Hank's Pub is the closest bar to home, and probably the grungiest in Texas. I haven't been there in years. Even when my cop buddies and I would go out for a beer (or several), we would usually go to more upscale places than Hank's. But Luke had always liked it there. Said it fit with his soul.

I step inside the bar and immediately spot Luke sitting at the counter. He is slouched over, his head in one his hands, his eyes covered by his hair which he had always worn just a little long in front. Empty shot glasses make a half circle around his arms, and he's currently nursing what looked like another shot of whiskey.

There are only a few people sitting in the bar and none of them are sitting anywhere near Luke. The bartender, a tall, bearded man who is just a touch on the hefty side, looks up at me. "You need directions, son?" he asks me, his Texas accent a good deal thicker than my own. "You don't look like you're from around here."

"I used to be," I say. "A long time ago."

Luke's head lifts up very quickly and he pauses. Then, slowly, he turns around on his stool and looks at me. A moment passes.

"Jesus Christ," he drawls, "what are you doing here?"

I don't answer. Instead, I walk up to the bar and sit down next to him and look at the bartender. "Can I get a beer?" I ask, and he nods, looking back and forth between Luke and I. Obviously, my little brother is a regular around here, and I can't imagine he gets many visitors. After all, who would come? Mom? Richard?

The bartender serves me a glass and I drink a sip. It tastes warm and a little flat but somehow having some alcohol in me makes me feel just a little bit better as I'm sitting next to Luke for the first time in six, maybe seven years. Luke is watching me, a dryly amused smile on his face.

"You know," he says, "I've been sitting here dreading going to the funeral, not because of Dad, but because I'd have to face you and deal with some kind of confrontation. I was starting to think maybe I just wouldn't even go. It's not like anyone would care. Mom certainly wouldn't be disappointed. I think she might even be happy, being able to prove herself right about me yet again." He chuckles, bitterly, and finishes off his whiskey. "I was going to go to all this trouble to avoid having to see you and here you are, coming to see me. That just beats it all." He laughs again but I don't join him. My fingers clench a little around my glass of beer. "So, why have you ventured into the depths of this unholy place, big brother? Why are you here?"

"Lilly," I say.

He nods. "That figures. You and Lilly were always like peas in a pod. Bestest of friends." He orders another whiskey from the bartender, who barely pretends to be washing glasses as he watches us silently. "So, Lilly wants you to what, make peace with me, drag my sorry ass home?"

I shrug. "I guess." I'm having trouble making my voice sound softer. Every word comes out harsh and clipped. Luke notices, but to his credit, he doesn't call me on it. I'm glad. I'm not sure I could take that right now, not after today, not from him.

"So. . ." Luke says after a good pause of silence with a weak chuckle, "how's life been treating you?"

I look at him with a certain amount of contempt and take another sip of my beer. "Look, man, I'm doing this for Lilly, all right? I don't need some false bonding moment, okay?"

I try not to look at him but I can't help but notice the expression on Luke's face. It almost seems to crumple, like a piece of paper used to being thrown regularly in the trash. He covers it quickly but not quickly enough. "Yeah," he says, his voice bitter. "Yeah, I should have known you wouldn't care. You just want me to be unhappy. You've always wanted me to be unhappy. Well, you know what, man? Fuck you! I don't need to go home to a bunch of fuckin' assholes who haven't given a shit about me since the fuckin' day I was born."

I was starting to feel just a touch ashamed of myself until Luke's outburst. Now I look at him incredulously. "You want me to feel sorry for you, is that it? Well, sorry, Luke, but when you screwed my fiancée, you sort of lost any right to ask for my godamned sympathy. You hurt me, Luke, not the other way around, so let's get things straight right now, okay?"

Luke opens his mouth to respond and then shuts it. He drinks his shot of whiskey. I close my eyes. I didn't want our first talk in years to go down like this. "Look," I say, "I can't change the fact that I'm still mad at you. I just, I can't. And I know you're mad, or resentful or whatever towards me. I get that. And all of this shit we've got between us, I don't think it's gonna be fixed in five minutes at some crummy bar. " At this point I remember the less-than-subtle eavesdropping bartender and I look at him. "Sorry."

He shrugs. "Ain't my bar."

"Anyway," I say to Luke, "we've still got stuff and that's fine. We don't have to have everything forgiven and forgotten already. I mean, it's just way too soon. But we're brothers, man, and Lilly's right. This isn't supposed to be about us. This is supposed to be about Dad. So, do you think that if we try, we can try to be cordial, at least for just a little while?"

Luke looks at me out of the corner of his eye and then nods once, slowly. "All right," he says.

We're quiet again. After awhile, and once the bartender appears to get bored and goes to snoop on the other customers, Luke looks at me and asks, "So, how are you doing? I mean, about Dad?"

I shake my head. "I don't know, man. It doesn't feel real yet, y'know?"

"Yeah," Luke says. "You doin' the eulogy tomorrow?"

"Yeah," I say. "Mom and Robert are having a collective apoplexy."

"Mom's still pissed at you?"

"Perpetually," I say. "I think Mom's forgiveness only comes after a dead body. Hers or mine, I don't know."

Luke laughs so hard he spits his whiskey and I smile at the sight before it fades into a frown. I remember when he would have been spitting milk instead and I wonder how often he does come to this bar. Luke wipes his hand across his mouth and smiles wryly. "Sorry, man. That's not really funny."

"It's okay," I tell him. "Might as well laugh while you can, right?"

"Yeah," he says and downs another drink. I glance at the empty shot glasses around him. Luke doesn't really seem drunk but I don't think much of it's hit him yet. Knowing him, he'll probably be just fine and then totally gone in under a minute.

"We should get you home," I say and Luke's laughter all but disappears as he follows my gaze to the shot glasses. "Lilly says you've been spending a lot of time here."

"Yeah, well, it's as good as place as any," he says. "Nobody bothers you or tries to fuck with you. And if they do, well, that's okay. That's what a good bar fight is for."

He turns to look at me, and I can see the large bruise on his forehead that I somehow failed to notice before. Some CSI I am. I chalk it up to stress and decide not to ask how he acquired it. "You ready to go?"

Luke doesn't answer at once. He's back to looking at his shot glasses and I'm not sure as I haven't been gifted with telepathy, but I think he's mentally calculating how much his blood level is for how much booze he's had. Luke was always pretty good with math and science. He could have done better for himself than just a mechanic but he just loved those cars. Besides, I think our parents had their effect too.

As if reading my mind, Luke asks abruptly, "Do you remember that year we did the science fair together?"

I nod. It was Luke's first science fair. He was about nine, or so, in the fourth grade. I was already in ninth grade and had done a fair few of those things before, so I offered to help him out with his project. Luke picked the same thing I had the first time I had a science fair.

"Sure," I say. "The volcano."

"Yeah," Luke says. "That volcano." His words are beginning to slur noticeably and I don't think it's going to be long before he loses all lucidity all together. "I had so much fun workin' on that stupid thing with you. We spent hours on it, d'ya remember? An' you coulda been working on your own project but you didn't seem to really care. You said you were having fun just hanging out with me."

"I was," I say, and am not all surprised to hear my voice crack a bit.

"And then the fair came," Luke says, "and my project got second place, and yours got fourth in your science fair. An' you had like three first place science projects in a row or something and Dad came over and told me you had done badly because you spent so much time helping me out. That I had screwed up not only my only project but also yours, and you must just hate me because it." His slur becomes thicker but the bitterness is clear and present in his voice. "I did everything wrong. Just like I always did. And every time it happened, every fuckin' time I did something wrong, you would be there looking patient and understanding, never boasting about how good you did, like Richard would. You'd never tell me what a fuck up I was. You were always just kind. You always just saw what Dad refused to see."

Luke's throat clenches. "He must have told me six thousand times a day how I fucked up this or I fucked up that until I just couldn't stand it anymore, an' I wanted to hate him. I wanted to fuckin' hate him and be glad when he finally died, when he finally got out of my fuckin' face, and out of my life. I wanted to hate him so bad, him and Mom and you. . .I wanted to hate you all, but now that he's dead. . .I don't want him dead. I want him back."

Luke's face crumples again and he's pretty close to crying. The bartender is back and this time Luke seems to notice. "What the fuck are you lookin' at?" Luke yells at him and suddenly gets to his feet, or tries. He staggers, and trying to get his balance, his hand waves out and knocks a couple of the shot glasses off the counter to the floor.

"Hey!" the barkeep says as the glass breaks on the floor. I stand up quickly and steady Luke before he falls over.

"I'll pay for those," I tell the bartender and pay the amount he quotes, which is probably really more than they really cost. I hold on to Luke and notice his right hand is bleeding pretty badly. "You got a first aid kit?" I ask the bartender, who snorts at me.

"You kidding? We don't got shit back here but booze and peanuts."

"Great," I say sarcastically, and then turn back to Luke. "Well, never mind. I got a kit in my car. C'mon."

Luke keeps his eyes on the floor, careful to not look up at me. "Can you just drop me off at my place?" he asks, his eyes searching the ground.

"I can," I say, "but I know the girls would love to have you home. Lilly especially wants to make sure you're okay."

"I don't want Mom to see me," Luke says, his voice quiet and ashamed. "I don't want her to see me drunk. I don't need her bitching. Her righteousness."

"Well," I say, "why don't we just drive around for a bit? Mom never stays up past ten o'clock anyway. We'll just go home after we're sure she's asleep."

Luke doesn't respond for a minute. Finally, he looks up and smiles at me. It's the smile of someone definitely plastered, but it's also so utterly grateful looking that some of the anger I've been carrying for the last six years just disintegrates like the broken glass on the floor. Not all of it; I can't forgive that easily what's been tangled and tarnished for so long, but I can't help feeling sorry for my little brother, the one I never thought I could feel sorry for again.

"Okay," Luke agrees, and I help him out to my car.