d taken an 8×10 portrait photograph of Barbara from one of the albums and had it framed for us; it was a picture of her that must have been taken before all the bad things started to happen. She looked so young and happy, her eyes smiling as well as her lips, her light-brown hair and grey eyes shimmering in the light and her silver filigree charm bracelet on her wrist. I’d forgotten about that bracelet, and seeing it in the picture brought back a fleeting quasi-memory of seeing it glitter in the sunlight. I briefly wondered where it had gone; it wasn’t on the list of things removed from the house, and it wasn’t in among her things in the attic.