Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 128417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Ice cubes rattle on the far side of the room and I snap my head up toward the sound.
Josh is standing at the entrance of the living room, his facial expression the same as when I opened my door to him in Las Vegas after reading his application.
His eyes dart to the photo in my hand and then back to my face.
The music swirls around us for a long moment. Finally, I hold up the photo and try to grin. “Your mom was stunning.”
Josh doesn’t reply.
I walk across the room with the photo and sit on the couch. “Tell me about her.” I pat the couch next to me.
He looks torn.
James Bay is serenading us, singing about scars.
“Come on, Josh,” I say. I pat the couch again.
He crosses the room and nestles himself onto the couch next to me, his lips pressed tightly together.
“She was beautiful,” I say.
“You’re her spitting image,” he says softly.
I look down at the photo in my hand. Well, I can certainly see that I bear a resemblance to his mother, maybe even a striking one, but calling me her ‘spitting image’ is pretty far-fetched. For one thing, from what I can see from this photo, Josh’s mother radiated pure kindness—a quality I’m certain I don’t possess, unfortunately. Plus, her features are literally perfect. It’s like she was concocted by mad scientists in some sort of government-sponsored lab. No one would ever say that about me, I don’t think.
Josh takes the photo from my hand and looks down at it wistfully.
“Poor Jonas,” he says.
“Poor Josh,” I add.
Josh sighs like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. “No, I got off easy. I was at a football game with my dad when she died. Poor Jonas saw the whole fucking thing.” He shakes his head mournfully. “Poor little dude was so traumatized, he didn’t say a word for a year afterwards.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Literally. Not a word.”
“For a whole year?”
“For a whole year. I did all his talking for him.”
“How’d you know what to say?”
“I just knew. Later, after he’d started talking again, he told me I’d always gotten it right. It was like we shared a brain.”
“What did Jonas say when he started talking again?”
Josh smiles. “We were sitting in the car with our nanny, listening to the radio, and I was singing along to a song—whatever it was, I can’t remember—and after not saying a single fucking word for a year, my bizarre, hilarious, crazy brother said, and I quote, ‘Shut the fuck up, Josh. You’re singing so goddamned loud, I can’t hear the fucking music.’”
I burst out laughing and Josh does, too.
“What made him talk again all of a sudden?”
“Not what—who. Jonas talked again thanks to one very special and extremely attractive woman: our third-grade teacher, Miss Westbrook. If it hadn’t been for her, Jonas wouldn’t be here right now, I’m sure of it. Which, of course, means neither would I.”
My stomach turns over. “What do you mean ‘neither would I’?”
Josh pauses a long time before speaking again, apparently choosing his words carefully. “If it weren’t for Miss Westbrook, there’s no doubt in my mind Jonas would have methodically figured out a way to kill himself before his thirteenth birthday. Granted, fun fact, Jonas actually did fling himself off a bridge when he was seventeen, right after my dad shot himself, but that’s a whole other story. But if it weren’t for Miss Westbrook, he would have done it much more precisely than driving off a bridge, and he would have succeeded.” His eyes glisten. “And if Jonas had succeeded in killing himself when I was still a little kid, if he’d left me alone with my dad in that big house for years and years...” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have been able to overcome it.”
The image of Josh’s “overcome” tattoo flickers across my mind.
“Do you think that’s why you never envision yourself in the future?” I ask.
Josh looks at me blankly.
“At dinner with Reed, you said when you were twenty, you couldn’t imagine yourself at thirty—and now that you’re thirty, you can’t picture yourself at forty. Do you think your brain has trouble imagining the future because you’re subconsciously not convinced you’ll have one? Because you’re not sure what Jonas might... do?”
He shakes his head like I just gave him mental whiplash. “Wow.” He makes a face that says “holy fuck.” “Well, shit. I guess that’s as good a theory as any. Whoa.” He smiles. “Deep thoughts by Katherine Ulla Morgan.”
I shrug. “Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“Can’t we just talk about The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? How ’bout that Raphael?”
I wince. “Sorry.”
“No, no, don’t apologize. I’m just kidding.” He sighs. “I guess I’m just not used to talking about this stuff.”
“Sorry. We don’t have to.”
“No, it’s good. It feels good.”