Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Losing the love of your life, your dignity, and your life savings all at the same time tends to paint things in a new light, one that begs the question: Can anything possibly get worse?
I don’t think it can.
When you’ve been to hell and back, everything else feels like Disneyland.
FOURTEEN
LACHLAN
mágoa (n.) a heartbreaking feeling that leaves long-lasting traces, visible in gestures and facial expressions
“Hey.” Anneliese knocks on my door Sunday night, clutching a spiral notebook against her chest. “You’ll never guess what I found.”
She takes a seat on the bed beside me and flips to the first page of The Neon Prince.
“I was going through a box of Donovan’s things and found this,” she says. “I think it’s the book he wrote . . .”
The sharp burn of tension tightens my jaw.
“I read a few pages, and it’s actually pretty good,” she adds. “He was very inventive with his choice of words.” Closing the cover, she hands it to me. “Anyway, I thought maybe you’d want to have it since you were a writer too? I know you weren’t on speaking terms, but I feel like—”
“Donovan didn’t write this,” I interrupt. “I did.”
Her ocean eyes fade to a dull shade of blue, settling on the empty wall space ahead of us.
“It’s like it never ends,” she says, monotone. “One lie after another after another. I was hoping maybe the whole novel thing was true because he talked about it so much—being a novelist and wanting to be published one day.”
“He also told you he was an only child,” I say. “And that those circled words in that book were his favorites, not our mother’s. How are you not picking up on a pattern here, Anneliese? He was pretending to be someone he wasn’t.”
She buries her head in her hands, and her hair falls over her shoulders, hiding her delicate profile.
“I can tell you how this book ends if you still need proof,” I say. “I can tell you the entire thing, chapter by chapter. I can even tell you there are light-blue stains on the last several pages because I accidentally spilled a bottle of Jones Soda on it.”
She forces a hard breath through her fingertips.
“Curious. Did you ever actually see any of Don’s writing . . . or did he just tell you he was a writer?” I ask.
She sits up, brushing her hair from her face, still staring blankly ahead.
“He never wanted to show me any of it. I just thought he was being self-conscious. Some people get that way about their art. Then we were busy planning the move and then renovating, and I never pushed it.” She speaks with her hands before letting them fall into her lap, limp.
“That photo album he showed you—do you know where that is?” I ask.
Rising from the bed, she heads down the hall and returns a few minutes later with a leather-bound album I’ve never seen before.
“Mind if I have a look?” I flip through the first several images. “Half of these are me. We were two years apart, but we looked so much alike sometimes people mistook us for twins. I grew a little faster than he did—caught up to him in height by the time I was eight and he was ten. God, he hated, hated, that his little brother wasn’t little anymore. I was faster than him . . . stronger than him . . . smarter than him . . .”
The only true advantage he had over me was his lack of anything resembling a conscience.
“It’s interesting that he went to all the work of choosing images where we weren’t standing together or posing as a family.” I slide one out from behind its protective sheet—a grainy image of my mother and me standing in front of a Christmas tree covered in heavy ornaments and multicolored lights. “See.”
On the back, in faded pencil, are the words: Lachlan and Mommy, Christmas 1999.
She inspects the inscription closer.
“I never would’ve thought to flip any of these over,” she says. Anneliese slides the photo back into its protective sleeve with careful ease. “I get why he would lie about everything else . . . because he wanted my money, but why would he lie about you?”
“You can spend the rest of your life speculating and never come close to the truth,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t care what his reason was.”
“Not even a little?” She tilts her head toward me, swiping at the soggy tears that slide down her cheeks as fast as they come. “He was your brother. That has to sting.”
“Brothers don’t do the kind of shit he did.”
“I believed everything that came out of that man’s mouth without question.” She sighs, shaking her head at herself. “How could I be so naive? I mean, there were some days when I thought he seemed too good to be true, but there were zero red flags other than . . .”