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That’s why I make myself watch it again and again.
“I’ll ask again: what the fuck are you doing here?”
Her mouth falls open, her eyes turning wide and sad. “Are you… are you Adrian’s brother?”
A naive part of me was hoping she wouldn’t make the connection. But a different part of me is relieved that she knows now, too. One less secret to keep buried.
“I was, once.”
She twitches with confusion. “What does that mean?”
I grab her by the upper arm and drag her into the hallway. After the darkness of the theater, it’s blindingly bright out here.
She tears her arm from my grasp. “You’re his brother!” she accuses. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Her chest is rising and falling fast. Her indignation is battling against her hurt. But neither one is really aimed at me. Not truly.
“I think the better question is, why didn’t he tell you?”
“He… he told me he has nothing to do with his family anymore,” she says defensively. “Based on what I saw on that video, I can finally understand why.”
“You saw two minutes of our lives,” I tell her coldly. “Don’t presume that you know anything.”
“He was six!”
“And I was eight,” I reply. “What’s your point?”
She draws in a pained, rattling breath and lets it back out. “Who was the bully offscreen?”
“That would be our dearly departed father.”
She stops short, her eyes darkening with shock as something registers. “The one you killed? Y-you… Oh, fuck. You killed your own father?”
“He deserved to die.”
“And who are you to decide that?” she demands. “Judge, jury, and executioner?”
I meet her gaze. “All of the above.”
A shudder runs down her body and she backs away from me. The mark that Adrian had left on her cheek is faint but it’s still there. It seems ironic that it remains when he no longer does.
June looks like she’s barely registered anything I’ve said in the last minute. Her eyes keep flitting to the black door of the theater and back to me, over and over again. Wondering how all the pieces of her broken life could ever be put back together.
“Did you find what you were looking for while you were snooping, Junepenny?”
Her face drains of color at the sickeningly familiar nickname. Part of me is savagely pleased. Part of me is disgusted by what I’m doing to her.
The latter part is the one I’ve spent a lifetime muzzling.
I advance on her, swaggering and all-powerful. She backs up another step, but there’s nowhere left to go. I have control of all angles. I have the story in my hands, and I’ll unspool it how and when I see fit.
“I d-don’t understand…” she stammers. “Why did he never tell me about you?”
“Probably because he was ashamed,” I say with a careless shrug. “He cut off his family. He walked away from the life, but he came crawling back whenever he needed something. Whenever he neededme.”
“Maybe he missed you,” June suggests. “Maybe he missed his brother.”
“You really believe that?” I laugh harshly. “Do you also believe in fairies and unicorns?”
“You two don’t have a monopoly on fucked-up families,” she seethes. “I have parents I barely talk to and a sister I barely see. But just because we don’t get along doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes miss them. They’re still my family.”
