The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. Thomas Mullen

to Jason and Whit. “Of course,” she said suddenly, as if she hadn’t realized it was her turn. “That’s fine…Goodbye.”

      “What is it?” Jason asked after she hung up.

      “It was the Points North police. He said that someone has…stolen your bodies. Souvenir hunters—he referred to them as morbids. ‘Some morbids must have taken them.’ He assured me that he would find the…bodies, and have them shipped to the funeral home of my choice. He said he’d call again once he’d tracked them down.”

      “Crazy people out there,” Jason said, calmly threading a finger through the handle of his coffee cup. “Poor fools got the wrong bodies.”

      

      It was decided that the Firesons—those publicly known to be alive, that is—should go about their day as they would normally be expected to. June’s boys cleaned the house while June stayed upstairs, sewing and doing needlework for the Salvation Army. Playing the role of grieving mother, Margaret stayed home, too, and as more calls trickled in from friends who’d read the paper she stoically accepted their condolences. At Jason’s behest, she refused their kind offers to visit, deliver food, clean the house. If she sounded somewhat less mournful than the friends had expected, perhaps they assumed she was still in shock. But after the fourth such call she found it difficult to feign sorrow, and allowed herself such comments as “Well, I’m not sure I believe all this, you know. My boys are smart, maybe there’s something fishy about these stories.” Her friends doubtless pitied her for being in denial.

      Weston, who seemed to be living at home again, told the brothers he had been given the day off but had some errands to run. On his way out the door, he crossed paths with Jason in the front parlor.

      “Listen, Wes,” Jason said quietly, remembering their last conversation a few days ago. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

      Weston just nodded and seemed suddenly nervous, even scared.

      “I’m sorry for some of the things I said that night,” Jason said. He wasn’t good at this. “It was a…a bad time. I didn’t mean all that.”

      Weston nodded again, as if he hoped he could nod this all away, all the bad blood between them, without having to utter a word.

      “I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, being the only one who’s home,” Jason continued, “looking after Ma and June. I know I can be a lousy brother sometimes. But what me and Whit do…It’s a little bit easier knowing that you’re here, you know?”

      Weston’s eyes filled again. Jason hadn’t known how his judgmental brother would respond to his apology, but he hadn’t expected this. It only made him feel worse.

      “You’re a good brother, Wes.”

      Weston folded his arms, hugging himself, and his neck hung down for a moment. He wiped at his eyes and looked up again.

      “Thanks, Jason. I’m sorry, too.”

      “It’s been a hard time, I know.” He put a hand on Weston’s shoulder, squeezed. “But we’re all going to be okay, you understand? We’re going to stick together.”

      “Yeah.” Weston stared at the floor. “I know we will.”

       III.

      New facts emerged after Darcy’s third drink. The words on the newspapers danced for her now, up and to the right as if hoping to escape her gaze. Damned words, always running from you. Always hiding things. She stared and stared and even with her eyes wet she insisted on wrenching every last bit of truth from the stories before her.

      Rain splashed through the window she had shattered with a highball glass. Thunder rolled over Lake Michigan and crashed upon the city. It was midmorning yet the skies were dark with the wrath of an afternoon storm, nature itself confused, nothing making sense.

      She had tried to call Veronica, but there was no answer. She had even used her own telephone, which Jason had forbidden for sensitive calls. But would the police still be monitoring her now? She had tried other numbers, dialing safe houses and the brothers’ sundry associates, but the few people who answered insisted they didn’t know anything. She felt that she didn’t know anything, no matter how many times she read the stories. And something akin to fear, tainted with guilt, kept her from dialing Mrs. Fireson in Lincoln City. How could Darcy talk to the mother of two dead sons? Would she somehow be blamed?

      On her desk were discarded copies of the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Times, the Daily News, and the Herald-Examiner. She would have scanned the red sheets, too, if they had written about him instead of carping about their political goals and gripes, overlooking what was truly important. Nothing was important but him. And they were telling her he was gone.

      Two days earlier, she and Veronica had driven separately to Valparaiso, each taking a long and circuitous route to ensure that they weren’t followed, checking into the tiny motel under the names they’d been assigned. By midnight the brothers were officially late. Ronny had fallen asleep at some point—after endlessly fussing around the room, unsure what to do with herself without her toddler, whom she had left with relatives—but Darcy had smoked all through the night, sitting in the room’s sole chair and peering through a crack in the blinds. Few autos passed that night, and none of them stopped.

      Surely the brothers would have called, unless something had happened. Or perhaps they were afraid that the girls were being watched—had they been followed after all? Did the police know about the motel? Parked cars in the lot of a nearby filling station became suspect. Maids were shooed away. By the next afternoon, she and Ronny had played cards and read the magazines they’d brought along, trying to act like friends, but without the presence of the brothers their true feelings were harder to conceal. Frayed nerves dispensed with etiquette. By the second morning they felt still more worried, and were getting hungry. Ronny missed her son and was anxious about leaving him too long. The brothers must have busted a tire, Darcy had said, trying to sound casual and unconcerned. Maybe they heard about a roadblock and needed to take a detour. They’ll get back in touch. She had invited Ronny to Chicago with her, but Ronny had declined the offer. She had been cold about it, Darcy thought. As if she feared what was coming and didn’t want to be in Darcy’s presence when it happened.

      Back in Chicago later that day, Darcy had heard the cry as she approached the first newsstand. The news was called out like a military victory, and she was the foreigner in her own town, left to mourn what others were celebrating.

      The headlines she saw from twenty paces away. Competing for the largest font and most dramatic adjectives. One of them opting instead for bluntness: firefly brothers killed. The simplicity was an anvil dropping on her heart, pushing the breath from her body, doubling her over.

      She didn’t remember whether she had paid for her copies or just walked off with them. She didn’t remember how she’d made it back to her room, but here she was. The wind picked up and rainwater darkened the pages. She lifted them to keep the ink from bleeding, to keep it from seeping into whatever mundane nonsense was printed on the back, to keep these worlds distinct. Even as the world was collapsing upon itself. Even as she was having trouble breathing. Another drink will help. Who needs a glass. Who needs something to mix it with. It’s supposed to hurt on the way down.

      On the running boards, it had occurred to her that she was the only one smiling.

      What a beautiful day! Red and yellow leaves danced in the air before her, cartwheeling on their descent, some of them even brushing against her face as the Buick careened through the woods east of that small Indiana town. Early autumn and calm, no wind that morning, but as the car sped along, her hair was horizontal, the tips snapping at the face of the poor sap behind her. She reveled in the way the day felt against her face, the way life felt against her face, as she rushed past it, looking for what lay beyond.

      This had all been very unplanned, of