Prodigal Son

The door flung open, and she came stalking in like a great cat, eyes darker and angrier than Arthur had ever seen before. 

Quincy followed soon after, his careful tread silent against the hardwood floor. He closed the door behind him, with a solemn gentleness at odds with the way Eliza had slammed it open. Arthur was suddenly grateful that his brother had come in last, if only because he didn’t think the heavy old door could handle Eliza slamming it shut.

 “What is wrong with you--” The women in question stormed up to him, gripping the collar of his shirt to yank his head down. Arthur didn’t bother shaking her off.  “Have you lost your mind? What were you thinking, bringing her here?”

  Arthur didn’t respond, knew any answer he could give would only serve to fuel his sister’s fury. He looked to Quincy for help, a looming statue guarding the door, and Quincy met his gaze evenly. No help would come from him.

 “Well?” Eliza shook his collar,” Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

  A moment of heavy silence passed. Accusing grey eyes stare him down.

  “She deserves to know.” He finally responded, barely a whisper of air.

 Eliza laughed derisively, throwing her arms out. “Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve sacrificed, you’ve damned us all.” She stabbed a finger at his chest. “You and your holier-than-thou attitude have damned us all.” Her words grated along Arthur’s already frayed nerves, leaving him feeling raw and exposed and couldn’t stop himself from snapping back like a wounded animal, caught and cornered and forsaken. 

  “She deserves to know,” Arthur repeated, stronger and steely and unyielding as if he could carve the words into stone through sheer will alone. 

   He thought of the young women on the other side of the door, lonely and abandoned and left for wolves and Arthur hates this, hates everything about this. It’s hard to keep everything inside--the guilt and regret, what could’ve been, what should’ve been, Arthur can’t keep every regret and fear buried so far within him when hurts this much. 

 “No one in this family has ever gotten what they deserved.” Eliza snarled at Arthur, a furious and desperate noise, as she finally let go of his collar and pushed him away. She ran her hands through her long dark hair, twisting her hands and violently yanking through the strands in a movement that must’ve been painful. Arthur felt the vague bitter taste of guilt rise up in his throat, and he shoved it back down violently, for he knew he would lose his nerve if he allowed himself to feel guilty over the distress he’s caused his sister.

  “Father did.” Quincy finally spoke, his voice soft timbre, after Eliza fell to fuming silence. He was glaring at the ceiling as if hoping to find some great answer up there of how to deal with this stuck between cobwebs and old stone. It was not.

  At that, Eliza seemed to visibly deflate, her energy suddenly leaving her in a great rush, for even she could not keep up her righteous anger in the face of Quincy’s steady calm. 

  “What have you told her?” She asked, her passion giving way to an eerie blank tone that all three siblings possessed in some manner or another.

 “That her absentee father died a month ago, that we’re all here to spread his ashes,” Arthur replied,” Nothing else.” He promised quietly, tone still cold and angry, daring Eliza to doubt him.

He wouldn’t lie about this, and even Eliza, as pigheaded and stubborn as she could be, knew this.

“How does she think he died?”

“Same as the papers--a tragic accident.”

Eliza finally yielded, quietly brooding but giving in. Arthur understood this, at least, for what he had chosen to do was dangerous to them all. He knows Eliza trusts him, would trust him and his choices with her life, but this wasn’t about trust. This choice he had made, this decision to bring their young estranged half-sister into an already uncontrollable, treacherous situation, it had the potential to blow up on all of them. This was about survival, and all three siblings knew very well that survival meant keeping everything that happened in their household under careful wrap. Their peace is held together through whispered secrets and carefully ignored truths, webbed together in a calculated jumble until no one, not even clever, grounded Quincy, truly knew what was real and what was a fantasy.

 A small knock sounded then, knocking them all out of their miserable thoughts, the sound quiet but clear, deliberate but delicate. Arthur wondered vaguely if everybody’s knock was reminiscent of their character. He had forgotten about the girl sitting in the adjacent room, he suspected they all had, which he found humorous since their entire argument had revolved around her presence. Arthur caught Eliza’s almost imperceptible nod to Quincy, and he paused but a moment before opening the door.

 A head peaked through the door, in a move strikingly reminiscent of a wary animal, and a girl stepped cautiously into the room. She was young, on the cusp of sixteen, with long blonde hair and a defensive hunch to her shoulders that was often seen in his dear older sister. Arthur gestured for her to come in, and there was a lazy elegance in her gait that Arthur arrogantly claimed as his own, and a calculating sort of intelligence in her expression that he had only ever seen in his father and brother. But it was the eyes that could not be denied, the grey eyes that convinced even stubborn Eliza that she was truly of their blood.

Every child of their late father shared that distinctive grey, dark like a storm cloud, and it made something deep inside Arthur writhe painfully every time he looked in a mirror.

Quincy theorized that the eerie lack of color was poetic, in a way, as if they were all missing something crucial. Some bit of color that was meant to make him complete, make him whole and human and finished. He had shared this theory with Arthur one cold night, and he bluntly told him to stop thinking and go to bed.

But as their half-grown half-sister stood before them, face as impassive as a statue but fingers twisting at her side, he wondered now if there wasn't a bit of truth to it. If perhaps they were all a bit unfinished, rough around the edges and off in a way that's easy to notice but difficult to describe.

"Hello." She finally muttered, after several beats of them observing one another. "My name is Juliet." She stuck out her hand, awkward and earnest and innocent in a way that Arthur and Eliza and Quincy have never and could never be.

Quincy was the one to smile back and shake her hand. It wasn't a nice smile, forced and more a baring of teeth than any true expression of joy, unnatural on his typically forlorn disposition, but it was the thought that counted.

Eliza had stayed quiet, her jaw clenched as she turned over some secret, bitter thought.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Juliet." He told the girl whose father he had murdered but a month ago. The girl who he had only realized existed but a month ago. The girl who festered a sense of responsibility and guilt deep within him until he finally sent an email explaining her never-met father had died.

"My name is Arthur. I'm your half-brother."