“What the hell, Ezra? That could have taken her eye out! You okay, baby?”
“I’m fine. I swear. It’s just irritated.”
“Fuck, Luna. I’m so sorry.” Ezra sat back down and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to think about Ethan in pain. I can’t. It kills me. We can’t take his pain away, you know? He’ll be scared, and we are just sitting around here, useless and healthy, for the most part.”
I agreed with Ezra. I glanced down at my arm, from the elbow to my wrist was wrapped in fresh bandages, and the skin was black underneath, slowly starting to peel. It didn’t hurt, only when I, you know, rammed it into a wall. The nerves were dead. Thankfully, I could use my hand, but I couldn’t feel anything in my forearm. If that was how my brother felt all over his body, I couldn’t imagine the pain he would suffer.
The table became quiet. Pain rippled through the air like waves during a windstorm. As if on cue, thunder rolled above us, and when I looked outside, fat flakes of snow started to fall. “Ethan loves the snow,” Luna said, and I brought her hand to my mouth, kissing her knuckles gently. I was glad she knew my brothers so well. She was family, always had been, and she cared for Ethan just like we did.
“He’ll see it,” Evan said confidently. “He’ll be fine. He’ll need us to be strong. The last thing he would want is for us to mope around. We can’t change anything right now. We can be there for him. That’s all we can do.”
“Can we see him today?” I asked, but all of them shook their heads. “Why?”
“He will be in and out of surgery and recovery. The doctor said we wouldn’t be able to come by until tomorrow.” Zeke sighed, tossing his bacon on the plate. Yeah, I had lost my appetite too.
Deciding to change the subject, I pushed away from the table and made my way toward the coffee on the counter. The kitchen was a bit too small for my liking. It barely had any counter space, and it was made of cheap material. I hated cheap.
“I was just about to tell Luna why I don’t have decent furniture.” Which was hypocritical since I hated to have cheap things. I didn’t want to invest yet. Not when I knew I always wanted something bigger.
“Oh yeah? Enlighten us,” Evan said, welcoming the change of subject.
I opened the cabinet a pulled three mugs down, one for Ezra since he had a temper, one for Luna, and then myself. They were all the same, blue coffee cups, nothing special. “It’s because I wanted all of us to get a place.” There. I had dropped the seed; now, I just had to water it. “I was hoping to buy the Hampton place at auction, but I missed it. It’s probably sold by now.”
“You wanted that haunted, half-burnt down mansion? Where the ghost of Glenn roamed the halls?” Ezra pretended to be a ghost and lifted his hands, wiggling his fingers as he made a creepy sound.
“Stop! You know I don’t like ghost stories, Ezra!” Luna said, and then something fell on the table. She probably tossed something at him.
“We all know it isn’t haunted, but yeah, I wanted it. Ethan always knew I wanted it. The place is huge. Big enough for all of us to live together but have our own lives. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it could be a cool project if it was still up for sale.” I was too afraid to look at them and see the amusement on their face. They wouldn’t take me seriously. I filled each mug with rich black coffee.
“It would make sense for all of us to live together,” Evan said. “My apartment is a shoebox, and I never invest because I’m always bouncing around between apartments to hang with you guys. It would save me money. I feel like my rent is going down the drain since I’m never there.”
“Us too,” Ezra and Zeke unified. They already lived together. The two couldn’t be separated or they wouldn’t function.
“Hampton place, huh?” Ezra said, leaning back in a wooden chair that I found on the side of the road. It creaked, and for a second, I was worried he was going to break it, but it held strong. “I think it sold at that auction,” he said. “Wasn’t it about a week ago?”
“Yeah, it was, come to think of it,” Zeke said.
“Shame. That would have been cool,” Ezra chucked in his two cents too.
Great. If I would have just put the fear behind me, we could have had the Hampton place, but because I didn’t speak up, the opportunity was gone.
I sat the coffees on the table, and disappointment gnawed at me. For years, I thought of that place as mine. Years. “Oh okay, I’m sure there are other places.” There weren’t. No places existed like the Hampton Mansion.
Keys were tossed at me, nearly dropping into my coffee, but I caught them in time. “What’s this?” I asked Evan, who then lifted his left side and slid something out of his back pocket. It was an envelope, and he tossed that to me too. “What is this?”
“Just open it and find out. Stop being annoying,” he grumbled in an agitated huff.
“Okay,” I drawled. The envelope was long and white, but not sealed. When I pulled the paper out, I unfolded the top and bottom of the pages, and my heart caught in my throat. “Guys,” my eyes watered when I read the deed.
It was the deed to the Hampton place. It was dated back to the 1600s. The last signatures on it was Evan, Ezekiel, Ezra, and Ethan Moore in black squiggly lines. The only name that was missing was mine.
“What is this?” I asked, holding up the paper that meant this home was ours. “What the hell is this?”
“Let me see,” Luna said with excitement, her smile as bright as a ray of light shining through the blinds in the morning. “Oh my god, you guys are homeowners!”
“How…when? Why? What? How…how did you guys know I wanted the mansion?”
Ezra snorted while Zeke slapped his hand on the table. “You’re kidding, right? You’ve been obsessed with it since we were kids, sweetheart. Everyone knows your obsession with it,” Luna said, still looking at the paper.