S H A D E S

Setting boundaries

April rushed into May and with it came a call from my brother, a voice I hadn't heard in close to two months. He'd been brief in the exchange, but I hadn't missed the threads of stress in his tone when he'd asked for me to squeeze him in for a morning coffee chat the following day. 

Finishing up at the gym, I walked down the busy Manhattan streets, a crisp, balmy day with the promise of encroaching summer on the breeze. The sort of morning that was deceptive with a brilliant sun and clear, clear skies overhead, but still demanded the layer of my jacket and jeans.

Collin sat in the nook by the Starbucks window, his back to me, and laptop open. Pushing into the coffee infused chaos, I joined him at the table.

"Hey," I said and his face lifted from the screen. Although he was my slightly older brother, by two years, age wasn't as kind to him as it was to me. Wisps of white lined above his ear and wings of crows feet crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

Rising, Collin gathered me in for a fierce hug. The kind that wrenched the breath out of your lungs and cracked a rib or two. He'd always been an aggressively affectionate hugger; ten years in a hellish marriage hadn't changed that.

"Good, you made it," he said as I sat down. "Can I get you something?"

"I'll grab a green tea in a minute. What's going on with you?" I asked, tucking my knees under the table. "You sounded pretty stressed out."

Collin shut his laptop, large hands folding overtop. His left ring finger, I noticed, was absent its platinum wedding band.

"Oh, shit," I breathed, reaching for him. "When?"

"Couple weeks ago." Our fingers twined and his lips thinned, a whisper of sadness deepening the lines in his otherwise handsome face. "Hell, longer if I am honest. We hadn't been 'working' for a long time, but papers were exchanged at the end of April."

I knew this was coming. A few years ago, the tension between him and his wife Helen had been brutal to behold. A toxic cloud of animosity, from her, and a thick, unyielding fog of depression, from him. "Why didn't you call me?"

His shoulders moved the barest fraction, as if too heavy with the burden of his failing marriage to find the strength to budge.

"I came out by your place, last week," he said, "but you weren't home. Stuck around till the wee hours, hoping to catch you."

"Oh," I said, "I was,"—with Tristan—"out of town. Business."

"Figured that might've been the case. How's the merger treating you?"

 "It's been—good. An adjustment, but good."

"Good." Collin nodded, fingers tracing the edges of his computer. "Well, look the reason I called you out is, well its Nathanial."

"Nate?"

 "I don't know what to do with him. He's getting into all sorts of trouble. Expelled. Again. Twice in one year. I don't think there's a private school in the city that will touch him, now."

"Expelled?" I couldn't believe my ears. My darling little Nate? Memories of a beautiful, tow-headed little toddler danced in my thoughts. That some toddler shifting and growing, transforming into a bright and dazzling young man. Smiling. Always smiling. Always happy. Expelled? Couldn't be. Not Nate. "On what grounds."

"Drugs. Heroin. Cocaine. Jesus." Collin lifted hands to his face, pressed them there. "He could be facing charges. Helen's lawyers are working tirelessly to see if we can reduce them to a misdemeanour with probation." Those hands swiped down over the length of his face, fell to his lap. "They found it in his locker, sis. And he won't give anyone answers. Helen thinks we should send him abroad for a while. To some reform institution for troubled youth."