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Maverick’s shoulders rise in a shrug. “If you don’t believe me, that’s okay. You wouldn’t be the first.”
He stands from the chair and steps closer to the bed.
“Do you need to get right up on me when you tell your tale? Personal space,” I say, but he only steps closer.
He leans toward my face and pushes the hair away from his forehead. A long white line runs just below his hairline. “Do you see that scar on my forehead?”
I nod.
“Your brother gave me that scar when I tried to fight him off me the first time. I was eight.”
Tears fill my eyes. They’re taking this lie too fucking far. “This isn’t okay,” I say. “Children really go through this. It’s not a joke, Maverick.”
He gives me a wan smile and lets his hair fall. “Fair enough, but my name isn’t actually Maverick. I changed my name as soon as I turned eighteen because I never wanted your brother to find me. Until today, I didn’t even know he was dead.”
“Bullshit.”
“My birth name was Landon Rivers. Those sevens on your brother weren’t sevens. They were Ls.”
“Bullshit!”
This isn’t true. None of this is true. My brother was a youth pastor. He...he couldn’t have done this.
“It’s not ironclad proof, but I have pictures if you’d like to see.” Maverick sits on the edge of the bed and holds a phone screen toward my face. “This is me as a kid. My first year on the baseball team, thanks to your brother’s generous support. No scar in this picture.”
He points to a little boy standing beside my brother. The child is all smiles, with a glove in one hand and a bat in the other. I glance between the older and younger versions of Maverick and find them too similar to discount. They have the same dimples and smile, and they both have a dark freckle right below the outer corner of the left eye.
“Now look at this picture, taken just a month later. Notice anything different?”
Maverick flicks the screen, and another picture pops up. The same little boy stands beside my brother, but he’s somehow so different. A smile graces the child’s face, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which I now see are green. Beneath his hairline, a long gash peeps through strands of blond hair. My brother’s arm firmly wraps around the child’s shoulders, and I’ve never seen a more uncomfortable little boy.
My stomach drops, and I feel as if I’ll be sick. How is this possible? How were my mother and I so oblivious?
“I kept these pictures as a reminder,” Maverick continues. “They tell a story in two images, but I’m the outcome. I overcame this, and you can too.”
Pictures...I remember cleaning out Reese’s room after he was murdered. There had been a box beneath his bed, and inside?—
“Do you have a birthmark?” I ask.
Maverick’s eyes close, and he nods his head.
“On your?—”
“On my ass, yes.”
I thought it had been a photograph of a girl in a compromising position. When I saw it, I was still fairly young and naïve. I quickly closed the box without taking a closer look, then put the entire thing in the trash.
Now I don’t feel like I’ll be sick anymore. IknowI will be.
“Trash can,” I blurt. “Trash can!”
Maverick rushes to the bathroom and hurries back with the small wicker waste basket. He holds it by my head as I violently retch.
All the pain this man has had to carry because of my brother. I can’t even fathom what he’s been through. And I’ve made it worse. I’ve made it so much worse. I defended the monster to his victim.
“I’m so sorry,” I sob through dry heaves. “Oh god, Maverick. I’m so sorry.”
One by one, he unties the ropes holding me to the bed, releasing my hands first so that I can hold the basket. When I’m free, I sit up and heave once more. I have nothing left in my system, but my body keeps trying.
