I pulled out a document and threw it on the floor. "Sign this, and you two can get out."
Kayla picked it up and read it. A written pledge, laying out everything that had happened—their two signatures at the bottom would stand as evidence.
The attached clause: she owed my brother a sum of money, the exact amount she'd swindled out of our family, to be repaid in full within three years.
She looked at the figure, her lips trembling. "I don't have that kind of money..."
"That's your problem," I said. "Sell the house, sell the car, go find that rich father of yours. How you come up with it is your business. I'm just here to collect."
She bit down on her lip until it bled.
In the end she signed anyway, and Luke signed too, his hand shaking like a leaf.
"Now." I pointed at the door. "Out."
Kayla helped Luke to his feet. His legs were still trembling under him.
They reached the door, and Kayla suddenly turned back to look at my brother.
"Bruce, I'm sorry." She said it again.
He didn't answer. He watched her back, and something behind his eyes broke, but he didn't call her back.
The door closed.
Only the two of us were left in the room, and the papers scattered across the floor.
The reception was still going downstairs, glasses clinking, guests trading toasts, none of them aware of what had just happened upstairs.
My brother walked to the window and stood with his back to me.
His shoulders were shaking, but no sound came out.
I crossed to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my face into his back.
He'd gotten thin. He'd been this thin in my last life too, thin enough that the hospital gown hung off him.
"Bruce," I said. "Don't be sad."
He turned around. His eyes were red, but he hadn't cried.
He reached out and smoothed a hand over my hair. His palm was warm.
"Belle's all grown up," he said.
My nose stung, and I nearly lost it.
In my last life I'd held him and cried like this too, the night before he stopped breathing, beside the bed in the ICU.
He'd been hooked up to tubes, the backs of his hands all bruised, his fever so high his mind was slipping, and still he'd smiled at me and said, Don't cry, Belle, your brother's fine.
How could he have been fine. His kidney was inside someone else's body. His life was clenched in someone else's hand.
"Bruce, let's go home," I said.
"Okay." He nodded. "Home."
We didn't go back to the marital home, back to the house he and Kayla had decorated together.
We went back to the old house, the place where we grew up. The magnolia tree in the yard was the same as ever, a little taller than in my last life, its leaves rustling when the wind moved through it.
My brother stood under the tree for a long time.
I went inside to pour him a glass of water, and when I came back out I saw him crouched by the roots, fingers digging into the dirt.
I came closer and saw him pull out a tin box, its surface spotted with rust.
"What is that?"
He didn't say anything. He opened the box.
Inside were the letters I'd written in my last life, letters to my sixteen-year-old self, an entire diary filled with them.
The last page read: Don't let your brother marry Kayla.
I'd never seen this diary again after I buried it.
I'd buried it here, buried it for a whole lifetime.
My brother turned to that page. His hands were shaking.
"Belle..." His voice had gone hoarse.
I crouched down and looked into his eyes.
Those eyes were clear and clean, none of the murkiness of being used, none of the hollow emptiness of dying on an operating table.
"Bruce," I said. "This time I'm protecting you."
He pulled me in and held me tight.
Magnolia leaves drifted down and settled on our shoulders. He didn't brush them off, and I didn't move.
In the distance the firecrackers went off. The reception was breaking up.
