Accidentally on Purpose

Chapter Fifty-Two

My brother was already waiting for me when I walked out of the room, freshly showered and ready to go home.

He had a duffel bag filled with his clothes sitting next to his feet near the couch. He was coming home with me, and he'd be staying there at least until the short Thanksgiving holiday ended. I could barely wrap it around my head, the fact that I was here right across the room from where he was sitting, and now he was finally coming home, even just temporarily.

A part of me understood his reasoning, how he left because he felt guilty for being one of the reasons why the accident happened, but I felt—no, I knew—that it was more than just that.

Looking from his perspective, I could see myself reacting the exact same way if something happened to Cole. But Tony didn't have to be gone for too long. He didn't have to completely leave me—hadn't he said that he missed me? What about Mom and Dad and Leann and Cole and everyone else he'd left? Hadn't he missed them too?

And the fact that my parents never let me talk about him still confused me. I understood that they were very mad, furious for what had happened, but didn't they see that it was hurting me to be away from my own brother? Tony said that he had chosen to leave, but why did they let him? He also said that he'd been talking to them occasionally, so they must've forgiven him at some point, right? So why wasn't I allowed to see him anyway?

The easiest way to get all of my questions answered was to ask Tony himself, but I didn't want to ruin this moment. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth and really told him how miserable I'd been, we would go into an argument. I didn't want that. It had been four years since the last time I'd seen him. Today was about getting him back into my life. All those questions could wait. I'd been waiting for years—a few more days or weeks wouldn't hurt that much, would they?

Tony's legs were lightly bouncing up and down for a while, until they stopped, and his eyes stared far away into the television. His fingers slightly twitched, forming a fist and then loosening it, and it kept going for a while, even when I finally sat down next to him. He was probably nervous and had a lot of things inside his head—after all, this was as much of a big deal for him as it was for me, to come home and see our parents. He hadn't seen his family in four years. How he could deal with that, I didn't know.

I sure as hell would ask him, though. As soon as we got home.

I reached out and grabbed his hands on his laps, but he seemed to ignore my touch for a while, until it was as if something inside his brain switched and he blinked, looking down at my hands on top his. He finally squeezed back, slowly, and I smiled.

"Sorry," he said after a while, as if he had been composing himself. "I spaced out."

"It's fine." I took a deep breath. "You okay? Nervous?"

He slightly nodded with a sigh. "I don't know what to expect. I'm excited to go home but at the same time I'm about to shit my pants just thinking about it."

"Did you ever see them?" I asked quietly. "I mean, do you guys ever meet up or something like that?"

He shook his head. "I never gave them my address. Just my number. And e-mail." He smiled a little. "They send me pictures of Cole every once in a while. He's so big now."

"He is," I said with a chuckle. "Smart, too. Smarter than any of us were when we were seven. God knows what goes on in that little brain of his."

The smile on Tony's face lit up. "Tell me about him?"

"He likes to draw stuff. And build stuff from Lego. But what he makes aren't child's creations." I shook my head. "One time, he built the New York City skyline. It's not perfect, but it's far from what you'd expect from a small child. I mean, it's a city skyline for God's sake. And he prefers watching documentaries over Sponge Bob. Graduated from Animal Planet real fast, now he's into MythBusters reruns."