Everything is swirling through my thoughts… my father who beat me, my mother who hates me, Jacey who didn’t want me… and now Nora.  It all bleeds together and I can’t tell the emotions apart.

I’m simply not good enough.

As I walk through the living room, my eyes fall on that f**king wooden box and I pick it up, gripping it tight.  It just symbolizes one more failure.

Jacey trails behind me and stares at it.  “What’s that?”

“I wasn’t good enough to save my little sister,” I tell her, my voice sharp, the words painful.  “Did you know that?”

Jacey shakes her head, her eyes wide.  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” she answers softly.

I nod.  “Yeah.  I did. She drowned when I was six and I wasn’t good enough to stop it. At least, that’s what my old man always told me… when he was beating the shit out of me every night.  Those bruises I had when I was a kid?  That’s why I got them.  Because I wasn’t f**king good enough.”

Jacey is still, completely frozen.  “My grandma called social services, you know,” she tells me.  “They came and investigated your father, but they couldn’t find enough evidence to take you away.”

Of course not. I vaguely remember that, too.  One summer, when I was twelve or so, I’d come home for a change of clothes and there were people at the house, strange people in pant suits who asked a lot of questions.  My father had stared meaningfully at me, and I’d answered them all like I know he’d want me to.

Kids are loyal to the end.

Well guess what?  It’s the end.

I grip the box hard, staring at it’s intricate design, at the way it so cleverly conceals it’s contents.  Hard and fast, I throw it across the room.  It shatters against the wall, splintering into pieces on the floor.

I don’t make a move to walk to it, to see what’s inside.

Jacey stares first at it, then at me.

“I don’t know what happened to your sister,” she says softly. “But I do know that whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault.”

I can’t help it.  It all wells up in me and I sink to the floor and sit limply, and all of it comes out.  All of it.

My sister sleepwalking.  The way we had to keep her locked in for her own safety. How my mother had found her washed up on the shore and how her screams had shaken the house. How my father had beat me every night when he came home from the bar.  Ring the bell, Brand.   How he had swung at me when I graduated high school and how then it was my turn to beat him.  How I’d punched him and punched him until my mother pulled me off and called the police.  How the judge had suspended my sentence when he heard I’d been accepted to West Point, but only if I’d agree to enter the military afterward.  How that was okay with me, because it’s had been my plan anyway.  And how my mother hates me now.

All of it comes out.

All of it.

Jacey holds my hand and tears stream down her face as she listens to me rail and vent and swear.  Years of disgust and bitterness flow out of me, all of it.

All.

Of.

It.

Even the parts that are directed at her.

“You used me for years,” I tell her angrily. “And I let you. That’s on me. Because I always thought I wasn’t good enough.. it’s something that’s embedded deep down--- so I always felt like that’s what I deserved.  To take and take and take.  Well you know what?  Fuck that.  I don’t deserve that.”

Jacey grips my hand tighter.

“No, you don’t deserve that, Brand.  And you were always good enough.  Always.  I was the one who wasn’t good enough for you.  Your dad was ass**le. Your mother is just as bad.  They f**ked you up, but you’re stronger than they are.  You are.  You’re good and strong and loyal… and you were more of a man when you were six than your father was ever.  You have to know that, Brand.  You have to.”

I’m finally done railing.  I’m limp and tired and exhausted.

I nod.  “Yeah.  I do know that.  I’ve spent my entire life trying to be good enough. I think it’s time that I just… that I just am.”

Jacey nods and holds me and I close my eyes for just a minute.

“I didn’t deserve for Nora to leave in the middle of the night without even a conversation.  Fuck her.”

My eyes pop open and Jacey is watching me, her face pale.

“I’m going to shower,” I tell her as I get up.  And I walk away.

A minute later, though, Jacey calls me.

I hesitate at my bedroom door.

“Yes?” I call back.

“I looked in the box.”

Her words are simple, her tone calm.

Suddenly, I want to know.  What the f**k did my father have to say? What could he possibly have to say to me?

I stride back to the living room and find Jacey standing over the shattered remains of the box.  She turns to look at me, her face pale, her eyes huge.

There, dangling from her fingers, is the old sliding lock from my sister’s bedroom door.

The paint is peeling from it, it’s old and it’s rusty, but it’s as familiar to me as my own hand. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sound it made when it slid into place every night before bed.

If I close my eyes, and imagine the sound, I also know something, something that I’ve purposely not thought about over the years, but something I’ve known since the night my sister died.

I didn’t hear the lock slide into place that night.

It’s something I’ve never told another living soul.

Jacey stares at me.

I stare at the lock.

“I knew my father didn’t lock Allison’s door that night,” I finally say.  “I knew.  I waited until he left for the bar, and I snuck downstairs for a snack, for some cookies. I meant to lock the door when I went back to bed, but I forgot.  I walked right past and I forgot.  I laid in bed that night, staring out my window, staring at what I thought was a silver ball floating away in the water.”

I pause, and the silence is pregnant as Jacey waits.

“It wasn’t a ball,” I say starkly.  “It was my sister.”

Jacey’s eyes widen a bit more, but she remains silent.

“So all along, my parents were right.  I guess that’s why I always felt like I deserved whatever my father gave me,” I admit, my words wooden. “I knew her door wasn’t locked and I forgot to do anything about it.  She’s dead and it’s as much my fault as it is anyone’s.”