Conviction (33 page)

I say, quietly, “You all right, Trey? You don’t look so good.”

“Oh, I’m great.
So
great.”

“Do you want me to get you anything? A sandwich? Or some Advil? Or something with caffeine?”

“You are just
too kind
.”

I look down and scrape at a hangnail until it tears off. He says, “Want a drink?”

“Um—no thanks, I think I’m good.”

“Oh, but of course my perfect little
brother
would never touch
alcohol
,” he stage-whispers. “He does everything his father tells him. Everything! So
obedient
. So good-
hearted
. He won’t even eat
birds
.”

He takes a long swallow from his glass. I start to try to get up, but he locks me into place with a look.

“So
loyal
. Your own father grades you like a book report and you tell yourself he’s just being a good
dad
.”

“Maybe you should go to bed.”

Trey claps. The sound’s like ice cracking. “A round of applause for my brother. Such a good brother. Such a
good son.
”

“Trey, come on, don’t talk like that. You’re a great brother. You always—”

“You’re so right, Braden. You are so right. It was
so good
of me to say my life was better without you. You are
welcome
.”

“It’s not—”

“And I hit you, too—remember that one? Let’s not forget
that
. I miss half your life, I don’t even call, and after all that, you come to the airport to pick me up
and try to fucking
hug
me, and you do my
dishes
—oh, you must just love me.”

“Of course I do. You’re my best friend.”

He laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Well. Lucky
you.
” Then, abruptly, he stops laughing. “Dad was always right about me.”

He pours more into his glass, then tips his head back and drains it, loudly. I don’t think he hears me when I murmur that maybe he’s had enough.

“I could’ve stayed here, you know. Right here in Ornette. Right”—he thuds the glass emphatically on the table—“
here
.”

“Sure, but you have your restaurant and everything, so—”

“I could have stayed here and married Emily Zilker and you would be happy, and Dad would be happy, and Kevin would be happy. And
Mona
. Let’s not forget
Mona
. Everyone
would be so
happy.
”

“You’ll find someone else, Trey, come on. Don’t talk like this.”

“And you know what?” When I don’t answer, he says, “I asked you a question, Braden. You know
what
?”

I swallow. “What, Trey.”

“Then maybe that cop wouldn’t be dead!” He flings out his arms triumphantly and he doesn’t seem to notice when he knocks over his empty glass. “Then everyone would
be happy! Or you know what else? Maybe Dad could’ve just finished the job and killed me the night he tried, and then everyone would be better off!”

Something cold blooms in my chest, like a bruise in fast-forward. “What are you talking about?”

“I could be exactly like Kevin. I could’ve done it exactly like he did. That’s what he thought we both needed, you know that? I could have a
wife
, and a
baby
, and
work at a
church
, and no one would know. No one would suspect a thing.”

“No one would know what?”

“He told me not to tell Emily. You know that? I should’ve listened to him. Then her parents wouldn’t have told Dad to try and save me.”

All the blood’s leaking slowly from my veins and into somewhere else, my lungs maybe, my abdominal cavity. “Told him what?”

“About me and Kevin.”

“Told him
what
about you and Kevin?”

“I took six years of her life. Six years I led her on. I always told her we’d get married. Six
years
I said that.”

“Trey, are you…are you having some kind of affair with Jenna?” Someone’s gripping the edges of my temples, squeezing tighter and tighter like a vise. Then something
occurs to me, something that’s been nagging at a dark, quiet corner of my mind, and I say slowly, “Trey? Please tell me Ellie isn’t yours.”

“Braden.” He smiles at me, a terrible smile. “You’re so
innocent
. Don’t be so innocent. I just said his name like thirty times.”

“I don’t get what you’re—” And then, in one horrible moment, I do. The whole room shrinks on top of me, and for a second I can’t see. “You and—oh
my God. You’re—you’re—” But I can’t even say it. Oh God. “You’re completely drunk, Trey. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Oh, but Braden,” he says, “
Braden
, don’t you want to know why Dad and I don’t talk? You always ask. Don’t I owe it to you to tell you? My
perfect
baby brother? My baby brother I always loved more than life itself?”

“You should go to bed. You should go to bed right now.”

“It’s because your father tried to kill me when he found out. You know that? He tried to choke me to death. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Shut up, Trey. You’re lying.”

“Oh, no, Braden, no, no. I never lie. Just ask Emily. Just ask Kevin about the last ten years.” He leans forward. His eyes are veiny and red. “And next time
you
don’t have to lie about it when I ask if you think I’m cruel.”

“Dad would never do that to you.”

“Your father is being held without bail for
murder
, and you’re going to look me in the eye and say I’m wrong?”

“You’re wrong.”

“Oh?” Trey says airily. “If that’s really what you think, then how come you aren’t answering all the reporters who want to know what happened and how come you keep
asking me if I think he did it and how come you want so bad to not have to say it under oath?”

“Trey, no.” I start to get up, but he yanks me back down. He says, “
No?
No? What do you mean,
no
?”

“You’re just—you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re drunk. Dad never did that. He didn’t kill anybody. And you don’t feel that way
about…Kevin. You’re just—fuck.” I close my eyes. I can’t breathe. “My God, Trey, that’s not—you can’t—how could you
just—”

“Oh, I’ve tried to fix it, Braden. And Dad tried
so
hard. Thank God he didn’t know it was Kevin or he would’ve ruined his life. He sure tried with me. I
couldn’t talk right for
weeks.
Did you know you burst blood vessels in your face when someone chokes you? Did you know that?”

“Stop saying that. Stop talking like this. Stop talking.” I stand up so fast twin flashes flare on either side of my eyes. He reaches for me but misses this time.

“There,” he says, as I stumble toward the door. “Now you know. Now you have your answers. Everything you always wanted. So there you go. I hope you’re finally
happy
now.”

T
his is the truth. This is what happened that night.

My dad had changed by the time he came out to the car where I was waiting at Jimmy’s house. Something had gone taut in his face; he looked like he’d aged ten years, and even I could
see he’d lost something. He had his sleeve rolled up, and his skin was puffy and swollen around the bandage. I couldn’t look at him. It was cold, but he didn’t turn on the heater.
I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood.

There was traffic getting back onto the freeway. We inched by a Kaiser hospital and a huge building being demolished, the road ahead of us all brake lights, and then the traffic cleared and we
sped up. We went by Mills College, and the zoo, and we left Oakland and still he didn’t say a word.

And I don’t know where I thought we’d go from there, but even though I knew I’d really hurt him I still didn’t see this, at the time: I’d pushed him too far
already. Because this was it. This was the night Frank Reyes died. At that moment, as we were going through San Leandro, Reyes had less than two hours left.

We cut inland around Castro Valley, heading east away from all the concrete buildings shoved up against one another. I said to my dad, “You wanted me to be scared.”

“Braden, I just tattooed your
name
on my
skin
.”

“You forced me into the car and dragged me to some stranger’s house and wouldn’t tell me where we were.”

“If you didn’t trust me, then that’s your own fault. I’ve never given you any reason not to trust me.”

“That’s a lie. You wanted to scare me.”

“Goddammit, Braden, I wasn’t trying to scare you. Okay? I thought it would make you happy. I thought it would be—” He swallowed. His eyes were wet. “I thought it
would be like that time we went to Disneyland.”

“And you agreed with that cop about me. You agreed with him and you let him say all that to me, and you didn’t even stick up for me.” I took a shuddering breath. “You
were happy my mom didn’t want to see me in LA, weren’t you? You were
glad
.”

He was starting to drive faster. There was almost no one on the road. The needle on the speedometer crept up to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty and then eighty-five. I waited for him to deny
it—I waited for him to tell me I was wrong—but we passed the signs for 84 and he said, finally, “You’re right. I was.”

We went up the hill in Livermore, the valley lighting up behind us in the rearview mirror. He went east on 205 and south on 99. And I didn’t know this then, but Officer Reyes, who
wasn’t on duty that night, was driving his squad car ten minutes behind us on his way back from giving Alex a ride to San Jose. If I’d gotten that tattoo, he would’ve passed us;
he might’ve already been home.

We passed Ripon, Modesto, Denair. We were almost to the city limits when I said, “As soon as I turn eighteen, I’m leaving.”

There was something terrible emerging in my dad’s expression, some way things were starting to unlatch, but he still didn’t answer me.

“I’ll do it. I’ll turn eighteen and then I’ll get out of here and never see you again. And there won’t be anything you can do.”

His face contorted like he was in pain. He closed his eyes so long I thought we’d crash, but I kept going. I said, “You and me can be just like you and Trey.”

He made a choking sound. “Braden—”

“He hates you, you know. Trey
hates
you. He always will. And you know what? Maybe I do, too.”

He veered across the lanes toward the shoulder so fast I was flung forward, and the seat belt cut a welt into my chest. He never checked his blind spot and a maroon Toyota barreled by so close
it nearly clipped us. The driver swerved crazily, her car streaking across both lanes, then laid on her horn so the sound fell back toward us across the road. He stomped on the brake when he was
still halfway in the far right lane; every car in the lane had to screech to a different lane to avoid hitting us.

“You want to be like Trey? That’s what you want?” He leaned in closer so his mouth was right next to my ear, and then he screamed so loud it physically hurt, “
Is that
what you really want?
”

A semi roared past us and the car rocked. I tried to twist around toward the passenger window, but my seat belt was still on and it had tightened when he braked suddenly and I couldn’t
move all the way around. Then he slammed my head against the door so hard that for a second I couldn’t move or breathe or see.

“Every single person in my life I ever cared about has given up on me, Braden.” He was out of breath, like he’d been running. “All of them have left me. Every single one.
And your brother is going to
hell
.”

There was a pain humming inside my eardrums, a worse feeling in my chest. I leaned forward and said, in the coldest voice I’d ever learned from him, “Like your dad when he killed
himself? Because he chose that over you?”

His eyes unfocused. Two trucks went by in a row, one carrying garlic and one carrying tomatoes, and papery bits of the garlic skin rose off the first truck. A few drifted and settled on the
windshield like ash. Then his eyes snapped into focus and his arms exploded toward me and I threw open the door to get away.

I stumbled doing it, my ankle getting tangled in the seat belt so I fell. We were almost to La Abra—I didn’t know exactly where, on the side of the road. I couldn’t get up. It
was foggy—that part’s true—and the cars were flying past me so fast I nearly got sucked into their wake. My head was throbbing, but in truth I barely felt it. I made myself get
up, and I started to run. He was screaming after me, and I couldn’t even make out the words—I didn’t try. I just kept running. He pulled back onto the freeway without checking his
blind spot and the tires scraped against the asphalt, the open passenger door flapping back and forth like a broken wing until the force and the speed made it close itself, and I stopped and stood
still as he roared away.

I could make out the taillights for a couple hundred yards down the road. I put my hands together like a canoe and breathed into them. My palms were scraped. I was getting dizzier, my blood
getting lost to gravity before making it all the way up to my head. And it was just when his car disappeared that I heard the sirens, and a few seconds later, I saw the flashing lights go after
him, and I tried to scramble as far away as I could from the lanes so I didn’t get hit. And I could be making this up because now I know the way things went, it could just be that now I know
what came next and now I know who was in that car, but I regretted everything already and I’m pretty sure I knew, even at the time, those sirens were headed for him.