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The school aide signals for the teacher from the door of the classroom, and Piper knows what it is before her name is even called.
“Piper, nurse’s office.” The teacher sighs, jerking her blonde bob in the direction of the door. Piper stands, smoothing her plaid uniform skirt over her skinny thighs and goes to join the aide, ignoring the heat of twenty two sets of 11 year old eyes on her as she does.
Lochlan is on the cot when she gets there, curled up on his side. He hates third grade. The kids tease him mercilessly--for his speech impediment, for how long it takes him to come up with the answer when the teacher calls on him.
He knows the answer, he explained to Piper once. It just takes him so long to make his body work, to bring the voice in his head forward in his mouth.
“Hi, Lochy.” she says, dropping to her knees at his bedside. He’s got his hands clasped together, fitted under his chin. His eyes when he turns them up to her are sad and big, red around the edges—he must’ve been crying before she got here. She reaches out a hand to pet at his hair.
“Sorry.” he mumbles, and she shakes her head.
“Don’t apologize. Are you okay?”
He nods miserably, and she puts a small hand to his damp cheek.
“They’re going to make me go back in a bit. I can’t miss more math class. Do you want them to call Barbara and she’ll come and get you?”
The school used to call Barbara all the time, until their father put his foot down and said Lochlan had to suck it up. So instead they call Piper.
Lochlan shakes his head, nestling into her palm. Her baby doll. Her favorite one.
He goes to put his thumb in his mouth and she pulls it away. Their father gets mad when he sees it damp, with Lochlan’s uneven teeth marks around the base. Lochy humphs, but obeys.
“I wish Saxon went to school with us.” he mopes. Piper snorts, rolls her eyes. She doesn’t. She really, really doesn’t.
Sometimes, when Saxon comes home from college, she overhears Lochlan asking Saxon to watch him play. Not even for Saxon to play with him, just to—watch. Lochy sits at Saxon’s feet in the living room, silently puppeting his action figures while Saxon watches TV, occasionally reaching a hand down to pet at Lochy’s curls, or to make a suggestion on what monster Lochy’s toys should fight next. Sometimes it feels like Lochlan doesn’t think anything he does counts unless Saxon is there to see.
What about me? Piper thinks. I’m always watching you. I’d even play with you, if you ever asked.
The aide appears at the door, telling Piper it’s time to go back to class.
-
Lochlan and Saxon slink into the living room of the villa in Thailand, stinking of vomit and alcohol. For Saxon, that’s nothing new, but for Lochlan, it makes her heart ache.
“Hi, Lochy.” she says from her place on the couch, book perched on her lap. Lochy looks up and meets her eyes, smiling shyly.
There’s something there, something that makes her tilt her head. He’s wearing Saxon’s swim shorts. She puts a pin in it, in the back of her mind, a reminder to ask him later, when they are alone.
But then Lochlan is sick at the side of the pool, face pale and sweating, and their father is telling them he had a seizure. And then there are the gunshots, the dead girl floating in the water, the FBI agents waiting on the jet bridge to handcuff their father and lead the rest of them away in an unmarked cruiser. Her whole life falls apart, and somewhere in the middle of all that, she forgets.
-
Five years later, halfway home from yoga class, she remembers that her curling iron is still at Lochlan’s, where she left it after getting ready there before a family dinner last week. Damn, she really needs that. She has a date tomorrow night. And shit, she still has his spare keys too, doesn’t she? Okay, good catch. Two birds; one stone.
It’s a quick detour, two left hand turns off her route and she’s there, neatly parallel parking her BMW and running up to the apartment building’s front door. She had texted him and he hadn’t responded, probably working late. He’s a first year engineer at an urban planning firm that focuses on green spaces, and there’s some big bid coming up next week—he had just been bitching to her about it over the phone yesterday.
She lets herself in with the key. If Lochy is home, he’s probably gaming, headset clamped over his ears, swearing at his college friends as one of them snipes him in that first person shooter game she’s never bothered to learn the name of.
Key in the lock, turning smoothly. She doesn’t announce herself; it isn’t needed. She’s done this a dozen times. Rounds the corner of his entry hallway into his living room, only distantly seeking the possibility of his little curly head over the top of his beat up IKEA couch.
Except. Except.
She only injests it in flashes, the thing she sees. Something in her brain shutting down automatically before she even registers it. Big white blanks in her memory, even as it’s happening.
Lochlan there, as expected and—and Saxon. As not-expected. Wasn’t he supposed to be on a work trip? She could have sworn--
They’re standing in the middle of the room, chest to chest—she has this faint, fleeting thought that they are arguing, yelling, because they are so close. But there’s no yelling. No sounds beyond a soft separation of mouths, because they are kissing. Saxon’s hand is on the back of Lochlan’s neck. Lochlan’s hands are raised, braced against Saxon’s chest.
Both of them turning to look at her in unison. Her voice high in her ears, screaming. The wood of the front door against her palms, and then Saxon’s hands at her sides, jerking her away so hard her neck snaps with the force of it. Saxon in front of her, braced against the door, eyes wild.
Noise in her ears, unintelligible noise. Her voice, Lochlan’s. Not Saxon’s for once, for fucking once.
When she blinks back into full consciousness, she is in Lochlan’s room, staring down at the door handle, which is locked. There’s hammering on the other side, the brassy knob turning furiously, Lochlan begging.
“Piper. Piper! PIPER! Open the door, Piper, PLEASE!”
Saxon’s voice, then, finally, faint on the other side. She can’t move. She can barely blink.
“Lochy, Lochy, calm down, take a breath, man—”
“PIPER!”
“Lochy—”
“Piper, open the door, Piper, come on, please, Piper, please—”
“It’s fucking Piper, Lochy. She’s not going to do anything.”
She stands and stares at the door for a long while. Maybe hours. It feels like it.
Lochlan’s hand at the nape of Saxon’s neck. The thin string of spit connecting their mouths as Saxon pulled away, grinning down at him. The cold heft of Lochlan’s keys in her hands.
“I’m sorry, Sax, I’m sorry. I forgot she had my keys, I forgot—”
Lochy’s sobbing now, nearing hyperventilation. Saxon is saying something to him, low and urgent, his breathing so loud she can hear it through the door.
Lochlan’s fingers hooked through the gap in Saxon’s button down. Their mouths on each other. Their mouths, her brothers’ mouths, on each other, connecting, kissing. It’s a dream. It’s a sick joke.
Her phone is on Lochlan’s floor, and she doesn’t remember how. It’s buzzing, Lochlan’s contact lighting up the screen. She just stares.
Lochlan. And Saxon. And Saxon—Saxon, fucking Saxon, Saxon, Saxon---
She sits down on the floor at the foot of Lochlan’s bed and rests her head back. Stares at the ceiling. Her heart is very loud in her ears. She’s aware of her chest rising and falling in jerky movements. She must be crying.
There’s so much commotion on the other side. It’s Saxon strangling Lochlan. It’s Saxon killing Lochlan and then coming to kill her. It’s Lochlan killing himself. It’s both of them arguing, both of them crying. Only Lochlan crying. Only Saxon crying.
It’s her phone, buzzing against the uneven hardwood. Again and again and again. She looks down at it. It’s six PM. How long as she been in here.
It’s texts from Lochlan. Dozens in a row.
Please come out
Please talk to me
Piper please
Piper I love you please it’s not what you think
Piper please pick up
please come out
Please come out
Piper
Piper I’m sorry
I’m so sorry I didn’t know
It’s one text from Saxon.
You are not going to tell Mom and Dad.
Lochlan knocks on the door again, and begs her to open it up.
She does.
Where is she? Why was she in Lochlan’s room?
Lochlan is in the doorway, face red and puffy, panting sharp and high. His face so like how it was when she would visit him in the nurse’s office. But that’s not what she’s worried about.
When she sees him, her older brother, standing further back behind Lochlan like the coward he is, some noise comes out of her, something primal and feral that she doesn’t quite recognize, and she launches herself at him.
She goes for his face at first, which he bats away easily, like she’s a midge, a moth, a piece of dust. Then her hands are at his throat, her fist coming up wildly to punch at him—his smug mouth, the warm stone of him. She wants to claw his eyes out. She wants him to bleed. She wants him to die.
Lochy’s little voice is in her ears, screaming “Piper, Piper, stop!” but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t fucking care.
Saxon gets her in a bear hug, his grotesquely huge arms coming around to pin her to him and contain her thrashing. She screams and arches her back, desperate to get away from him. Her stomach turns, she’s going to be sick, having him this close to her. Shivers run up her spine, her throat tightening. It’s terrifying, genuinely the most scared she’s been in years.
He’s touching her. Touching her and holding her to him, like he did to Lochlan, has maybe been doing to Lochlan all this time. He’s got her locked so tight and she’s struggling so hard that her feet leave the ground, kicking in their tennis shoes above the carpet, pinned like an animal struggling in a trap, moments from death.
She shrieks again, fighting like hell, her head snapping back to get as far away from him as possible, but the vice grip of his arms won’t let her move, won’t let her far enough away. After this, where ever he goes—another city, another continent, the other side of the world—it’ll never be far away enough again.
Lochy’s voice again, through the fear and the static—”Put her down, Saxon, put her down!”
The crack of his voice changes something in Saxon, distracts him for just long enough that Piper can wiggle an arm out, and she hits him across the face as hard as she can.
“Ah, fuck--!” he swears, dropping her, stumbling with the back of his hand pressed against his lips. She got his nose, and good. Blood starts pouring from one nostril and he steps back, tiling his head to stop the flow, but it comes and comes, dripping over his mouth and down his chin. Ruby red stream like a knife wound down his neck.
She backs up, hands held out in front of her to keep either of them coming at her again. Lochlan is still by the door, crying again, hands clasped in front of him, pleading. Saxon is staring at her at a downward slant, snorting so hard on the blood that it starts dripping from the corner of his mouth as well. Good. Fucking good.
“Piper—” Lochy says, so gently. He approaches with his own hands up, walking towards her very slowly. “Piper, calm down. Listen. Please.”
If she runs for the door again, Saxon will get her. Get her and hold her down and do—do what he did. Do what he has been doing. Tears are dripping hot down her face. All their cheeks are wet.
“Piper, let us explain.”
“No.”
“Piper.”
Saxon straightens his head, hand cupped over his nose. His eyes over the arc of his palm are clean and bright. Trained on her. Watching.
“Get out.” she spits. He jerks his head, eyes narrowing, huffing a laugh that makes droplets of blood spit from between his lips. His teeth are red with it.
How did this happen. How did she not see, how could she not protect him. Lochy, her baby, her brother, her little brother--
“No, Sax—yes.” Lochlan says, one hand moving in a slow arc in Saxon’s direction. He looks like a lion tamer. He looks like he’s in the middle of the ring. “Sax, go.”
Saxon’s eyes bounce between them both, considering. Lochlan looks to him and makes eyes—makes eyes, like a secret language, oh, God—and Saxon nods slowly. He brings his bloody hand away from his nose and exposes the ruin of it, the mess of fluid dripping down his face. He backs towards the door, grasping behind him at the coat hook at the entrance and finding his jacket. He gets it off the hook and puts it on, no sudden movements. Hands up in surrender, he fumbles in that same blind way for the door handle behind him. Opens it. Backs out of the front door.
He’d hung up his coat, before he had done it. Like it was normal. Like it was natural.
The door shuts. The bolt settles in the lock. She and Lochlan are alone.
Moving in that same slow way, Lochlan walks towards the counter, never turning his back to her. He picks up his keys and holds them out, panting hard.
“Come on, Piper. We can go for a drive.”
Her chest is heaving. She’s somewhere between crying and choking. Her body is trembling; she feels like an animal.
She considers it a moment. Then nods.
“Okay. But I’m driving.”
-
They drive in silence for as long as she can take it. She keeps her hands at ten and two, knuckles white around the steering where, static in her ears. Lochlan sits beside her, hands trapped between his knees, saying nothing.
What is there to say? What could there possibly be to say?
She breaks the silence, but only because she has to.
“Oh god—” she groans, tears springing to the corners of her eyes anew. Her mouth is full of saliva. “I’m gonna be sick--”
She takes a hard right off the main road at the slanted entrance to the massive parking lot of a grocery store. Guns the car fast to the farthest corner, putting as much distance as she can between them and the light crowd of shoppers meandering towards the entrance.
She’s barely cut the engine before she’s shoving open the driver’s side door, gagging, stumbling out to stand at the side. Hands on her knees, bent over, heaving. A thin stream of acidic bile comes out, sharp over her tongue, burning as it drips onto the cracked asphalt.
When she looks up, Lochlan is standing in front of her, hands at his side like a little toy soldier, clenching and unclenching into fists.
Looking at him, her knees buckle. She sinks down, scooting back to sit on the concrete slab at the head of the parking space. Over Lochlan’s head, the cheery green Publix sign shines green and bright. Lochlan watches her, shifting from foot to foot, like he’s trying to decide whether to sit next to her or stay standing. He chooses to stay.
“What—” she finally gets out. “Lochy—what?”
Lochlan’s little mouth opens and closes. He makes a sound, starting to say something, and then stops himself.
“I’m sorry.” he finally gets out. “I’m sorry you saw that.”
She keens, a high whine in her ears. Him apologizing—it makes it so much worse.
“Lochy, don’t apologize. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was—he was hurting you.”
Lochlan’s curls against his forehead, his hard blink, lips coming in so he can bite at them. The little scrunch of his chin, so precious. Her baby. Her baby.
“He’s not hurting me.”
It’s all coming back to her, the handful of Family Psychology classes she took in college to fulfill her science elective. Molestation, incest, sexual abuse. Of course he didn’t think Saxon was hurting him. Of course he didn’t. Saxon would’ve made sure of that.
Lochlan can read it on her face, the disgust, the alarm. “Piper, I love him.”
“Of course you love him, Lochlan.” she gasps. “He’s your brother.”
If Lochlan flinches at the word, he hides it well.
All she can think about is the timeline. How long has this been going on. Did anyone know? Did Mom and Dad know, did they suspect? How would she tell them? Oh fuck, oh god, she might have to tell them. She might have to be the one to break the news. That this had been happening, the most evil thing you could do, happening to them, after everything else they had already been through.
“Piper, it’s not like you’re thinking.”
“I think it’s exactly like I’m fucking thinking.”
“It’s not.” His voice is so thin, so shy. She keeps thinking of the look he gave Saxon, how he got him to back off.
So long. She realizes, her body suddenly running hot. This must have been going on for so long.
“When did this start?” she demands. “Was he doing this when we were kids?”
Saxon in Lochlan’s doorway. Saxon at the side of Lochlan’s bed, eighteen to Lochlan’s ten, putting a hand on him, under his clothes, looming big and terrible in the light from the moon. His palm braced against the bed, against Lochlan’s dark blue sheets patterned with rocket ships.
“No.” Lochy says forcefully, shaking his head hard. “Not when we were kids. I promise, Piper, I promise.”
“So when?”
Lochlan turns his eyes down, scrapping the toe of his dirty sneaker against some pieces of gravel. They make a sound, high and tinny, nails against the chalkboard of her mind.
“Lochlan. When.” Still nothing. She tries to offer him an out, for some fucking reason. Some fucking reason, to make it better than it was. To make it better than the worst thing ever. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since I was a senior.”
“In college?”
He had only graduated college last year. They had only all been in Durham together again for eight months. It had to be that. It had to be recent, had to be some sudden early 30s psychosis on Saxon’s part.
She expects Lochlan’s head to pick up. She expects his big eyes, huge and dark, to brim with tears, for his little head to nod, to swear to her it had only started so recently, had only been a few months, and he hadn’t known how to stop it.
Instead, he shrugs, eyes still on the tarmac. And then he shakes his head.
“Oh god.” she sobs, and her hand flies up to clamp over her mouth. She’s getting so loud; she’s starting to make a scene. Someone’s going to come over, someone’s going to ask what’s going on. “Oh my fucking god.”
Lochlan colors. He looks pained, eyes knitted shut, brown furrowed. He’s starting to tremble.
“Since high school.” she says, once she’s composed herself enough to pull her hand away from her mouth. “He’s been raping you since you were in high school.”
“I was 18.” Lochlan mutters miserably, and Piper sobs again. Her mouth is uncovered, hanging open, aghast.
“Lochy, that doesn’t matter.”
She’s in tears, then, total break down. She rests her forehead on her knees and sobs into the hollow theater of her lap.
“I knew it.” she finds herself saying. “I fucking knew it.”
Had she? Had she known it? Maybe she had. Saxon’s hand at her waist, in her hair, yanking her ponytail, pinning her to the couch under his terrifying weight, shoving his wet pinkie into her ear canal, laughing at her screams. The tense, frozen smiles of her friends when he would torment her in front of them. Their eyes ping-ponging back and forth, giggling nervously, wondering if they were next.
Lochlan approaches her, then, and she has to hold her body so still to keep from bending away. She can’t stop thinking about it, Saxon’s hand on the back of Lochlan’s neck, his tongue in their baby brother’s mouth. Saxon is sick, he is diseased. He’s a monster, on a level she never even thought she had to consider.
She stays so still, as Lochlan lowers his long body to sit next to her on the concrete block.
“Lochy, I have to—” she’s sobbing around the words, choking them out. “I have to tell Mom and Dad.”
Her tears are starting to dampen the thighs of her jeans, the denim staining dark blue. She’s got her hands cupped around her eyes, blocking out all the light. She can’t bear to look at him, but she knows she has to. She had to reassure him that he’s not like Saxon, that this was something that was done to him. That she’s here now, that she’s going to protect him. Even if looking at him makes her sick, makes her gorge tighten.
Lochlan on his tip toes, head tilted back, smiling into the kiss. His finger dipped into the gap between one of Saxon’s shirt buttons.
Lochlan stiffens, but he doesn’t move.
“No, you don’t.”
“They have to know. So they can stop this.”
“They don’t. I don’t want them to know. You can’t tell them.”
“Lochy.”
She feels mute; she feels deaf and dumb and blind. She can’t believe she’s here, having this conversation.
“You can’t tell them.” Lochlan repeats, his gaze suddenly so serious, so secure. “I don’t want you to tell them.”
“Lochlan, he’s hurting you.”
“He’s not hurting me.”
He lets her cry for a bit longer, one finger in his mouth, gnawing at the cuticle. He seems like he’s considering something. And then. One deep breath and then:
“Piper. If you say anything, I’m going to deny it. Aside from this, we’ve been--we’ve been really careful.”
She picks her head up and looks at him in the face, the first time since she stumbled out of the car. He is deathly serious, the most serious she has ever seen him.
“It’ll be us against you. I will make you look really crazy. And I love you, Piper. I don’t want to do that.”
She waits for the crack. She waits for him to break, to admit that that’s what Saxon taught him to say, when they prepared for this possibility all those years ago. Saxon would’ve done that, he was smart like that. He’d have covered his tracks.
But there is nothing. Lochlan looks her in the eye longer than she can ever remember him doing their entire lives.
“Oh, my god.” she mutters. “He’s turned you into him.”
“You can just forget about it.” he says with some earnestness, like it’s a gentle promise. “It’ll never happened again.”
“He’ll never rape you again, or I’ll never see it happening again?”
Lochlan sighs. “He isn’t raping me, Piper.”
She crumples, head in her hands. Her baby, her baby. Reduced to this. It’s her fault. It’s all her fault.
Lochlan’s cold, damp hand at the center of her back.
“So do you want me to drive you home?”
-
She’s alone with Saxon for the first time three months after. She’s distracted, not paying attention as she mounts the stairs of their parents’ new house and finds him standing in the hallway, by his bedroom door, across the hall from her own.
She has this odd sense that he’s been waiting for her.
She goes to her door, eyes trained forward, but something roots her there, prevents her from turning the knob.
“Turning in for the night?” Saxon asks, and she’s never hated him more.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to talk normally to me. You are dead to me.” she says, parroting the speech she’s practiced a million times in her bathroom mirror. She’s both dreaded and looked forward to this day for months. “I don’t want anything to do with you. We have no relationship. And when I have kids, you sure as hell are going to have no relationship with them. You’re disgusting. You’re fucking evil.”
For a long moment, her brother says nothing. Weighing his options. Then he snorts, and mutters something under his breath.
She can’t help it—she turns. Faces him. Finally, finally.
“What?”
“I said,” Saxon enunciates, “That it's worth it.”
One look in his eyes, that offsetting icy blue, just like their father’s, and she knows. He didn’t care. There had always been a part of her that hoped, somewhere deep down, that it was all just dysfunction. That he did care for her, in his own way. You always want your family to love you, no matter what they do.
But all she had ever been was a force of opposition. A competitor for Lochlan’s attention, his love. And now that Saxon had it, she served no purpose. She was just another body in his house.
Saxon’s gaze is still on her. He tilts his head. “You think that little of him, huh?”
“What?”
“You think he’s that stupid. That he had nothing to do with it.”
Her jaw tenses so hard it hurts her teeth. She’s got nothing to say. Saxon grins, and opens his bedroom door.
“For the record,” he says, one last parting shot. “He started it.”
-
They’re pillow talking, trading lore, and then one thing leads to another leads to another leads to another and then Piper’s crying, embarrassing snotty tears that wet the pillowcase beneath her head.. Logan puts a hand in her hair, carding it back from her face, and makes some small noise of sympathy, cuddling Piper close.
“I can’t imagine,” Logan says, cheek resting on the top of Piper’s head, hand traveling long and slow up and down Piper’s spine. “Families are so hard. They don’t deserve you.”
Piper breaks at that, sobbing loud and unencumbered, her body wracking against Logan’s own. Five years of grief, of loss. Since that day in the parking lot, she had made herself a ghost. She comes to the occasional family party, will answer one out of five of her mother’s phone calls, but other than that—the only thing they know about her life is her address.
“Can I—” Logan starts, hand stalling at the nape of Piper’s neck. “Can I ask what happened? Why you don’t—”
Piper swallows hard. Nods.
“I found out that my older brother was molesting my younger brother. Not in childhood but—but when we were older. And I told my parents, and they didn’t believe me.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Logan sighs, and holds her even tighter. “Oh Jesus, Piper.”
It feels good, to finally tell someone the story. The story, in a literal sense. A fiction where she was braver. A fantasy where she did the right thing.
-
The thirtieth fifth wedding anniversary is unavoidable.
“We’re just going to do something small.” her mother had told her over a rare phone call she accepted. “I’m telling you now, well in advance.” The threat is implicit. She can’t get out of it this time. Her presence is required.
She sits at the patio table in her parent’s backyard—the new new house, downsized even further from the one they bought once her childhood home had been sold to cover the legal bills from her father’s trial. Her foot bounces uneasily, watching Aiden play in the pool with some of their cousin’s young children. It kills her, how often he asks after her side of the family, why they don’t see Uncle Lochy and Uncle Saxon more.
Four hours, she had bargained with herself. Four hours, and then she’s good until Christmas.
Something blurs in the corner of her vision, and she turns to find Saxon standing beside her. Her spine tightens, eyes flaring, and he just smiles in response, holding out a red plastic cup towards her. His Girlfriend of the Month is standing next to Logan by the pool, laughing and flipping her hair over one bronzed shoulder.
“Hiya, Pipe.” He’s so much older now, the distinguished threads of gray at his temples catching the sunlight. “I brought you a drink.”
She hums in response, not moving. He holds it out for several beats, intent on making it awkward.
Every time. He does this every fucking time. Like it’s a game to him.
“Alright, well—” he sighs in an exaggerated, put up way, and sets the cup on the table next to her. They hold eye contact, Piper’s heart hammering in her throat.
Slowly, she brings her fingers up against the side of the cup and pointedly pushes it over. It tips easily, the drink—wine, cocktail, whatever he prepared for her this time—spilling out over the glass surface of the patio table and dripping onto the grass. He looks away from her down to the ground, watching the liquid stream out until it’s just drips.
He barks out a laugh and shrugs. “Worth a shot.” And his grin towards her is mean and terrible.
She trains her eyes forward, back towards Aiden and his friends. Focus on that, focus on the positive. Her son will never been alone in the same room as Saxon, ever. Ever, ever, ever. She couldn’t protect Lochlan, but she can protect him.
They came in the same car, Saxon and Lochlan. The girlfriend had been demoted to the back seat. Insane, that Saxon can find women that will put up with it.
Saxon’s hand rests gently on her shoulder and she stays so still. He leans down, not quite to her ear—he knows better.
“You look great, by the way.”
She wants to cry. She wants to vomit. She does neither. She stares at the lapping water of the pool until her eyes run red from the glare.