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“What?” I ask, stunned even though I knew this had to have been coming.
“When your brother passed,” she starts slowly, “did it change you?”
I want to say that it obviously had, but I can see that she’s searching for a genuine answer, something to compare her own experiences to.
“Yeah, it did. I’m not as… light… as I used to be.”
I stare over the top of her head at a point on the wall beyond us, trying to sift through my feelings without letting them overwhelm me.
“That makes sense,” she says, nodding thoughtfully. “Were you two very close?”
I blow out of breath, ruffling the stray strands of hair on top of her head, knowing how deep this conversation could get and not sure if I’m ready to go there just yet.
“As much as we could be. He was only three years older, and we did a lot together.”
I sigh, deciding that now is a good time as any, and proceed.
“My dad favored Tommy over me, and he groomed him to be a professional racer from a really young age. I guess I didn’t have the discipline for it like Tommy did, so I got left out of a lot of things. I just wanted to go fast and have fun,” I laugh softly.
“Sounds about right. Not much has changed,” Keaton says, smiling up at me.
“No, it hasn’t. But it annoyed my dad, so he never spent much time training me. He’d take Tommy to races, or to the garage, and I’d get left behind.”
I draw in an unsteady breath, thinking back on all of those times when I was too little to understand what I’d done wrong, or what I’d done to deserve his behavior.
“My uncle Rob, my dad’s older brother, would come over during those times and take me to the drag races outside of town and we’d make a whole day of it.”
“That was really nice of him,” Keaton comments, sliding her hand from my shoulder up to the nape of my neck.
“Yeah, he and my dad don’t really get along, so Rob doesn’t make it out much anymore. You’d like him, though. He’s actually the one who taught me to drive.” I smile fondly at the memories.
“What about your mom? What does she have to say about all of this?”
I don’t really like to talk about my mom, but I realize Keaton doesn’t know this or how much of a sore subject she is when it comes to my dad.
“The older I got, the more I realized that to my dad, she was nothing more than a trophy wife. She gave him the son that he wanted and brushed us to the side. We are pretty much the casualties of his picture-perfect reputation at this point.”
Keaton scoffs, obviously unimpressed. “He sounds like a real charmer.”
“To anyone of importance, he is.”
“If he’s as bad as all of that, why didn’t you and your mom just leave him?”
Images of the one time she actually attempted to take me away from that life flash behind my eyes and my grip on Keaton tightens as my body goes rigid.
“What?” Her eyes flash back and forth between mine. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“No, it’s… it’s okay, I just… It’s not something I talk about.”
Keaton waits silently, running her fingertips through the hair at the nape of my neck, a silent comfort that urges me to continue.
“She tried to take me away once. But my dad wasn’t going to allow her to shatter the perfect image that he created.”
“What did he do?” she asks, her voice small and afraid.
“He made sure she would never try to leave again,” I say, fighting to keep out any emotion.
“Oh Bodhi,” Keaton gasps, her eyes filling with sorrow as she watches me. “I’m so sorry.”
