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Jim swallows. He readjusts his hat again, then nods once before disappearing down an aisle.

A muscle feathers in Kimi’s jaw as she looks to the ground, thumbing at her necklace until Jim’s footfalls disappear to the other side of the store like a phantom retreating to its place of death.

The burning within Thomas’s chest gives way to a dull, gnawing ache, one he has always done well to hack away at as soon as it threatens to expand. Only now, Jim’s words have yanked the ache out by the exoskeleton, where it writhes, contorted and hideous, beneath the cold lights.

Eighteen

Higher…

Thomas’s voice had carried through the cracked door of Patient Room 213, low and terribly clear amidst the passing bustle of the doctors and nurses of Athens Memorial Hospital.

“I don’t want her near me,” he said.

Outside the room, Jane listened as their mother’s syrupy voice replied, “But, sweetheart, she’s your sister. You’ve just endured something horrific together.”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten,” he snapped, and Jane startled at the tone. Never in her life had she heard her brother speak with such blatant disrespect to one of their parents before. They had been raised on the golden doctrine of “yes, ma’ams” and “thank you, sirs,” of swallowing down disagreements and never making a scene that might otherwise cause untoward attention.

Talking back to any elder adult was a grave offense, though their mother had simply remained silent.

The nurse pushing Jane’s wheelchair knocked on the door then, and a moment later Jane’s mother poked her head out. Her wide-set brown eyes briefly took in Jane’s appearance, starting at her forehead. The bandage covering the gash was now removed, revealing the careful line of nineteen stitches slicked over with petroleum jelly—the line that Jane’s mother was perhaps more upset about than any of her other injuries.

“Hi, darling,” she greeted quietly before slipping out from the room and shutting the door. “I don’t think Thomas is quite up to visitors at the moment. Dr. McKittrick just gave him some unfortunate news about his arm, and—”

Jane’s mother paused, dabbing at her eyes before plastering on a tight-lipped smile. “Why don’t we head back to your room and put on the TV? You can always find a Desperate Housewives rerun this time of day.”

It went like that for another two days, Jane hovering outside Thomas’s room until a tired nurse would wheel her back to her own. Then on the third day, Thomas finally agreed to let her inside.

Jane had been informed of the gist of his injuries by their mother: multiple breaks in the right arm that had required intensive reconstructive surgery, along with a fractured collarbone and some internal bleeding in the abdomen that had also required surgery. Still, Jane’s sharp intake of breath was audible when their mother rolled her inside the shade-drawn room and over to her brother’s bedside.

Thomas had always had a boyishly handsome face; Jane had heard enough about it from her friends growing up and again while rushing at AU from an endless array of girls smitten with the school’s baseball pitcher.

But now, every space of Thomas’s skin seemed to be covered in small, scabbing scrapes and an array of purple bruising giving way to splotches of sickly green. His smile—his bright, white-toothed smile—was hidden behind something akin to a storybook villain’s grimace.

“I’ll just let you two have some privacy,” their mother said before dipping outside of the room.

When the sound of the door clicked shut, Jane found herself feeling nervous.

For God’s sake, he’s your brother, Jane. Just say something.

But Thomas spoke first. “Mom was right,” he said from his seated position in bed. “It’ll be a nasty scar.” His eyes flicked from her forehead down to the hospital gown and protocol wheelchair. “Everything else seems fine,” he continued in a low, emotionless voice.

It was true. Some seat belt bruising was imprinted across her hips and chest, and the ribs on her left side still twinged where two had broken and punctured a lung. The concussion symptoms might linger for up to two weeks, perhaps longer, but otherwise the doctor had told her she would likely be discharged the next day—“a God’s honest miracle” given how high the car had plummeted from and the sheer impact of the trees that had caught them.

Yes, everything else seemed fine. Everything else visible, anyway.

She swallowed at the sudden dryness in her mouth. “How are you doing, Tommy?” she asked.

His blank eyes shifted from her to the thick white cast wrapped around his right arm that reached up high past his elbow, past where a tree branch had been the only thing holding the appendage together. Jane’s mother had told her that some of the muscle and nerves had been so shredded that he’d likely never regain full function again.

A minute of silence stretched past, and Jane felt that tumble of anxious air start in her stomach again, doing flips and turns the longer he stared at his arm.

“Do you know where I was on the night of the accident?” he finally spoke.

The air in Jane’s stomach seemed to rise upward toward her chest then, gaining pressure as she quietly shook her head no. People had always claimed that she and her brother looked alike with their matching thick eyebrows and dark eyes—the complete opposite of their father’s and Cassie’s fair-haired, green-eyed attributes.

But at that moment, with the way Thomas looked at her, Jane thought her brother could have been no more than a perfect stranger.

“I was at home,” he said quietly. “I was at home in my apartment, just watching the Braves beat the Mets.”