What Follows

`paint over it with black... like it was never there`

We never return to the Darkoom after Tobias fed Benji a hot dog he stole from an unsuspecting civilian.

We return to my mansion instead, to its porch to be more specific. Jacob is sitting in front of us, shirtless, smoking and absently swinging himself on the quite uncomfortable, metal bench-swing Dad was very keen on buying years ago.

I glance at Tobias who’s cradling a quiet Benji in his arms and studying me.

“Smoking won’t kill him,” He tells me and I make a face. “I mean,” Tobias says. “Let’s say he continues smoking for the rest of his life...then, what? He dies at 70? 65?”

“You never know,” I tell him. “He might die at 65 but get sick at 45 or 50. So much pain, won’t it be?”

Tobias shrugs slightly. “He could die before 45,” is what he settles on telling me and I shake my head, saying nothing.

Well, I mean, it’s true what he said. A person might live fearing something he might not end up dying from. But that doesn’t turn down my argument, because Jacob isn’t afraid of dying of smoking, which could mean that he could die from it.

The evening is an hour or two away. The sun has disappeared from the deep orange, cloudless sky and the air seems to be quiet still, judging by the stillness of everything- the trees, the dead leaves, Jacob’s golden hair.

The house’s front door opens and Jacob seems unbothered by it. Aiden slowly emerges from behind it, in jeans and a holed, baby-blue shirt that compliments his complexion and dark hair.

“Jacob.” Aiden greets him, and Jacob looks up distractedly, gives him a once-over before nodding once.

“Uh,” Aiden starts, hooking his thumb toward the street. “I’m heading off to the market...should I fetch you something?”

Jacob drops the cigarette and Aiden’s eyes follow it before focusing back on our brother- his brother.

“Tell Mom that sending you to do her shit won’t work,” Jacob says. “You can cut the crap if you may.”

“I’m not here because she asked me to,” Aiden says quickly. “I’m genuinely asking you-”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jacob looks away, uninterested.

Aiden’s shoulders drop. “I really mean it, Jake,” He says softly. “I miss you, man. I really do. I want you back. I’m your brother. I want to spend time with you but you’re always blocking me out with one excuse or the other.”

Jacob is looking at him through the hair cascade obscuring his eyes, saying nothing for a while, before, “You know-” He rasps out. “I’m trying.”

Aiden sighs heavily. “It’s okay. I understand-”

“No, I’m trying, trying," Jacob says. “I can’t believe we couldn’t tell what was up with Rose. Like how is it that we didn’t suspect that she was so, so...depressed? A goner?”

Aiden says nothing, glances at the windows before taking a seat next to Jacob on the swing. Jacob shifts a little, rests his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands and looks away, in Tobias’ direction.

“Somethings are just beyond our understanding. And sometimes those things better remain this way,” Aiden says slowly.

“Well, for me, understanding. Aiden. Understanding is the key to moving on,” Jacob says, giving him a sidelong glance. I shift in my place and sigh softly.

“No. Jake,” Aiden says. “You don’t understand. I used to think the same until someone told me this-” Jacob looks over at his brother. “They said, responsibility comes with knowledge. What if, what if you had known the reason behind her death and couldn’t do a thing about it? What would hurt more?”

Jacob stares at his brother unblinking. “But ignorance is also the root of most of our problems,” He says, his voice breaking. “What if I had known and helped her out?”

Aiden inhales deeply, then shakes his head. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We don’t understand and we never will.” He tilts his head toward Jacob. “And when we fail to understand, Jake. When we miserably fail, we accept it and we move on. We make up our reasons to help us cope with it and we move on. We move on."

Jacob’s face is getting pinker by the second. “But-”

“No buts, Jake,” Aiden whispers, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Death is already complicated enough. Asking questions no-one has the answers to makes it even more so. Death shouldn’t be mystified or it’ll cause the living more trouble than they can handle. Death is just death. If it’s hard to accept that Rose killed herself, just accept it as Rose died. And death is not uncommon and sometimes has no explanations.”

“But that makes all the difference, eh? Death and suicide?”

“It does,” Aiden says, squeezing his shoulder. “It does, Jake, not gonna lie. But we do what we ought to do to move on and thrive. Even if it means choosing to ignore differences as consequential as those.”

Jacob gulps, making no effort to wipe away the tears that are tumbling down his cheeks.

“It’s not fair.” Jacob breaks down. “She left us to escape unanswered, horrible questions in her life, just to punish us by handing them over and forcing us to answer them for her.”

“Jacob, she never forced us to do anything at all-”

“Then why does it feel like it?” Jacob pouts, looking broken.

Aiden’s shoulders drop. “Because you love her. Possibly much more than I do.” He blinks. “And thinking that your love wasn’t enough might have driven you to look for reasons to justify it and I’m sorry.”

Jacob sniffs, then drops his head on Aiden’s lap. His bloody moon face is facing me and his cobalt blue eyes are welling up and I can’t believe I’m standing so still. Jacob then turns his head away, in Aiden’s laps, as his shoulders shake with the effort of containing his screaming, fighting, broken, begging-for-mercy-and-release sobs.

Aiden leans over his brother and holds him tight, eyebrows furrowed and eyes filled to the brim with a thousand insults that I’m so very willing to gobble. His dark hair cascades over his eyes as Jacob lets out a stifled sob, and I find myself all out of breath.

And as I watch, all I can do is whisper a hundred thousand, tumbling, slipping, slippery sorries, hoping it’ll reach them and do the things I’m not there to do. Wipe Jacob’s tears, hold his cold hands and hug Aiden who’s sitting out there, pretending to have it all together when I know I’ve shaken them all up terribly.

“Where’s the back door?” Tobias suddenly asks from next to me and I look over at him. He makes an ‘are-you-seriously-crying’ face and I sniff in response.

“Why?” I whisper, my voice raspy, almost inaudible.

“Because I just happen to know the exact way to fix your problem,” Tobias says like he’s perfectly cooked up his idea.

I give my brothers, who seem to have found solace in each other’s company, one final glance and walk on the porch in the opposite direction, around the mansion’s circumference.

“What is the way?” I ask and can’t believe I’m too desperate for a solution that I just hope his idea, whatever it is, to work.

“Just get us in the house and I’ll tell you.”

I start walking faster until I reach the back door that opens up to a little glasshouse my mother treasures.

“This is beautiful,” Tobias comments, eyeing all the unique, exorbitant plants cultivated here, and all the tools that seem too complicated for the both of us. “Your father’s a gardener?”

“No,” I say quickly, accidentally knocking over a misplaced metal container. It wobbles around noisily and I close my eyes irritably.

"Michael? Is that you?” I hear Mom’s voice coming from upstairs and I look at Tobias frantically.

He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m holding Benji, can’t help you here. Just pick up this- uh- container and put it back where it was.”

I immediately move to do so, when I roll my eyes and loudly drop the container again.

“What are you doing?!” Tobias whispers loudly with wide eyes and I smirk as I hear Mom call Dad again and make her way downstairs.

“Giving her the spice her life’s lacking,” I say and Tobias shakes his head, unable to hide his smile.

“You have the most insane combination of characters.”

“I’ll surprise you,” I say as I make my way across the long-ass rows of plants.

“So? Your mom’s a gardener?”

“A botanist,” I say. “This is her teeny weeny lab. She owns labs much bigger than this and much more dedicated to plants.”

"Cool.”

“No,” I say. “It hurts to know that a plant gets more attention than you do.”

Tobias laughs in response and I glare at him.

“What?” He says. “It’s funny to imagine.”

“Thank you,” I say as we reach the stairs that’ll take us upstairs to the main house. Mom is descending them, meanwhile, in her apron, yellow, silicon gloves and a curious expression on her tired face.

I walk right through her as Tobias stands aside and waits for her to walk by him. We then climb the stairs together and get into the kitchen where Mom has left the tap water running over the unwashed dishes.

“Get us to your room, Rosey,” Tobias says and I nod, getting out of the kitchen and into the spacious salon before rushing to the spiral stairs that’ll take us to my room.

We walk a lot, past a lot of rooms- storage, guest, seeds, two offices, my brothers’ rooms- to finally get to the one at the very corner of the house. The one I chose because its balcony faces the street, people and life.

Ironic, I know.

I easily open the door and immediately wonder if that’ll be the case after years of my death, when people have moved on and no longer visited my room as often. I wonder if the doorknob will grow rusty and stale, missing people’s sweaty hands that caressed it into opening up.

I wonder if things die on the inside like we do when they get misused. I wonder a lot of things.

“Are you seriously going to hold onto it forever?” Tobias, who’s made it into my room, asks and I blink, snapping out of my thoughts. I look at the silver doorknob and let it go.

I get into the room, that still remains untouched and look at Tobias who has let go of Benji who jumps around with life. Tobias then walks to my desk where he picks up a paper and a blue glitter pen.

Tobias tries the pen on something and gasps.

“What?” I say.

“You have shiny ink?” Tobias asks incredulously. “Bloody hell, that’s awesome. Shiny ink?” He shakes his head like he can’t believe it. ”Shiny ink? How fancy is that?”

“They’re glitter pens,” I say boredly. “What do you want from them anyway?”

Tobias hands me the paper and the pen and I hold them cluelessly as he picks up Benji.

“Tell me, Rosey, did you like the sea?”

“Did I- what-?” I face Tobias who’s looking at me intently.

“The sea. The ocean. Did you like it?”

“Nah,” I say distractedly, glancing at the pen. Then, “Not all of it.”

“Not all of it?” He repeats. “What do you mean?”

"Tobias-?”

“Just answer.”

"Well,” I say hesitantly. “I’m mostly afraid of it if I face it alone. It’s a magnanimous creation. But on bad days, when Jacob was around, we’d go together and sit on that one broken bench. Its colour is eroded away from the sun and the salty water. But we’d sit on it and talk and talk about everything-”

“I want you to write a suicide letter,” Tobias says quickly, cutting my train of pleasant thoughts.

“You want me to what?"

“Explain yourself,” He says. “Give your brother the closure he wants.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Even happy thoughts don’t influence her attitude toward things. I fail to understand what really does make her think more positively-” Tobias rambles on to the ceiling.

“I mean, I can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t leave it like that-”

“Yes, you can,” Tobias says. “You just have to figure out when and where. But you really have to do it, Roseline.”

I glance at the paper with a sigh before folding it and shoving it in my dress’ pocket along with my ‘shiny’ pen.

“I’ll think about it,” I say and look at Tobias who’s giving me a small smile. His eyes are a bright hazel and his red hair is shining under the sun rays pouring from my balcony. Plus, Benji’s golden fur gives his eyes a beautiful glaze and I just want to- I just wish-

“I wish it was possible to take pictures because I would’ve snapped one of you...kept it with me for eternity.” I find myself saying as Tobias lifts his eyebrows, his smile widening.

“You’re telling me romantic things, Roseline.” He smirks. “Mind you, this is a ‘no-feelings’ zone and I might catch myself breaking rules,” he tells me. “And I’m usually very obedient, Roseline.”

I chuckle lightly, my heart heavy.

“Okay, Mr Obedient, we need to head downstairs,” I say with a faint smile and Tobias’ smiling lips turn into a prominent ‘o’.

“You’re not even denying that they were romantic things!” Tobias exclaims and I shake my head.

“They weren’t. I denied it. Happy?" I say with a wide smile and Tobias chuckles, walks to me, holds Benji in one arm, drapes his other arm around my shoulders and urges me to start walking.

I shake my head with a smile, brush off his arm and leave the room.

Surprisingly, when we make it back to the porch, I don’t only find Aiden and Jacob, I also find another very tall guy, standing on the porch steps, a hand on his hip and a shaky one reaching for his inhaler that he shoves in his mouth.

My brothers look at him curiously and Jacob, who looks less worn now, immediately gets up.

“Can I help you?” He asks, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

The guy, this very familiar guy, finds it difficult to open his eyes under the sun and lowers his head.

“Hello,” He says shakily, out of breath. “I-uh-” He looks up at Jacob who’s studying the guy’s attire. Jeans, simple black hoodie and a backpack. “This is Mr and Mrs Bracken’s residence?”

Jacob looks confused for a second but then nods.

The guy’s uptight shoulders drop and he steps closer to Jacob. Aiden quickly gets up and I wonder if my brothers see this fickle guy as a threat.

“You’re Roseline’s brothers, right?” The guy states more than asks. “I am William James, one of your sister’s mates. And I would like to give you something.”

William. Yes. William. I remember him.