Emily knew one thing with certainty. Whatever Michael had tried to bury, whatever silence he had built between his past and his present, it was real. And it was darker than she had imagined.
The door had barely slammed when Lily bolted out the side of the house, her sneakers pounding against the cracked sidewalk. Emily stood frozen for a moment, then instinct pulled her forward. She couldn’t leave the girl alone, not after what she had just witnessed.
«Lily, wait,» Emily called, her voice catching in the cold afternoon air.
The girl didn’t slow. She darted down the street, slipping between two leaning houses, her small frame moving with surprising speed. Emily hurried after her, her boots crunching over gravel and broken glass. Her heart raced, not just from the chase, but from the gnawing sense that if she let Lily disappear now, she might never find the truth Michael had spent his life hiding.
After several blocks, the road opened into a clearing. An old convenience store squatted on the corner, its sign faded and its windows grimy. Beyond it, a narrow dirt path wound toward a stretch of water glinting faintly in the pale sun.
Emily spotted Lily heading in that direction, shoulders stiff, hands shoved into her jacket pockets. Emily ducked into the store first, the bell over the door giving a weak jingle. Inside, the air was stale, lined with shelves of canned soup, dusty boxes of cereal, and a cooler humming with soda and cheap beer.
She grabbed a packet of cookies, a stick of beef jerky, and a few brightly wrapped lollipops from a jar by the counter. The cashier, an older man with weary eyes, rang her up without comment.
When Emily stepped back outside, Lily was waiting at the edge of the path, arms crossed. Her eyes, those piercing green eyes, narrowed. «Why are you following me?»
Emily held up the bag. «I thought you might want something to eat. That’s all.»
For a moment, Lily didn’t move. Then, with a shrug that tried to look careless but carried the weight of exhaustion, she turned toward the lake. «Fine, but I’m not going back home right now.»
Emily followed her down the path. It led to a small lake ringed by bare trees and scattered rocks. The water was calm, reflecting the washed-out sky.
Lily sat on a fallen log near the bank, pulling her knees to her chest. Emily sat a few feet away, opening the bag and setting the snacks between them. «Here,» Emily said softly, «take whatever you like.»
Lily eyed the cookies, then reached for one. She bit into it, chewing slowly, her face unreadable. After a moment, she took a lollipop, too, rolling the stick between her fingers.
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the soft lapping of water against the shore. Emily didn’t rush it. She knew better than to push.
Finally, Lily spoke, her voice quieter now, stripped of the defiance she’d shown her mother. «You’re not from around here. I can tell. Why did you come?»
Emily hesitated. The truth pressed against her chest. «I… I know your brother, Michael.»
At the sound of his name, Lily’s head snapped up. Her eyes widened, then narrowed with suspicion. «You’re lying.»
«I’m not,» Emily said quickly. «I’m engaged to him. We’re supposed to get married soon.»
For a long moment, Lily just stared. Then, slowly, her shoulders dropped. «So that’s why you showed up.»
She looked out at the water, her voice hardening. «He doesn’t talk about us, does he?»
Emily shook her head gently. «No, he never has. That’s why I came. I wanted to understand.»
Lily gave a sharp laugh, one that didn’t carry any humor. «Of course he doesn’t. Why would he? This place, my mom… it’s nothing he’d want you to see.»
Emily stayed quiet, letting the girl’s words come on their own. Lily picked at the wrapper of her lollipop, then began, her voice low but steady. «Michael used to come home a lot, back when Daniel was still alive. He tried to help, tried to take care of things.»
«But Mom, she was always drinking, selling whatever she could for booze. Jackets, shoes, even my school supplies. Michael stopped bringing stuff because she’d just trade it away.»
«He hated it here, hated her,» Lily continued. «But he loved us, especially Daniel.» Her throat tightened and she paused.
Emily’s heart clenched. She could hear the truth pressing at the edges of Lily’s voice, a truth she wasn’t sure she was ready to bear.
«Daniel was different,» Lily whispered. «He was strong. He always protected me, even from Mom’s boyfriends. But one night, one of them came after her with a knife. Daniel stepped in.»
She stopped, staring at the lake as though the water itself might swallow the memory. «He didn’t make it.»
Emily’s chest ached. She wanted to reach out, to put a hand on Lily’s shoulder, but she didn’t. The girl wasn’t asking for comfort. She was telling her story because no one else would.
«That’s why Michael doesn’t come back,» Lily said finally, turning those green eyes on Emily. «He blames himself. He thinks if he’d been here, Daniel would still be alive. But he couldn’t save him. He couldn’t save any of us.»
The wind rippled across the lake, carrying the bitter smell of smoke from somewhere in the distance. Emily swallowed hard. In that moment, she understood why Michael never drank, why he never mentioned his family, why he shut down whenever she asked.
His silence wasn’t pride or secrecy. It was grief. And sitting beside Lily, Emily knew the truth she had uncovered was only the beginning.
The wind off the lake carried a damp chill, and Emily pulled her coat tighter, but she didn’t move. Lily sat hunched forward on the log, elbows on her knees, staring at the water as though the stories trapped inside her would only come out if she kept her eyes fixed on something steady.
«There were four of us,» Lily began, her voice flat but edged with a bitterness too old for a 12-year-old. «My oldest sister is Sarah. She got married before she even finished high school. She’s got kids now, a couple of them, maybe more.»
«We don’t see her much. Then there’s Michael. Then Daniel. He was only a year younger than Michael. And then me.»
Emily’s breath caught. She could picture Michael as an older brother, protective and steady. But Daniel—his name hung in the air like a ghost.
«Sarah’s always been kind of a mess,» Lily went on. «She married this guy who drinks almost as much as Mom. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they make up, sometimes they come. Social services showed up once, almost took her kids. She cleaned up just long enough to keep them, but it never really changes. That’s just the way things are with her.»
She picked at a thread on her jeans, then tore it free. «Michael left as soon as he could. He went to community college in Cleveland, started working, tried to make a life for himself.»
«He’d come back on weekends, bring us food or clothes. He always worried about me and Daniel. He’d yell at Mom, try to make her stop drinking, but it never stuck. She’d just wait until he was gone and then start again.»
Emily swallowed hard, trying to keep her expression neutral, though her stomach twisted.
«Daniel was different,» Lily whispered. «He stayed. He tried to hold things together, especially when Michael was away. He protected me, even from Mom. And he believed, he really believed he could save her.»
Her voice cracked. Emily waited, letting the silence hold space. «One winter, a couple of years ago, Mom was with this guy,» Lily said finally.
«His name was Tony. He was mean, always drunk, always angry. One night, he came after her with a knife. I don’t even know what they were fighting about. Something stupid, probably. Daniel jumped in. He tried to get between them, tried to stop Tony. He got stabbed before anyone could do anything.»
The words hit Emily like a blow. She covered her mouth, horrified.
«By the time the ambulance came, it was too late,» Lily continued, her voice barely above a whisper. «Daniel bled out on the floor. Michael wasn’t here that weekend. He couldn’t make it back because of a snowstorm.»
«He said later that if he’d been here, Daniel wouldn’t have died. He screamed at Mom at the funeral, told her she’d killed him. And maybe she did. If she hadn’t let Tony into our lives, Daniel would still be alive.»
Emily blinked back tears, her throat tight. She could almost see it: the cramped living room, the shouting, the flash of a knife, Daniel collapsing while his little sister watched.
«Michael never came back after that,» Lily said. «Not really. He showed up one last time to pack his things and to make sure I had what I needed. He gave me a card, opened a bank account for me, put money in whenever he could.»
«But he wouldn’t step inside the house again. He told Mom if she brought another man around, he’d call the cops and have him locked up. And I believed him. Everyone did. People around here don’t mess with Michael anymore. But he still won’t come back.»
Lily finally turned to look at Emily. Her eyes were wet but hard, daring Emily to deny her story. «That’s why he doesn’t drink. That’s why he never talks about us. He hates alcohol. Hates what it does. Hates her. And he blames himself every single day for Daniel.»
Emily’s chest ached. She wanted to gather the girl into her arms, to tell her it wasn’t Michael’s fault, that no one could have stopped a storm or changed that night. But she understood now why Michael had built such thick walls around his past.
Every sip of liquor, every shadow of that house, carried the memory of blood on the floor and the brother he couldn’t save. For a long while, neither of them spoke. The lake shimmered dully, the sun sliding lower, casting the world in shades of gray.
Emily stared at the water, trying to absorb the weight of what she had just heard. She thought about the man she knew, the man who laughed softly when she burned pancakes, who folded laundry without complaint, who kissed her hand in passing as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
And now, beneath all of that, she saw the grief he carried like a second skin. It wasn’t shame that kept him silent. It was pain. Pain so deep he couldn’t bear to name it.
Emily closed her eyes, a single tear slipping down her cheek. For the first time, she fully understood why Michael never raised a glass, never let himself relax when others lost themselves in drink. For him, alcohol wasn’t a casual indulgence.
It was the reason his family had fallen apart, the reason his brother was buried in the ground, the reason he kept Lily at arm’s length though he loved her fiercely. And for Emily, the truth was both devastating and clarifying. The silence that had once unsettled her now made heartbreaking sense.
The drive back to Cleveland felt longer than the drive out, though the distance was the same. The highway stretched on endlessly, but Emily’s mind was heavier now, weighed down by what she had learned at the lake. Lily’s voice replayed in her head, flat, matter-of-fact, yet filled with wounds so deep they would never fully close.
