Erich - Nine.

Erich

I pretended I didn’t know why I left the barracks that night. Out on the street I told myself I didn’t remember leaving. I told myself I was walking aimlessly. In the two days since Peter shot Hochberg, I had barely slept and I wasn’t in my right mind. Nothing had driven me into the cold streets of the ghetto in the middle of the night. I wasn’t looking for anything. All lies.

            I kept to the outside edge of the ghetto. Along the inside of the wall. Someone on guard at the wall waved to me. “Careful out there, Amery.” I hunched my shoulders and walked faster. He didn’t know where I was going.

            Go to Hersch’s. I told myself. Talk to Hersch. Talk to Jim. Talk to Rebecca if you have to. Talk to someone who will tell you not to do this. Just don’t go where you’re going.

            The watch in my coat pocket read two-thirteen in the morning. Less than half an hour ago I had woken up in the darkness of my own room. The silent empty lonely darkness. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was freezing and shaking and shuddering. Curled up on my side like a kid. I couldn’t remember dreaming of Gabe though maybe I had. All I knew was that I was alone, so alone, and I thought I would die if I had to stay in that cold dark empty room. I’d taken the loneliness for two years. But I couldn’t take it anymore.

            I don’t know if I was thinking clearly or not. Does that mean I wasn’t thinking clearly? I’d like to think I wasn’t because I’m not proud of where I went first. I staggered downstairs in a hazy half-sleep. Down the hall towards the medical bay. Where I knew Mathias was on duty. I didn’t have a plan. I just didn’t want to feel so alone. I thought anyone was better than no one. I thought it didn’t have to be Gabe.

            I only got as far as the doorway. The medical bay was dark and empty of patients. Mathias was at his desk. Dozing with his cheek in his palm in the light of a desk lamp. He looked handsome. He looked sad. He looked as alone as I was. Maybe alone enough to not ask questions for this one night. Boys on the front did it when the isolation got bad. Everyone knew that.

             But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make myself take another step towards Mathias. I didn’t want this. I realized the restlessness didn’t go away when I saw Mathias. The lonesomeness didn’t go away. I could feel myself being pulled away. Drawn onward but not to the medical bay. Not Mathias. I wanted something more than someone to fix the loneliness. I couldn’t choose where I went. I was like a planet being pulled on by the gravity of a sun. Gabe. Gabe was my sun. I needed Gabe like I needed to breathe.

            Mathias stirred. Blinked. Squinted through the darkness at me. “Little late to be down here, isn’t it, Erich?” he asked with a friendly smile. I felt so guilty for what I had almost done to him. I could have ruined his life. I could have made him lose his wife. I could have gotten him killed. All for my own selfish lonely reasons. Because I wanted him to fix something he couldn’t fix.

            “Sorry,” I rasped as I turned away. “I have somewhere to be.”

            And that’s how I wound up on the street in the middle of the night. Trying to convince myself I wasn’t going to Gabe even as I cut a path towards the butcher shop. Out in the open on the freezing cold night I understood better what I was doing. I understood that I would not be able to go back.

I looked around. Made sure I hadn’t been followed. Dietrich had been riding all of us since Hochberg got shot. If anyone saw me sneaking out I would be in trouble. But the street was silent and dark and freezing cold and empty. No one knew I was gone.

The butcher shop was about as far from the main gate as you could get. Next to the wall all the way at the end of the ghetto. I stopped outside the shop.  I knew I would go in. I wasn’t trying to convince myself not to. I just wanted to wait one more minute before I changed everything. I felt frozen. My eyelashes and lips all iced over. The cold hurt my bad lung and stiffened my hand. I watched my breath come in shallow puffs. This time of year I barely felt human. But I felt warm when I looked up at the second story window. There was just a soft light. Like candles. And a shadow that moved back and forth over the flickering light. Gabe. Knowing he was there made me feel fearless.

Inside it was warmer. I could smell a coal burning stove in the back room of the shop. Peter wasn’t there though. The fact that I didn’t get attacked on entry told me that much. I thought it was good of him to keep the house warm for Gabe. The main floor was dark but the flickering light pooled down from the top of the stairs. There was music upstairs too. So unexpected I didn’t recognize it at first. Gabe playing his violin. He hadn’t heard me come in.

There was a second at the top of the stairs before he saw me. I knew he blocked out everything else when he played. I remembered the first time I ever saw him with his violin. In the music building at Wellington’s. I had watched him and tried to force myself not to think about the dream I’d had the night of the fight. I had been afraid of what I felt when I watched him with his violin. I still felt like I was watching magic happen when he played. The song was sad and pretty and he played with his eyes closed. He knew his violin like it was a part of his body. Watching his perfect hands on the bow made me shiver.

The violin screeched and I knew he had seen me. Embarrassed, I cleared the last few stairs. Gabe didn’t say anything. He stood there with the violin in one hand and the bow in the other. Just looking at me with his bottom lip between his teeth. He looked angry and sad at the same time. What could I possibly say to him?

“You sound good,” I began. It was all I could think of to say. Cleared my throat. “Sounds really good.”

Gabe scowled at me. “Mendelsohn,” he said flatly. I had messed up already. He knelt at the foot of the bed and set the violin down in its case. “Don’t tell Peter I was playing.”

Silence. Did he feel like I felt then? My stomach swimming and my heart pounding. Anxiety. Fear. Anticipation. I wasn’t even sure why. I looked around while he put away his violin. The only light in the room came from a set of six candles on the floor. It looked like a shrine. Had he been praying? The candlelight flickered on Gabe’s face. His beautiful face. He looked a lot better than he had two days ago. I hoped he was getting over what Peter put him through. My mouth went dry looking at him.

            “I don’t know why I’m here.” I looked at my feet as I said it. I couldn’t think when I looked at him. “I don’t �" I’m not just �" I mean, I want to, but…” I was looking for the words to say I wasn’t just out looking for sex. I was afraid he would think so, if I turned up at his door unannounced. I didn’t want him to think that.

            When I dared to look at Gabe he gave a little nod of his head. “I know.” Gabe always knew. I hardly ever said what I really meant. But Gabe always knew.

            It was too much to meet his eyes so I looked down again. “Could I, maybe, tell you about Germany now? You know, would that be all right? You don’t have to listen. You… you can throw me out. I don’t… I guess I don’t deserve another chance to tell you. I should have told before, I know I should have, only…” I was rambling. Too scared of being turned away to wait for him to answer. “Only I’m ashamed of what I did, and I wish I didn’t have to tell you.” Had I ever told him I was ashamed of myself? I spent every minute feeling ashamed of myself. But I never said so. To admit it would be too much like weakness.

            Gabe ran his fingers through his hair. “Will you just tell me why?” He sat heavily at the foot of his bed. He didn’t say anything else for a long minute. The anxiety fluttering around in my chest was so bad I thought I might fall over. When Gabe looked back at me he looked like he might cry already. “Why didn’t you come back?”

            I wished I could sit next to Gabe. Hold his hand while I told him. But I was too tense to sit and too afraid to approach him. I shrugged a defeated shrug and kicked at the ground. “I thought I was going to. I really thought I was going to.” The truth. I wouldn’t lie to him tonight.

            “Then why didn’t you,” he sniffed into his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?” He was going to have to stop crying or I would never get through this. I would cry too.

            “Because you would have told me not to, and I had to go.” I took a deep breath. I’d planned how to tell this story a hundred times. Already none of it sounded right. I couldn’t make it sound like I did the right thing. “I got a letter, Gabe, from Chris, when I was in the hospital. Until then I just wanted out of there. I just wanted to go find you. But I was really stuck there. Punctured lung, you know.” Did he know? Had I told him? “Christian was the last person in the world I wanted to hear from. I almost didn’t read it. I wish I hadn’t read it. But I did. It said…” I looked up from the floor and saw Gabe looking back at me. His eyes were clearer now. I didn’t feel any less awful. “… It said my father was dying.”

            Gabe covered his mouth. “Oh God.” Over the last two years he must have thought of a million reasons I might have gone home. But obviously he never guessed it. “Erich, your father…”

            “Was a b*****d,” I finished for him. Was. I would never get tired of speaking about him in the past tense. Christian Lukas Amery III was a monster. He was abusive. He had destroyed my life. Not any more. “I broke out of the hospital that night.”

            He was quiet again. “Why?” he asked again.

            My heart sunk. This was what I was afraid of, when I left England. The reason I didn’t tell him I was going. Gabe couldn’t understand why I had to go back. “I had to see him die, Gabe.” I had to sit next to him. Standing in front of him made me feel too exposed.

            “But why?” He was getting upset again. “Hell, you were free of him! You never would have had to see him again! Why the hell would you go back to see him die?” He agitatedly took a cig out of his pocket. Without thinking I handed him my lighter. He took it grudgingly. Lit it and inhaled. I forgot how I loved to watch Gabe smoke.

            It was my fault he didn’t understand. All he knew about my father he knew from the way I talked about him. I had told Gabe a lot. But I hadn’t always been honest. I told the truth about my father. I just hadn’t told the truth about myself. “Look, you have to know. I know I made it sound as if I was some big fighter who always hit him back. But I wasn’t. I �" not always, at least. Just think…” Oh God, this was going to be hard. “…Think about him hitting me with his belt, and me just lying on the floor taking it because I know he’ll hit me harder if I move. Think about him knocking me out with a beer bottle to the back of the head, and I wake up to find my mom picking glass out of my head, because he won’t take me to the hospital.” I touched the back of my head. Tender just thinking about it. “Haven’t you ever felt this? All these little scars under my hair? Glass shards. That kind of thing, it wasn’t just when I was a kid. It happened when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. So… so I hope you can see why I had to see him die.”

Gabe looked at his lap. Exhaled smoke while he processed what I’d said. I didn’t look at him either. I knew he was imagining it. I felt sick. “Can I…?” he asked quietly, casting his eyes up. He reached his hand out a little towards me. I shrunk away impulsively. But I wanted to let him. I wanted him to touch me. Gabe moved slowly. As if I would startle and run away from him if he moved too fast. Ran his fingers through my hair. Searching the back of my head for the smooth scars that speckled my skull. So gentle. So close. I closed my eyes and gave a shaky sigh. His thumb traced behind my ear and down my jaw. His touch so light. My skin tingled along the line his fingers traced. What if I just kissed him now? I wanted so much to kiss him now. The heel of his hand rested on my cheekbone. Without thinking I turned my head. Turned into his hand and pressed my mouth to the soft inside of his wrist. Gabe sighed. “So you had to go.” He understood. Good.

I had to make myself pull away from his hand. “I had to go,” I echoed. I couldn’t let myself get caught up in Gabe. I had to finish telling him. There was still so much to tell. I forced myself to stand up again. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from kissing him if I sat next to him. “I really thought I would go back to England once he died. I thought I would be back in a few months, at the latest. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you would tell me not to go, and I had to go. It was stupid, it was stupid, but �" ” Gabe would have told me not to go and he would have been right. I didn’t get what I wanted from watching my father die.

“It took me longer than I thought to get back home,” I continued. Gabe went back to picking nervously at his fingers. “I had to get as far as the east of France before I got to occupied territory where someone could take me the rest of the way. Chris said no one was after me in Berlin anymore. Brigitte’s father and brothers had been called to the front. But still, I was so afraid to go back.”

I remembered sitting on the train as it pulled into Berlin. Watching my hands shake and hating myself. I think I knew already that I had made a mistake. “I had imagined that everyone would know I was back. Everyone who chased me out of town would come out of their houses and watch me walk down the street back home. But everything was just… normal. I took a bus to the apartment where I grew up, like I had done a thousand times. I actually didn’t see anyone I knew. All the boys I grew up with were deployed. That was a good thing, I guess.” I remembered thinking I would die if I saw any of the boys who attacked Burkhard. Gabe had gone all quiet again. I hoped that meant he wasn’t so angry anymore.

“Home was… bad,” I said for lack of a better word. “That apartment was always so small, but it felt worse after being gone for so long. We didn’t have a lot of money, you know.” I thought Gabe looked guilty. His parents had left him so much. I didn’t like to talk much about growing up poor in that awful apartment. The place only had one window. Only one bedroom. I shared a bed in the living room with Chris until I was fifteen and he moved out. Nowhere any of us could escape from my father. I told Gabe about it once on the roof. It was before I knew he was rich. I told him everything on that roof. “Chris had worked out a furlough to be with Führer. I hated every second I had to be around him. He didn’t say a lot, at least. I don’t think he knew what to say to me.

“Mama, God she’s an angel. She was so happy to see me, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had disappointed her. She tried so hard to get me out, and there I was, less than a year later, back in that house. She didn’t say so. She would never say so. I felt even more ready to see my father die when I saw my mother again. She would finally be all right once he was gone.”

“What about your father?” Gabe asked in a small voice. “What… what was he dying of?”

I cringed. It should have made me happy to think of my father during those last days. But it always made me sick. I sat down in the chair by the stairs. Still facing Gabe. I clasped my hands together and looked at the ground. “Something in his brain. It was a clot, and then a stroke. I’m not sure what happened after the stroke, but everything just started shutting down. His brain couldn’t tell his body anything. By the time I got there he had been immobile for weeks. Paralyzed on one side. Shitting himself paralyzed. I remember thinking there was so much justice in that blood clot. All his evil just built up and burst one day. He had been poisoning himself for fifty years. He died young because he had too much bile and hate in him to stay alive.” I didn’t tell Gabe how scared I was the same would happen to me. But when I looked at him I felt like he already knew. I remembered looking down at my father on the bed and thinking still how much I looked like him. He didn’t look like himself anymore. Both too stiff and too limp at the same time. But he was still me. He had my mean eyes. My ugly mouth. It was like watching myself die.

“He was laid out on his bed. Wouldn’t go to the hospital, the b*****d. He wanted to die in his bed like a man. And he couldn’t talk, but when he saw me, he managed to make the face he always used to make when he looked at me. Just… hate. Not even disappointment or anger. He just hated everything I was.” Gabe couldn’t know how it felt to have someone look at you like that. “He was pretty far gone by the time I got there. He only had a few more days. My mum took care of him, though I have no idea why. She had always given him whatever he needed, I guess. It was easier that way. I know she was ready for him to go, though. One day I saw her looking into his room, and when I went over to her, she just said, ‘every time I look in, I pray he’s dead.’” I would never forget that. It was the worst thing my mother had ever said about my father. She said it in English. Usually she spoke to me in English so he couldn’t understand her. But she said that in German. She wanted him to hear. He couldn’t hurt her anymore.

“Those were bad days. The apartment was suffocating, but I couldn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone I used to know. I just shuffled around the house for three days. Chris went out at night, at least, with some of his old buddies. Between him and Mama, though, I couldn’t get a minute alone with my father.”

Gabe looked up at me and squinted through the darkness. “Why,” he asked for the hundredth time. “What did you still need from him?” He crushed his cigarette into the ground with his shoe.

I wished he would stop asking me questions. I never had good answers. Nothing I had done during that week in Berlin made sense. “ I didn’t need anything from him,” I said a little too defensively. “I just…” Not yet not yet. “I didn’t get a chance until the third evening. Mama was in line with the ration cards and Chris went out drinking.” Drinking was the one activity we Amery boys all appreciated equally. We thrived on it when things got bad. I was drunk for six months after Berlin. Took me another six months to get back to functioning without it. “He hadn’t talked the whole time I was home. I thought he couldn’t. I had been thinking about what to say for weeks. I went in there so, so ready to say it.”

I looked across the room at Gabe. He looked ready to ask another question. What did you say he would ask. But when we locked eyes he swallowed it. “I’m not proud of this, alright? But I wanted to hurt him, Gabe. I wanted, s**t, I wanted him to know he was right, okay? Everything he thought about me, it was true, no matter what he did to stop it. I wanted him to know that I had cared for and kissed and touched and fucked another boy, because I knew it would kill him, and I wanted to be the one who killed him.”

When I looked at Gabe, his lip was quivering. This was one reason I hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth. I knew that it would hurt him to know I thought that way. I would never forgive myself for thinking of Gabe that way. For using him to get back at my father. Even if I only did it in my bitter, angry mind. “But I didn’t.” I pressed my palm to my forehead and looked away from him. “When I got the chance, I couldn’t tell him. Not that I pitied him or forgave him, or anything. I’ll never forgive him. I still wanted to hurt him.”

“Then why?” His voice was small and broken. I hated that I had to put him through this.

I looked up from the floor and found him looking back at me. Sometimes I wished I had told my father. When I was so angry. When I found a scar I forgot he had given me. But looking into Gabe’s eyes, I remembered why I hadn’t. “Because you weren’t revenge, Gabe. You weren’t �" it wasn’t…” I got tongue-tied. Not sure how to say this. “When we were together, I wasn’t… I didn’t do it because I wanted to hurt my father, understand? You were…” I couldn’t hold his gaze anymore. “S**t, Gabe, you are so much more than that.”

I knew I had never said anything that romantic to Gabe. I told him before what he meant to me as a friend. But as more than that? I didn’t know how to say what I felt. Gabe sniffled. Turning his rosary nervously over in his hand. “Erich…” he started. I couldn’t let him finish. I wasn’t done.

“I didn’t have anything else to say to him, so I turned to go away. But behind me I heard him say ‘what?’ Just this ugly grunt of a word. But his voice was the same. All spiteful and cold. He said, ‘you goddamn disgrace. When I get out of this bed I’ll beat you into the ground.’” It was the same thing he’d said to me for eighteen years. He didn’t care that he couldn’t even move. “The thing is, I didn’t want to fight with him anymore. So I told him he had won. I was broken. Broken beyond repair.” Gabe knew. I had told Gabe once how I had never loved anything. I thought nothing could fix that. “I told him I knew that all he ever wanted was to break me. But he just looked up at me, with my own goddamn mean blue eyes. And do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘I never broke you. I could not break you. You are an Amery, and we do not break.’” And he never said anything else. “I hated that he called me an Amery. As if we were the same.” I could hear the disgust in my own voice. I would rather be a broken nobody than an unbroken Amery. “He died a few hours later. Another stroke. Mama saw it happen. She deserved to watch him die more than anyone.” I was asleep on the bed in the living room but I woke up when I heard him groaning and choking. I sat up and saw my mother standing in his doorway. I don’t know if she could have helped him. But I know she didn’t try. I was proud of her for that.

“You have to understand, Gabe, I was ready to leave right then. I already regretted having left. Chris demanded that I stay for the funeral, as soon as it was over I wanted to get out of there. That night, I wrote you a letter to send ahead, to tell you I was coming back.” Gabe’s face crumpled. The letter had never reached him. I never got to send it.

While I gave him a minute to let it sink in, Gabe got to the question I had been dreading all night. “Then what about Brigitte.”

Goddamn it. I had handled all of this so wrong. I should have told Gabe everything that night at Hersch’s. I shouldn’t have told him about Brigitte in an ugly outburst. I made this harder on both of us. “She was at the funeral,” I admitted quietly. My stomach began tying itself in a sick knot. I hated this part. “She looked just the same. Skinny, blonde, mean. I was so angry that she showed up. Of course she wouldn’t give me the chance to deal with my father’s death without dealing with her, too. She had no reason to be there, except to torment me. She came right up to me after the service. I was standing with my mother, for god’s sake! She still looked at me as if I was her prey. She came up to me, and she said she was sorry about my father, and would I come to her place that night.” Gabe was starting to look angry again.

“I thought she was out of her mind, I really did. I didn’t know what she could possibly want from me. I swear, I did not think I would go.” I hoped Gabe could believe me. I was telling the truth. “But, what happened, that night, Chris had his friends and my father’s army friends over to the house. They were all drinking, and talking about what my father did in the war. I hated that, because they had so much respect for him. They kept telling the story about when he got buried in rubble at the Somme. They didn’t dig him out for days. I’d heard it a hundred times.” I always thought that was probably the moment he became who he was. Buried and helpless down in the dark. Even though Mama always said he didn’t turn until after the war. I think it stuck with him. “I had to get out of the house. I went walking, and I sort of just ended up at Brigitte’s house.” I had always walked to Brigitte’s house. It was the only place to go to escape my father. I went there without even thinking.

“I went up her fire escape, just like always. Her father and brothers were gone, but her mother wanted to kill me just as much. I don’t know what I expected, but it took us all of two minutes to start fighting. I tried to talk about my father, but she didn’t want to hear it. She actually defended him, even though she knew better than anyone how he treated me!” I got to my feet angrily. I still couldn’t believe the things she had said. “She said I should be grateful to him for bringing me up the way he did! F*****g grateful! She said I was weak, and he was only trying to make me strong.” I could hear my voice getting high and angry. But I couldn’t help it. Gabe shrunk back a little on the bed.

“She said I wasn’t a man, and I said I was, and she said prove it. That’s what she kept saying: prove it prove it prove it.” Beweisen Sie es. “And goddamn it, Gabe, I wanted to prove it! And she sat on the edge of her bed with her legs open and she said ‘if you were a man you would f**k me.’” I didn’t tell Gabe what she said first. She screamed at me are you a man or are you a fairy? That’s what did it. “So I did.”

Gabe looked crushed. I wished I could die. “How could…” he started in this broken voice. I couldn’t let him finish.

“I don’t know what to say,” I groaned. “I was so stupid. She just got to me! I told you, she always knew exactly what made me hate myself! She made me feel like nothing. I just…” I dug my fingers into my hair in anguish. Covered my eyes with both hands, “I just got so tired of being told I wasn’t a man. I snapped. I threw her back on the bed. I didn’t even kiss her. And she wouldn’t let me touch her with this.” I held up my damaged right hand. Ekelhaf she called it. Disgusting. “She took off her shirt, but I couldn’t… make it happen, and that just made it all worse. I knelt between her legs and I just tried and tried but nothing worked until I thought about you.” Every second I sat there without an erection was agony. Proof that she was right. “It didn’t last a minute even. The second I went inside her, everything just went cold.” I had tried hard. Thrust hard. Grabbing her tits and letting her kiss my neck. I wanted to believe I could do it. “I gave up.” Gave up pounding my fists on the mattress next to her and yelling verdammt verdammt verdammt. Completely humiliated. I was a failure. I wasn’t a man.

I thought maybe Gabe would have something to say. But he just sat there. Covering his mouth and blinking back tears. “She sat up, trying to close her shirt, just looking so horrified. She said she knew it. She’d always known. I tried to get out. I was standing up to leave, but then she said ‘who was he?’”

“It’s true,” she says breathily. Angrily. “Everyone knows what you are, Erich. I knew it.” She shoves me. “I knew it!”

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” I growl, pulling up my pants.

“Who was he?” she cries. “The boy in England, who was he?”

 “I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. But she knew everything. Chris, goddamn it, he knew. Chris knew and he told her to try and see if I would f**k her so they would know for sure. They knew everything, Gabe. S**t, she knew… goddamn it, she knew your name.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I know but she doesn’t she can’t.

“What was his name?” she lowers her voice to this spiteful whisper. “What’s his name, Erich? Hmm? Christian says it’s Gabriel.”

 “I couldn’t believe it.”

“Don’t you DARE say his name!” I roar. I grab her by the wrists and throw her backwards on the bed. “You b***h, don’t ever say his goddamn name!”

I realized I had been pacing angrily around the room. Gabe was backed up on the bed away from me. I must have looked angry enough to burst. I forced myself to sit in the chair again. To calm down. I had been angry all my life. But I know for certain that I had never been angrier than when I heard Gabe’s name come out of Brigitte’s mouth. “You know I never hit her, right?” I asked. Bent my head into my hands. “Even when she hit me, I never hit her back. I knew I would be like my father if I hit her. But goddamn it, Gabe, I wanted to kill her. She said you’re name like you were a disease. I wanted to kill her for that. I had to get out before I did something to her.” I only held her down for a few seconds. Her teeth were chattering I had scared her so much. “I didn’t want to look at her another second.” The last time I saw her was on that bed. Still holding blouse closed as she sat up and yelled at my back. Everyone knows what you are. Chris knows. Everyone knows.

Gabe wiped his eyes. Sitting cross-legged on the bed now. I wondered why he was crying. Because I’d tried to f**k Brigitte? Or because she knew the truth about us? “How… how did she know?” he asked sorrowfully. “How could your brother have known?” I wondered how it was possible that I felt even guiltier than I already did. It was my fault. My fault Chris knew.

I shook my head. “I didn’t know, then. I should have just let it be. I should have left without going home. But, I guess I had to know. I ran back to the apartment. Just so angry. Mama was out, thank God. Just Chris. Chris, the b*****d, he knew I was coming. He was just sitting there at the table, with the letter I’d written you.” I’d hidden it in my trunk. But he must have gone through my things. He must have known something had gone wrong while I was in England. I’m not sure how to describe how I felt when I realized my brother knew what I had written. Panic, mostly. Fear. Not anger. I was too terrified for anger. “You can imagine. Keeping it secret was all that ever mattered to me. You understand that, don’t you?” Even if Gabe understood himself better than I understood myself, he still lived in secrets. We could never tell anyone. Lives built around never letting anyone know the truth.

“You know I do,” he sniffed. Moved forward to the foot of the bed again. I wished he would come over to me. But he stayed where he was.

“He didn’t even seem surprised,” I growled. “We fought, worse than any fight we ever had. He, goddamn it, he read it out loud. And I hit him for that. But I was so mad I couldn’t think straight, and he hit me harder.” I rubbed my itching eyes. Saltwater burned under my eyelids. Oh no. Not now. Not in front of Gabe. But it had to be now. I would cry now, because this was the worst part. Worse than my father. Worse than the awful sex with Brigitte. What Chris did was the worst thing anyone had ever done to me.

I stand in the doorway and look at him. Frozen. Horrified. “So this is what you got up to in England,” he taps the letter with his knuckles as he says it. “I knew Führer was right about you.”

“Give it to me,” I snarl.

Chris smirks. Picks up the letter. “‘Dear Gabe…’” He can’t speak English as well as I can. He never uses it. Calls it the language of the enemy. But he can read it.

“Put it down.”

“‘I know I hurt you. I know I shouldn’t have left. But I want you to know…’”

“Chris.”

“‘I’m coming back for you.’”

“Chris!” I lunge at him. He leaps back. Shoves his chair at me. Stays out of my reach. Still reading.

“‘I think about you every day. Every minute. You are the world, Gabriel. You are the only thing that has ever mattered.’”

“GIVE IT TO ME”

“‘You have to know. You have to know how much I �" ’”

My strangled cry sounds like an animal. I can’t let him finish. I have him. Have him by the front of the shirt. Slam him into the wall. I’m punching him punching him punching him. He’s bigger than me. Same height but bulkier. He should be winning but I am angrier. I have to get the letter away from him. Crumpled and folded in his hand. I reach for it. Pull the paper away from him but he doesn’t let go. That horrible ripping sound. Half of the letter flutters to the floor. I let go of Chris. Drop to my knees. I need the letter. I poured everything into that letter. It was my whole heart. Torn in half.

Chris only needs a second to get his bearings. I’m still on my knees when he hits me. Just once in the face. Hard. My head is still reeling when he kicks me in the chest. Sending me flat on my back. Wheezing and dizzy. I know he’s won.

I blinked back the tears. It was dark. Gabe couldn’t see. My voice sounded ragged when I started talking again. “He told me I couldn’t stay. He said I had to get out.”

He stands over me. A giant. A monster. “You are not my brother. You are nothing but a stain on our father’s name. A sick, disgusting, worthless stain. I want you out of this house.”

“I’m gone,” I seethe.

“No,” He puts a foot on my chest and presses down hard. As if I could get up. “You think I’ll let you go on living like an deviant? Hmm? Just keep f*****g some little English boy? I don’t think so.”

Rage rips through me like adrenaline. “I’ll kill you.”

He snorts. “I think you’ll find most people would rather see you killed than me.” He’s right. “Now listen.” He’s crushing my ribs.

“He gave me a choice. Join up with the police corps, or…”

“You will enlist tomorrow, and stop shaming this family. Join up tomorrow, and prove that you still have some scrap of manhood. Otherwise I’ll turn you over to the authorities, and you’ll be in a camp with a pink triangle on your chest so fast your head will spin.”

“… Or he would turn me in. He had the letter. People got locked up for a lot less.” Gabe had obviously run out of questions. He sat with his head down. Hugging himself. “I didn’t have a choice, Gabe. I wish… I only…” What else was there even to say? “I didn’t have a choice,” I said again. Defeated. Done. He could do with that story what he wanted. But now he knew. At least he knew. “I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

We were both quiet for a long minute. I had given Gabe a lot to process. He just kept shaking his head and biting his nails. “What was in the letter?” he asked finally.

My stomach lurched. This was it. Slowly, I reached into my pocket. Pulled out the torn half-sheet of paper. Crumpled folded stained almost illegible. I stood up and took a few steps towards him. Head bent but eyes cast up at him. Holding the paper in both hands in front of me. A sad pathetic offering. “Chris burned the other half.” I lied. 

Gabe couldn’t believe it. He inhaled sharply and covered is mouth. Looked from me to the letter and back. I handed it to him. I watched as he read it. Tears slipping down his cheeks and under his fingers. He didn’t read it out loud. I didn’t need him to. I had read it a hundred times. Lying in my bed in the barracks. By the glow of my lighter on the watchtower. In my cabin on the train to Poland while I sobbed myself to sleep. I knew every word.

Dear Gabe. I know I hurt you. I know I shouldn’t have left. But I want you to know I’m coming back for you. I promise. I had to go. I wish I hadn’t. You can’t understand why. Not yet. I promise I’ll be there to explain soon.

I never thought I could forget you. I didn’t leave to get away from you. I know you think I did. I know you probably think I’m too broken and too afraid to accept how much I need you. But I think about you every day. Every minute. You are the world, Gabriel. You are the only thing that has ever mattered. When I �"

The letter cuts off suddenly. Gabe didn’t ask what was in the other half. He must have expected it to be more of the same. Good. I wasn’t ready for him to know what was in the other half. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready.

He grabbed me by the wrist. Pulled me down next to him. He wrapped his arms around my neck. I hugged him around the waist. Pressed my face to his shoulder. Gabe’s hands on the back of my head. Just holding me there. I started to cry into his shoulder. Body-wracking long-held-back sobs. Only the second time he ever saw me cry. I couldn’t help it. “I know,” he whispered even though I hadn’t said anything. “I know.” This. This was all I needed. I wouldn’t need anything else, if he didn’t want to. When was the last time anyone hugged me?

Gabe pulled me gently with him down on the bed. Wrapped his arms around me. Lying side by side. Running his hands up and down my back. So soft and soothing. The mattress creaked under us. I held his shirt in my fist. “I’m sorry, Gabe,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry.” I said it. At least I said it. I pressed my head to his chest and Gabe pulled me closer. Arms encircling me. I had never been held like that before. But once he was holding me I realized I never wanted him to let go. I felt him press his cheek to the top of my head.

“It’s alright,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

It took me a minute to stop crying. I didn’t want to be crying when I said what I would say next. I lifted my head. Eyes burning but dry. His head next to mine on the pillow.  His face close up in the half-dark. All eyes and curls and freckles. His breath on my face. Noses touching.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked. Voice shaking.

Gabe put a hand my face. Ran his thumb over my cheek. Brushed away a lingering tear. Then he pressed his smoky sweet mouth to mine. Soft damp perfect. I felt warm. Free. Safe. I felt safe. 

 “Yes,” he breathed against my mouth. “Yes.”