He could’ve said he’d miss the other boy, but it would have been a lie. In this place, people came and people went. Get attached and you’d go crazy. Detachment was a survival skill . . . the first true lesson here. And he was a good student.
As far as he was concerned, he was alone in that small world. It couldn’t be any other way; not here, not now. Not ever. He laid his head back on his pillow and waited for sleep. He’d read that some did multiplication tables in their heads, some sang silent lullabies, and some counted sheep. Not him. He counted horses. They galloped through fields, racing a golden sun. Counting on, he slipped into sleep. There he dreamed . . . of sun, wind, and horses.
He always did.
Chapter 1
“A picture’s worth a thousand words.” Jesus, how often have you heard that old saying? Slathered across sickeningly sweet greeting cards, beaming from manipulative TV commercials, it was a time-honored classic. A picture’s worth a thousand words. . . . Yeah? Right now I could think of only one.
Goddamnit. Behind glass, framed in velvety rosewood, the photograph was one I hadn’t seen before. Not that I didn’t recognize it; I did. I might not have remembered ever seeing the picture, but I recalled all too clearly the moment it captured—the last Christmas. Not as in the one last year—no, it was a helluva lot more momentous than that. Think “the Last Christmas” as you would “the Last Supper.” In some ways it was much the same—an ending, a betrayal, and lives that would never be as they once were. I might have been an unwitting Judas, but the result had been the same. Consequently, I hadn’t felt much like celebrating on the twenty-fifth in the past ten years. You could keep the twinkling lights and the tree, but screw the presents and the eggnog; I didn’t want any part of it.
All those things were in the five-by-seven photo . . . along with two boys. One was fourteen; one, seven. There was no guessing involved in that. I knew those ages to the day, if not the minute. The older kid was obviously a cocky son of a bitch with black hair, mocking pale brown eyes, and a grin that just wouldn’t quit. My grin . . . I hadn’t seen it in a long, long time—not that version. The one I flashed these days had all the warmth of a jagged shard of ice.
The younger boy in the picture occupied a different end of the spectrum, in appearance and personality. He had unusual eyes, unique in their innocence and color. One green, one blue, they looked out calmly from beneath the fringe of pale blond bangs. His smile was smaller than my grin, but pure and happy. I touched a finger to the glass over that smile. It was my brother, Lukas.
We sat under a ridiculously huge tree. The lights sparkled among a thousand silver icicles and a thick coating of artificial snow. We’d insisted on the cheap and tacky spray despite our father’s snort of derision. It would be the only snow we were likely to see that year. Southern Florida wasn’t much for the white stuff—not that kind anyway. I had my arm slung around Lukas’s smaller shoulders and both of us sported eggnog mustaches, yellow and foamy. Mom had started the habit of making us alcohol-free nog three years before, and even though she’d died only a year later, the tradition was kept up. It kept her alive and with us for the holiday. And it made Lukas happy.
Kid brothers were always a pain in the ass. Any older brother or sister would tell you that. They tagged after you, asked a thousand questions, and bugged you endlessly. They took your crap without asking and narc’ed you out every chance they got. Lukas did all that, sure. He also looked up to me, brought me things—a sea-polished stone from the beach or a comic book he bought with his allowance—and didn’t think any cootieridden girl was good enough for his brother. If making eggnog made him smile, what the hell? I’d do it. And for those two years I did. Dear old Dad was always too busy, and the housekeepers . . . well, they weren’t Mom. The creamy drink pretty much sucked, but Lukas and I drank it anyway before opening our presents.
Of course, that year was the one the presents were too big to open. That year was the year we had to go to the newly built stable to see them. They came with fancy names, I’m sure, but I never learned them. I called mine Harry, after Dirty Harry. That was the year I wanted to grow up to be a cop. I’d never seen my father laugh before; not like that. “A mussor,” he’d choked, darkly amused. “I couldn’t show my face again, Stoipah.” He shouldn’t have worried. It had been a dream that didn’t have a prayer of lasting very long.