Secret Brother Read Free

treated everything in it like her personal possessions and was, according to my grandmother, “more protective of it and your grandfather than I am.”
    Myra was barely five feet four but had gray-black eyes that seemed to double in size when something annoyed or angered her. She had a habitually stern, leanface on which smiles seemed to bubble up from some hidden place whenever she permitted them. I knew the maids my grandparents had were terrified of her, most not lasting more than six months; the grounds people, the gardeners, the pool man, and anyone who came onto the property to do any work made sure she was happy with what they were doing, even before my grandpa had a look at it.
    â€œBut what about Willie?” I asked now, hoping to hear a different answer.
    He shook his head. His face was still ashen gray. When my grandfather was deeply upset about something, he seemed to close up every part of himself through which rage or emotion could escape. The steam built up inside him and made him look like he might explode. The only indication came in the way his hands and lips trembled slightly. Anyone who didn’t know him well would probably not notice or would notice when it was already too late, especially if he was angry. And then, as Grandma Arnold used to say, “Pity the fool who got his engine started!”
    Grandpa Arnold was always the biggest and strongest man ever in my eyes. He was six feet three and at least two hundred twenty pounds of mostly muscle. He owned one of the country’s biggest trucking companies. He had been a truck driver himself, and because he hated the long days and weeks of separation from his family, he had put together his own company and built it to where it was today. It was even on the stock market now. I had no idea how rich my grandfather was, but to most people who knew us, heseemed to be the richest man in the country. Wherever he went, people practically leaped out of their skin to please him.
    He put his hand on my shoulder and then brought me into a hug. We stood while nurses and doctors went around us as if we weren’t there, which made it feel more like a dream.
    â€œCome on,” he said when he stopped hugging me. He took my hand and led me down the hallway to another room, where a nurse and a doctor were working around a very small boy. Despite the scary-looking equipment and the wires and tubes attached to him, the boy didn’t even whimper. He didn’t cry, and unlike any other child his age, he didn’t call for his mother. He was lying there with his cerulean-blue eyes wide open but looking as glassy and frozen as the eyes of the worried people in the lobby. His pale face seemed to be fading into the milk-white pillow, making his flaxen hair more golden. I thought he looked like a fallen cherub, an angel who had floated onto the hospital bed and was still too stunned to speak.
    â€œWhat happened to him?” I asked, sniffing back my tears.
    â€œThey say he was poisoned.”
    â€œPoisoned?”
    â€œWith arsenic. They don’t know if it was done deliberately or if he was eating something meant for rats.”
    I grimaced. I was close to heaving up everything I had eaten all day as it was.
    I looked up at my grandfather and saw somethingdifferent in his face. The terror, anger, and horrible sadness that had been there from the moment we had driven off to the hospital suddenly were gone, replaced with this look of awe and interest I had seen in him only occasionally since my parents’ deaths and especially since Grandma Arnold’s death. He always seemed impervious. It was as if he had a new limit to how deeply he would smile or laugh and how tightly he would hold on to the reins of his curiosity, especially about people. He did what he had to do for Willie and me, but I couldn’t help feeling that he was moving about robotically most of the time and that we were very dependent on Myra to care for us.
    I waited a