Beyond the end

Minneapolis

Brandon went by Nat when it was already almost closing time but his friend had now gotten used to those late raids. Brandon needed to talk and came to him. That's why he left the door open. He was making coffee. Even his wife knew that if he was late it was because Brandon was there with him. Brandon wasn't having an easy time. As if everything had plummeted without a reason and Brandon got lost in trying to pick up the pieces.
"Hard day at work?" Nat asked him.
"Enough" Bran threw there briefcase on the first available chair "but the work saves Nat."
"Yes, that's true," he gave him a faint smile.
Bran looked at him and knew Nat had something to say to him "let's hear spit whatever you need .."
"Bran. I love you like a son you know but yours being eclipsed by everyone is wrong."
"Everyone at all.. Nat. Don't overdo it. I see Andrea every now and then. I live with Steve. We go out a few times."
"You're avoiding the problem."
Brandon knew he was right. Nat was always right.
He shook his head.
"I can't do it."
"Yes, you can do it, and you would also but you have a damned pride that chains you."
"I wouldn't be able to look her in the eye."
"Yet she did it for you."
"What?"
"Emma," Nat replied, "I saw you here desperate for losing Kelly. Every evening at the club. Yet she forgave you. She took you back, she forgave you."
He was right. He was always right. As mentioned.
"I'm not as strong in these things. And then it's different."
"My mother said if you don't like the life you live in, you can only thank yourself."
Brandon smiled weakly.
Nat took a picture off the wall. His smiling and poor mother and father just landed in New York.
"My mother went to wash the clothes at the ladies' house, sometimes her hands were broken in the cold. She grew up with us, she was very young when I was born. And she was studying. She always said she didn't want to scold herself for the life she lived. She wanted to go to bed happy to be who she was and happy to lie down next to my father."
"what's the point Nat?"
"Don't let time go because it's the only thing you can't get back."
"I know that." Bran took that old photograph in his hands.
"What were your parents' nane?
"My mother Grazia but she liked to call herself Grace. And in the end everyone called her that, she would call me that if I was born female Grace Busicchio. My father Alfredo. Al."
Brandon smiled looking at that old photograph. As a memory that could partly belong to him too.
"I saw Dylan today."
"Here a thing I don't want to hear"
"He came to ask me where Brenda was."
"And what did you tell him?"
"I don't know where she is and anyway I wouldn't tell him."
There was a weird Silence between the two.
"It breaks my heart to see you like this"said Nat
"I don't have my heart anymore."
Nat put one hand on his arm. "Don't say that. Things would be fixed if only you wanted to fix them. You can't throw such a love for something you don't even know if it happened."
"Yes, I know."
"No you don't know."
Brandon took a few minutes "you know. I bought my house back. Casa Walsh."
'When?'
"Before leaving for Italy with Kelly. I wanted to go back there with her. Ask her to live with me. Casa Walsh is bigger than her house and she could have renew it as she wanted. Do our own thing. " He showed him the keys he kept in his pocket "the rings have always brought us bad luck. Back then I had thought about buying a house for us." He stopped and returned to anger "Dylan knew. I told him." "
"Oh Bran" sighed Nat.
"Anyway we should have a drink to celebrate," he said sadly holding back a pain in the back of his throat "I'm a house owner. I have a mortgage" Brandon laughed without joy.
Nat touched his arm.
"I don't want you to drink. Everything is gonna be ok, Bran."
The fact is," he took a short break, "I don't know how to get out of it and then I can't .. for me and for Brenda. I promised her.
"Maybe it's just too early," Nat hissed, "time always helps and you never know what you're able to overcome, until you get over it."
"Let's hope," B replied, put the bunch of keys on the counter, "at least give me a piece of apple pie."
Nat smiled.
"Of course my friend."
The Minneapolis air was pungent. The city surrounded by a gray and northern sky. Dylan looked at everything with new eyes. He had planned to come there but with Brenda and now walking only through those streets he felt even more the emptiness of lack and what had happened. And so that was the city of the Walshs, the place where Brenda and Brandon were born, grown up to sixteen, the streets they traveled as children. Those thoughts calmed him down in some way. They made him feel part of something. He knew the address of the Walshs. It was no secret to anyone but he had not warned of his arrival. He didn't want to hear a no as an answer. He wanted to put Jim and Cindy in front of the him, push them to help him after doing thousands of miles in search of a yes.
The house was a beautiful exposed stone villa, with a well-kept driveway. She remembered Casa Walsh, not for her shape or color but for that familiar air she kept. Dylan paid for the taxi and watched her silently for a few seconds. Jim's car was parked in the open garage. They were at home. He walked up slowly and Cindy opened the door for him.
At first she wasn't sure if it was a ghost or a hallucination however despite everything that had happened she was very warm with him, perhaps for a gesture of impetus, perhaps because Cindy had really loved him very much.
Jim arrived shortly after called back by Cindy.
"Come in," Jim invited him.
"I guess you know what happened," Dylan began as Cindy put some sweets and some hot tea on the table.
"Yes," Jim replied.
"I don't know exactly what Brandon or Brenda told you, but that's not what they think they saw."
Jim and Cindy looked at each other with a faint hint of embarrassment.
"Brandon refuses to give me informations on where Brenda is and I need to explain to her even before anyone else."
"She didn't even tell us where she is," Jim interrupted him, "she was here with us only the first week with JT. Then they left. And the reason she didn't tell us that she knew you were coming to look for her here."
That last sentence hurt Dylan deeply. A shadow of fear emerged from his soul. The fear that he would never see her again.
"I suppose then she's not even in London if she doesn't want to be found by me."
Cindy shook her head "We don't know. You know Brenda."
"It's better like This but she calls us to let us know how she is going. She had a broken heart," Jim sighed.
"Nothing happened between me and Kelly," Dylan whispered, "really nothing."
"That's not what they saw," Jim replied.
"I know that," he said sadly.
Cindy was softened by that now man boy who had been so deeply attached to his family.
"When she will feel ready I'm sure she'll be back," she said, trying to cheer him up.
"No, she won't," Dylan replied, "this time she won't. You can at least give me her phone number."
"Don't ask us that. Brenda doesn't want to be found and we have to respect her choices" Jim cleared his voice " and you should too. Now, Dylan, she is hurt, she lost her child, she probably has permanent damage, she lost you, she doesn't ask you for anything, she doesn't want anything, she want to be able to move on, it's no difficult to understand."
"I had asked her to marry me," Dylan said, "we had to come here to announce it to you, she wanted to be the one to say it. And now I have nothing left. And Brandon doesn't even look me in the face."
"I don't know what you and Kelly are expecting from them," Jim said irritated.
"What we can do Dylan" interrupted Cindy "is telling her that you came here, what I personally can do is tell her to call you. But that's all. I'm sure she'll be back one day and that even Brandon might one day be able to overcome the anger."
"Are you going back to L.A?" Jim asked.
"I don't know" Dylan sighed and felt the tears rise and get entangled somewhere. He noticed a photograph of the twins as children, in the middle of the snow. Brandon's blue eyes bastards shining and Brenda's smile welcoming her brother in her arms.
"Is this the house where they grew up?" He asked.
"Yes," Cindy replied, "is the house where our family formed and grew up. Where we left before we came to L.A."
"It's beautiful," he said.
"Thank you. Do you want to have lunch with us Dylan? It's ready and we won't say anything to Brandon at all," Cindy laughed and made him laugh too. A painful and sudden laugh.
Dylan looked at Jim, he wasn't sure Jim wanted him in his house but strangely to Jim he did tenderness, because the men in pieces you recognize them by the look. From the tone of voice. From the lost look.
"We're not going to tell Brandon," Jim repeated.