The Rascal by Eric Arvin Page A

There was peace once, but that was before his father was told he had a tumor, something dreadful and genetic that was easily passed from generation to generation. Something that could not be tested for until later in life when it was all but too late. One did not need a degree in psychiatry to see that their mother had blamed their father for possibly passing the disorder down to one of her sons. Possibly even the favorite one. There was a current of raging animosity for years. The house was thick with it. Even Ethan felt the brunt of its force once or twice, when he would catch his father or mother watching him, he knew they were thinking, “Why not him instead of our precious Jeffrey?”
    The boys could not see the illness in their father. The man looked as solid as he ever had. “Any illness worth its salt knows to stay hidden,” he’d said. “It’s like oxygen or love, but mean and angry.”
    Like oxygen or love … or guilt.
    Ethan was tested for the disease when he was older and on his own. The disease had skipped him. He supposed it had skipped Jeff as well or else his brother surely would have told him. But that good news came too late for the family. Their father, years earlier, had killed himself, running the car he was driving into an old oak tree while returning from a dinner date. Their mother was in the passenger seat and she survived. She was still in a coma at a hospital a few miles from where Ethan now lived with Kelton and Bug. Though Jeff had at the time of the accident just become of the age to legally care for Ethan, who was but two years younger, he decided not to do so. He did not even tell his brother of this decision, but instead one day just left. Ethan spent the next two years in state care, visiting his comatose mother often. When Jeff finally did return, he brought Chloe with him. Her face went white when Ethan introduced Kelton, whom he had met while in state care, as his husband.
    Mother’s face was blank now. Her pain was gone or, God forbid, hiding beneath a pale shroud. But it was best for him not to think of such morbid things. If he did, if he allowed himself to focus on what waited in the dark, he might never recover. To Ethan, a blank stare was more terrifying than the most horrific grimace of pain. Ethan had stopped being afraid of the dark soon after the accident. He stopped seeing imaginary nightmares, because there was a real one just down the street at a care facility, and it had his mother’s face.
    Ethan clicked on Chloe’s icon, but as he did so, her name disappeared from the screen. She had signed off or—and this he found more likely—was simply refusing to talk with him.
    He soon signed off as well. He needed to check on Bug anyway. He’d give Jeff a call tomorrow if he could find the new cell phone number. Wading through discomfort in the daylight was always preferable to doing it in the stillness of night.

The Bridge
    Standing on the small stone stoop outside the kitchen door, Chloe watched the barn. Her arms were folded yet again, as much from a pensive attitude as from a chill. Her brow was pinched in deliberation. The move hadn’t helped at all, and she now accepted that it was ridiculous to have thought it ever would have. They could live on this hill above the rest of the world for ages and not see another soul (but for crazy old Lana Pruitt), and still Jeff would never see Chloe the same way he once had. And, in truth, she would never see him the same either. Gone was the gorgeous man with the warm smile who gave her inappropriate hugs at company meetings as her mother looked on. She’d never feel those arms again in that way. She’d never again feel the warm crush of his body on hers while making love. Past mistakes, she found, anchored their pain to the present. It never lessened, and never had the chance to slip away to the horizon where it might possibly disappear forever.
    But there was nothing for it. She had to live with him now that they had