Christian snapped a picture of the abandoned pruning knife on the tiles, then turned toward the rows of specimen tables. He headed to his favorite orchid: the Brassocattleya cross.
First, he took a close-up shot of the blossom, then he pinched off a dead leaf and felt its edges to see if it was moist, just as their mother used to.
“She’ll miss these flowers,” Christian commented.
Certainly more than me, Arthur thought dourly.
Christian plucked the flower, and Arthur gasped.
Mother would never have allowed that.
Christian dropped the flower on Arthur’s lap and picked up the pruning knife from the floor.
Arthur watched the blade. He imagined how it would feel if it cut into his wrists, how the blood would well out and drop onto the floor. His mother would know. She’d used a long knife from the kitchens to slit her wrists in the bath. When Arthur found her, the water was such a deep red that it looked as if the whole tub had been filled with blood.
Christian touched the inside of Arthur’s wrist. His fingers slid back and forth along the same spot where his mother had used the kitchen knife.
“Do you think it hurt much?” Christian asked, not shying from the harder questions. His fingers still rested on Arthur’s wrist.
Arthur shrugged, suddenly nervous—not at the subject matter but at the intimacy.
Christian moved his fingers aside, replacing his touch with that of the cold edge of the pruning knife.
Arthur stayed very still, hoping.
Christian took a deep breath, then sliced into Arthur’s wrist—but not too deep. It didn’t hurt as much as he had anticipated. No more than a sting really.
Blood welled out.
Both boys stared at the shiny scarlet line on Arthur’s white skin.
“She left me, too,” Christian said and put the flower into Arthur’s hand.
Arthur clenched his fist, crushing the orchid, and more blood flowed out of his wound. “I know.”
“My turn now.” Christian drew the bloody blade across his own wrist.
“Why?” Arthur asked, surprised.
Christian turned his arm over and dropped his wounded wrist on top of Arthur’s. Their warm commingled blood ran down their arms and dripped onto the clean-swept floor.
With his other arm, Christian took several snapshots: of the crimson drops on the white stone tile, of the bloody flower crumpled on the bench. Last, Christian angled the camera up to take a picture of the two of them together, their arms linked.
“I will never leave you,” Christian whispered to him. “We’re blood brothers, now and forever.”
For the first time since Arthur had found his mother in the crimson water—her stained blond hair floating on the surface, her head tilted back to stare at the plaster ceiling—he broke down and wept.
Arthur felt a hand shove him from behind, stumbling him back to the present.
“Get off my porch!”
He turned to discover a middle-aged woman standing there—about the same age his mother would have been if she’d lived. She scolded him and herded him off her home’s stoop, her flannel nightgown billowing in the night breeze.
Arthur’s reporter instincts came back. “Did you see anything?”
“None of your business what I saw.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sized him up. “But I can say that I don’t like how this Summer of Love has turned out.”
Later, when Arthur filed his story, the headline read Summer of Death follows the Summer of Love.
“I STILL HAVEN’T heard any word from Christian,” Wayne said over the phone three days later. “Our friends in the city haven’t either.”
Arthur frowned, cradling the phone to his ear as he sifted through piles of police reports and forensic exams from the latest murder, a third victim. The young man was named Louis May, recently arrived from Kansas City. Like Christian, the man had likely been drawn by the promise of California, a modern-day gold rush of free love and openness, only to die on the sidewalk, his throat torn open and a flower in his hand.
Had the same happened to Christian? Was his body yet undiscovered?
“But something strange happened this morning,” Wayne said, interrupting Arthur’s line of worry.
“What?” He sat straighter and let the papers settle to the tabletop.
“A Catholic priest came by, knocking at my door at an ungodly early hour.”
“A priest? What did he want?”
“He asked if I knew where Christian might be, where he hung out, especially at night. Strange, huh?”
Strange barely fit that description. Despite his brother’s name, Christian had no religious affiliation. In fact, he only had disdain for those who piously bent their knees to an uncaring god, like Arthur’s parents had. So why would a priest be interested in his brother?
As if hearing Arthur’s silent question, Wayne explained. “The priest said it was important that he find your brother and talk to him. Said Christian’s immortal soul hung in the balance. He told me to tell Christian that he could turn his back on what he’d become and accept Christ into his heart and find salvation. Those were his exact words.”
Arthur swallowed, hearing an echo of his own words to Christian on that last night, words that could not be easily taken back. He had called Christian names, demanded he change, telling him that the path Christian had chosen would only lead to a lonely death. Their argument had grown more and more heated until the brothers fled from each other.
The next day, Christian was gone.
“You should have seen that guy’s eyes,” Wayne continued. “Scared the hell out of me, I have to say. Never met a priest like that. What do you think he really wanted?”
“I have no idea.”
After that call, Arthur sat in his tiny rented room, studying pictures and news clippings taped to the walls. Like Christian, all the victims were men in their twenties. They were dark-haired and handsome.
Arthur stared at a publicity photo of Jackie Jake. The folksinger’s black hair flopped over his eyes, reminding Arthur acutely of Christian. Jake even had the same bright green eyes.
It was at that moment that Arthur realized he didn’t have a single picture of his brother. After their quarrel, in a fit of pique, Arthur had destroyed them all. In many ways, he was as volatile and temperamental as his mother—and in the end, just as judgmental.
Arthur had been a fool back then. He knew it now. He wanted only to find Christian and apologize, but he worried that he might never get that chance. He could never make it right.