Troubled Waters by Carolyn Wheat

tree and grasps a strong gray branch in one hand as she catches her breath and waits for her brother. She pushes a fist into the place in her side where the stitch still hurts. Her breath comes in panting, heaving sobs. As Ron comes closer, she parts the branches and steps into the cool world beneath the canopy of leaves.
    Kenny lies on the ground. Sleeping? But—
    What was he doing in her tree, anyway? She steps forward, about to wake him, then steps back with a cry. Kenny’s face is blue, his body still as a doll’s. He can’t possibly be alive.
    She raises her hands to her mouth and stifles a scream. “He killed himself,” she whispers. But then something strikes her. She looks at the area around the body—the only way she can look at it is to think of Kenny as “the body”—and sees no glass, no bottle of pills, no means of ingesting poison. No hemostat, although she has no way of knowing that one is missing.
    Ron reaches her and grabs her by the shoulders. “Don’t get any closer.” He steps past her and blocks her view. “I think it was parathion. If we so much as touch him, we could be dead too.”

C HAPTER F IVE
    As always, it was the chair I noticed first. Not the smile on the bearded face or the warm welcome in the brown eyes, so like mine and yet so different. Not even the startling increase of gray in hair and beard caught my initial attention. Instead, my eyes traveled first to the wide rubber wheels, then up to the strap that secured the twisted torso in place, finally to the hand and breath controls on the armrests. Even to me, my brother was his chair.
    It still gave me a jolt to see Ron’s basketball player’s body folded like a carpenter’s rule into the ugly hunk of metal that made his life possible. I pasted on a smile and tried to act as if meeting my brother in federal court were an everyday occurrence.
    I knelt next to the rubber wheels and said the first words that entered my head. “You could’ve stayed in Cleveland and fought extradition. You didn’t have to make it easy for them.”
    â€œIt’s good to see you, too,” Ron said with a wry smile. I put my arms around his shoulders and hugged hard, steeling myself against the realization that he wouldn’t hug back.
    He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek. His beard tickled my face.
    â€œCass, it was nice of you to come,” Ron said, “but Harve Sobel is my lawyer.”
    â€œNot anymore he isn’t,” I retorted. “Haven’t you ever heard of conflict of interest?” Without waiting for an answer, I went on. “Maybe it was okay for you both to have the same lawyer back in ’82, but with Jan facing new charges, Harve should keep Jan and I’ll represent you.”
    â€œThe reason I waived extradition and had Zack drive me here from Cleveland,” Ron said, replying to the question I’d all but forgotten I’d asked, “is that they’d have won eventually, so why drag it out? Besides,” he added in a tone just a shade too firm, “I wanted to be here for Jan.”
    â€œJan!” All the pent-up rage I’d been feeling since I first saw her on the news exploded. “I can’t believe she talked you into this in the first place, let alone running away when things got heavy. I can’t believe she used you. I—”
    â€œCass.” Ron’s tone was commanding. “If you don’t stop talking about Jan like that, I’ll get another lawyer. Maybe it won’t be Harve, but it won’t be you either unless you shut up. Got that?”
    Ron’s face was red, blood pounding to his head. He strained forward in his chair, chest pressing against the strap that held him in place. His hands made claw motions that didn’t seem entirely planned.
    There were a number of things I would have liked to say, starting with the fact that I for one had been