Homefires by Emily Sue Harvey Read Free Book Online

the blue, temporarily evaporating my anger at him.
    My feet touched the floor and I clung to my brother, steadying myself, laughing and peering through tears into the good-looking face whose blue eyes crinkled with laughter lines. He would be twenty-three now. “Chuck, you’re just about the best lookin’ guy I’ve ever seen. A blond John Saxon.

    “ Just about? ” he mimicked, wide grin framing perfectly even white teeth, knowing I’d paid him my highest compliment.
    “Why isn’t – is her name Connie? Did she come with – ”
    “No. Actually, Honey, Connie ain’t with me anymore. Gettin’ a divorce,” he stated calmly, succinctly flipping a fleck from his shirtsleeve with his fingertip, a gesture that spoke more than words.
    “But – ” I sucked in a shocked breath. “What happened, Chuck?”
    “Oh,” he shrugged. “Differences. Just couldn’t be helped. What about you? Things goin’ okay with yours?”
    “Oh – great. Great.” I did not pursue why his marriage ended. My heart felt a peculiar heaviness as he plopped down on my turquoise sofa, but he soon had me diverted again, laughing and cutting the fool. Fact was, I was the yo-yo and he pulled the string. He tossed me away and pulled me back. Tossed me away when I mentioned Daddy and pulled me back when I appeased him.
    When in his favor, I thought of bygone days when we siblings were the “Three Musketeers,” one for all and all for one. It hurt, the change, especially when I knew Chuck had been a Mama’s boy. I knew the pain of his loss.
    I didn’t then and still don’t today know what murky trick of genetics caused the disintegration of trust between Daddy and Chuck except that they were both bullheaded and both plagued with tunnel-vision once their minds were made up. I knew Daddy loved Chuck, just as I knew Chuck loved him, but they just couldn’t get it together. Unforgiveness and pride eroded their chances of reconciliation.
    “How’s Trish, by the way?” he asked.
    I filled him in on how Trish’s weight problem seemed to be escalating, leaving out that the tension between her and Anne still existed. Chuck had locked horns with Anne aplenty on his own before he split – in his case, it was his own smart-aleck rebellion at doing chores he felt beneath him. Like cleaning the bathroom commode. And I’d thought does he think that should fall to us mere females? And though Trish’s pudgy tendency began long before Anne entered the picture, I was convinced the stress of Trish’s position magnified things. I told Chuck Anne had spent a few days in the hospital recently.

    “Ulcerative colitis.” Anne still fought her own emotional battles with Daddy.
    Chuck’s eyes glimmered when he looked up from the wedding pictures we were going through. “Ol’ man still giving her a hard time?”
    “They just don’t always – see eye to eye on things is all, Chuck.” I tried not to sound prim, but Chuck’s nostrils reacted to my defensiveness.
    “Tell me somethin’ new, why doncha?” He tossed a picture aside and, whistling through his teeth, opened another album. I bit my tongue, determined not to say anything to drive him away. Why? Why did I so tenaciously carry this virtual one-sided commitment.
    All I knew was that this was my brother. That had to mean something.
    I didn’t share my disappointment that our grandparents moved away so soon after I was free to visit them without Daddy’s permission. Despite his animosity toward Daddy, Chuck sympathized to the point of shunning MawMaw and Papa, augmenting their grief.
    The vicious cycle spun on. Chuck’s anger roiled restless and indiscriminate, settling in senseless ways.
    My brother left as abruptly as he came, his hostility lingering like a dank gray, choking fog. That he could turn off his love for Daddy and MawMaw and Papa – and now, Connie – baffled and terrorized me. Was it only a matter of time before I displeased him and he stopped loving me?
    A chill rippled up my