Free The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey Page A

closer to the window. His mother took Bonnie by the shoulders and gently shook her.
    He looked around but there was no sight of Bonnie’s car. Then he remembered. His hand instinctively went to her keys in his jeans pocket. She’d tried to off herself, that’s what. And was now bawling to his mother about it.
    He staggered sideways, near fell. Clutched onto the windowsill to hold himself steady. Good. Good then, his mother wasn’t alone.
    He stumbled to the side of the house and slumped down against it. Good. He didn’t have to go sit with her. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear another thing. His mouth was parched; he wanted water. He turned his head and pressed his throbbing jaw against the cool of the clapboard. Fucking Clar Gillard. He slid sideways and was half sitting, half lying, keeping his ribs fromtouching the wharf. To hell with it. He let himself fall to the wooden planks and near cried from the pain and then stared up at the fogged-in night, wishing for stars.
    He shifted for comfort. He groaned, his ribs aching. He was shivering. What the fuck. He opened his eyes. Had he slept?
    He tried to sit up. A dog was barking and snarling, its nails scrunching through beach rocks. He leaned sideways to see through the dark and felt himself falling, falling over the wharf, and as he clung onto the grump he stared in astonishment at a dolphin’s head flickering white out of the water. The dog—Clar’s dog—danced on the water’s edge, snapping and snarling, and then plunged into the water towards the dolphin.
Get back, get back,
Kyle yelled and the dolphin threw back its head and made its
tic-tic-tic
-ing laugh. It sank back into the sea and now Kate was looking down at him,
tic-tic-ticing
with a steel slide on her guitar, and she was crying, her tears dripping thick and bloodied onto his hands. He cried out, scrubbing his hands clean on the rough, splintered planks of the wharf, but her tears kept bleeding down her face and the night behind her morphed into a blacker shadow of itself, threatening to engulf her. He tried to say her name but it warbled in his throat and the dog’s barking grew mad, frenzied, its nails cold, hard, gritted with sand as it scampered over his hands.
Ee-asy boy, ee-asy
…
    —
    A cold ashy dawn shouldered him awake. His body hurt and he was shivering uncontrollably. His bloodied hand rested beneath his cheek. He raised his head and pain cut a sickening streak through his skull. He lifted a hand to his jaw, flicked his tongue around his teeth—they were all there. He ran his tongue over lipsthat were crusted with dried blood and tasted like stale water in a rusted rain barrel. Clar must’ve busted his mouth.
    He tried to sit up and moaned. His ribs! Like shards of bone jabbing through flesh. He fought his way from beneath the bulky weight of a tarp. What the fuck—where did that come from? He pushed himself onto his arse and was jolted fully awake by his father’s hulking frame leaning against the side of the house, staring down at him.
    “What, you tucking me in, now?”
    “Your mother’s up. Time to go in.”
    Time to go in.
Right, you old fucker, why didn’t you stay with her last night, he wanted to yell, but couldn’t. His father’s stubbled face needed shaving and his scruffy hair told he hadn’t been to bed yet, either. And the legs of his jeans: stiff, wrinkled, and damp-looking. Pissed himself agin.
    He looked away. Never could bear the shame in his father’s eyes after a night’s boozing. Those times his father did catch him looking only added to his shame.
    He tried to stand, his legs too palsied. He grasped onto the side of the house and rose and got the spins so bad he near fell over the wharf. The dog. Clar’s dog. On the beach and staring up at him and whinnying like a sick horse.
Fuck’s wrong with you.
    Addie rose from her chair by the table as they entered. “What happened to your face? And your hand?” she asked Kyle.
    “Fell down.” He