Lamentation by Joe Clifford Page B

blame yourself for not being able to fix your brother, and you feel you’re letting down his memory. So you deliberately sell yourself short and don’t live up to your potential. You suffer. Like a penance.”
    “Congratulations,” I said, jeering. “That’s officially the dumbest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
    “How long do you expect us to wait for you to get your shit together?”
    I moved toward her.
    “What if I did?” I said.
    “What if you did what?” Her eyes blazed with fury as she balled her hands into tiny fists, mouth compressed into a hard, thin line, which is what happened every time I got her worked up, something I possessed an uncanny ability to do.
    I stepped closer, and she stuttered a half step back.
    “What if I had my shit together?” I said. “What if I had a regular job, a steady paycheck with security and benefits—what if I worked at the phone company like Charlie—punched a clock every morning, came home every night?”
    “What if you did?”
    I moved in. She backpedaled, bumping against the kitchen table, hands fumbling to grip an edge.
    “Would you still be with me?”
    She couldn’t retreat any farther; I was pressed against her now. She turned her head away. But I had her pinned, my mouth inches from her face as she squirmed half-heartedly.
    “I’m not answering that,” she said. “It’s a stupid question.”
    “What’s so stupid about it?”
    Jenny stopped squirming, squared her face to mine. Her hands went to my hips, pulling me in, pressing hard against my jeans. She stared into my eyes.
    “Because I never would’ve left in the first place.”
    I jerked a hand over her head and snagged my heavy wool coat off the kitchen table. “I have to go.”
    I left her standing there.
    “Thanks for the visit,” I said, walking out. “Lock up when you leave.”
    “You should know, people are saying he killed that guy.”
    “People are wrong.”
    I bulled out the door and down those old rickety steps, out into the biting northern winds that felt like a million razors slicing my skin.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The Dubliner was dead, typical for a Sunday night. A few college-aged stragglers looking too preppy for White Mountain Community—but too far from Dartmouth to be Ivy League—played a game of ham-fisted darts in the corner, in between loud sports talk and rape jokes. A pair of white-haired, leather-faces slumped over amber shot glasses along the bar, droopy eyes, poor posture, trying to tuck a lifetime of regret deep down inside and keep it hidden from the light.
    On weekends the place could pick up when Liam, the bar’s owner, featured his Celtic folk trio, The January Men. The music sucked, but if you cozied up to him afterwards, telling him how great they were, you’d get drinks on the house all night long. Even on Fridays and Saturdays, patrons were mostly locals; nobody would come to a place like the Dubliner unless he lived within a six-block radius.
    I didn’t see Charlie so I poked my head out on the smoking porch, where I found him—and Fisher—leaning against the long tiki hut counter, island straw and bamboo entirely out of place in an Irish-themed bar in the dead of winter in the Northern wilds. Charlie waved at me; Fisher nodded glumly. The two of them were smoking cigarettes, a pitcher of beer and a basket of chicken wings between them. The cold night air hurt to breathe in.
    I’d give Charlie hell later. I knew he’d planned on calling Fisher, but didn’t realize he already had, and that that was the urgency behind meeting for a drink. I could’ve used prep time before having to deal with the guy.
    All the umbrellas were strapped down, chairs upended and set atop tables. Deep snow covered the patio floor, except where Charlie andFisher stood, a puddle of slush from smokers’ trampling. On the walls, a fenced enclosure, hundreds of license plates and other tin sign oddities hung, quirky symbols of Americana from places like Route 66, the Grand