make this evening. My tone’s off, too. Jesus Christ, sometimes I just slip into it without even thinking. I guess the wind changed one day while I was being an ass.” He offered a faint smile. “I’m going to be serious and I’m going to be pleasant. I’m going to show you I can do that.”
Jack took a sip of beer. “A girl was found murdered today.”
“I know,” Ben replied, his smile gone now. “It’s just horrible.” He sipped from his glass, before realizing that Jack was staring at him. “And after those jokes I made earlier,” he continued, “the timing… I mean, it couldn’t have been worse, could it?”
“No,” Jack said darkly, “it could not.”
“Maybe I should’ve just stayed away this Christmas,” Ben continued. “I mean, I can’t deny that these things seem to happen when I’m around. Maybe somehow I’m a bad luck charm for the entire town.”
“Maybe you are.”
“Really?” He paused. “I guess I was hoping you’d tell me I’m wrong, but I reckon you’ve got every right to agree. I’ve been back about a week now, and already two girls are dead. Frankly, I understand how it looks.” He took another sip. “I’m just glad that you and Beth don’t take Dad’s ramblings too seriously. I mean, cards on the table, I know I can be weird and I can make wildly inappropriate jokes, but hurting another human being? I couldn’t do that. For all my other faults and sins, I just couldn’t.”
He sighed, waiting for Jack to say something, before looking over at his brother again.
“You should have had help,” Jack told him eventually. “A long time ago. You should have been given the help you so desperately needed.”
“Help?” Ben frowned. “I never needed help. What are you talking about?”
“These things are left to fester, and they get worse. If you’d been helped at the start, it might never have reached this stage.”
“Huh?”
“I blame myself,” Jack continued. “Dad’s an idiot, Mum couldn’t face the truth, Beth doesn’t want to believe such dark things can happen, especially with her brother involved… I should have fixed everything.”
“Have you been drinking for a while already?” Ben asked, with a faint, cautious smile. “Been smoking something, maybe? You’re not making much sense.”
“I think I’m making perfect sense.”
“You do? Care to explain it to me?”
He waited for a reply.
“Jack,” he added finally, “you’re staring at me kind of intensely. You’re starting to freak me out.”
“I spoke to Alex Gordon before I came to see you,” Jack continued. “That’s why I’m a little late. I went to tell him something, and he agreed with me that it might be significant.” He paused. “So then I persuaded him to come in here first, before he arrives. He understood that I needed to talk to you in private first.”
“In private?” Ben shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What… What exactly are you talking about, brother?”
“I know, Ben.”
“You know what?”
“That it’s you.”
Ben paused for a moment, before leaning back and smiling. “Still pushing that line, huh?”
“It’s not a line.”
“It’s a line. It’s almost a mantra, it’s like a tumor that’s been growing in your mind for years. Dad really did a number on you, Jack -”
“This has nothing to do with Dad.”
“It has everything to do with Dad! He’s poisoned your mind!”
“You were with Hayley Maitland at the diner earlier!”
“What?”
“You were seen!”
“I was seen ?” Ben paused. “You mean the girl I exchanged all of a dozen words with? She’s the girl who was murdered?”
“The coincidences just keep piling up, don’t they?”
“For God’s sake,” Ben continued, “do you really -”
Spotting movement nearby, he turned just in time to see Alex Gordon stepping into the bar. From the look on Alex’s face, he could immediately tell that his arrival had been planned.
“This is for the best,”
Amelia Earhart: Courage in the Sky