She stepped away and lowered her head. Birds sang in the tress. The sun passed behind a cloud, then reemerged.
“I got into a fight with my parents,” she said. “They pushed me to be the best at everything, and they wouldn’t settle if I came in second. It was so easy for them, and they assumed it was easy for me, too. They thought it was what I wanted. So one day, I had this fight with my dad about how he wanted me to go into medicine. I didn’t want to, but he said I had to.”
Charles frowned. “I thought you wanted to go to medical school. That was all you ever talked about.”
Bronwyn stared at him pleadingly. “I didn’t, Charles. I never wanted to. I was just … his mouthpiece. But that’s beside the point. I drove over to your house. Only you were somewhere else … doing something with your mom in the basement maybe. But I didn’t feel like going to the basement. I didn’t feel like talking to your mom. So I sat at the table and waited. And while I was waiting he came in and he just … he really looked at me. Me, Bronwyn. No one else did. Not even you, Charles. I’m sorry but not even you. He asked what was wrong, and it all just poured out of me. And … it felt like he really got it.”
She paused and took a shaky breath. “We talked, sometimes, after that. Most of the talks weren’t about anything important, but we struck up a friendship. He opened up to me, too. He even bought me a Christmas present that last year we were in school, but I said I couldn’t accept it—I didn’t know how I would explain it. I couldn’t tell you because I thought it would just make you uncomfortable. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Charles gaped at her, scrambling to keep up with what she was telling him.
“One time not long before that banquet, we were talking and he leaned in and hugged me. But there was someone in the next room. Someone saw us. I knew in that moment it was going to be misconstrued. I tried to do damage control, but it was too late for that. I figured you’d hear about it, too, and you’d assume the same things. I wanted to tell you what was going on a million times, but I thought it would hurt you. You guys didn’t get along, and there I was, coming in there and disrupting things, taking away some of that attention for myself …”
She paused again, shuffling her feet in the slushy ground. “The day of the banquet, I told him that our friendship had to end. But it was hard, I didn’t want it to. He didn’t want it to either. I didn’t mean to, but I leaned over and kissed him. But then you burst into the house, Charles, and I thought you saw us. I know some people saw. I thought we were alone, but a group of people came in all of a sudden. Board members, other kids, you. And then you were screaming at Scott, and he pushed you down on the ground and … I don’t know. I thought it was all a symptom of what you saw. And so I ended it with you. I figured you wanted me to. You acted like you did when I told you, just nodding, not even asking why. I didn’t blame you for hating me. I didn’t blame you for not understanding. I was taking away what was yours.”
Charles’s head pounded. What she had said began to take shape. He thought about how she always tried to draw Scott in—on the patio, in the halls at school. Sometimes she’d disappear upstairs when she came over to the house for dinner. He’d assumed she was in the bathroom, freshening her makeup, carefully washing her hands … but maybe not.
He thought about how Scott hovered over their table at the banquet, staring right at Bronwyn. And when Charles had gone inside after Scott and found him in the laundry room, it had seemed like another person had been in with him moments before. Maybe he’d just missed Scott and Bronwyn’s maudlin good-bye. His stomach turned.
“Why?” he whispered.
She blinked. “I know it makes no sense. But it did, back then. It really did.”
He stared at her, disgusted. “How could a clandestine relationship with my brother make sense?”
Bronwyn blinked rapidly a few times. “Your brother?” she whispered. “Charles, no. No. It wasn’t Scott.”
Charles tilted his head.
“Scott was the one that saw us hugging a week before the banquet. He was the one who … who read it all wrong.” She looked down. “I tried to explain it to him a few times, but he wouldn’t listen. He called me terrible names.”
Charles’s mouth felt dry. “If it wasn’t Scott you were with, then … who?”
Bronwyn lowered her eyes, ashamed. Charles stepped back, daring to consider the only other possibility it could be. The only other him. “What?”
She let out a small, animal-like noise.
“You felt like you could … talk to him?”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“What the hell did you talk about?”
“I don’t know. School. Pressure. College. My future. The weather.”
He clapped his hands on his head. “Why didn’t you talk about any of this with your parents?”