They took down all the pictures of him. They cleared his room, which had sat waiting for his graduation. They burned every memory of him they ever had, both tangible and intangible. The fire consumed everything. They steeled their hearts and never mentioned his name.
But there was always crying.
"He was so good…why him…?" Medeline would ask. And Steven would change the subject.
As for Ronny…he never said anything. He kept his guilt bottled inside of him much like he had kept his hatred and jealousy hidden before Bobby came home for the last time. He was a boy of secrets, as compared to Bobby, who wore his soul like a suit, baring everything to everyone. He talked as well. Bobby always talked. And Ronny listened. They were always so different. And it seemed as much as Bobby was loved so was Ronny resented and ignored. But things were different now, weren't they? His parents were proud of him for what he'd done…He was the only one now, why wouldn't things be different?
"Why aren't you eating, honey?" Steven asked his wife. It was a funny questioned considering he had hardly touched her meatloaf himself. But there was no getting over it. Maddy's cooking had not been the same since the day they renounced Bobby. It tasted of cardboard and tears.
"Is there nothing we could do…" The strong, confident woman she had once been was only a distant memory to the shadow she was now. There were dark bags beneath her eyes and violent crows feet around her mouth. Hate and bitterness clouded her eyes into something that her husband found he could not look into. They frightened him. They bespoke of insanity.
"No, honey. Its incurable. He's lost to us now."
"He coud try, he could be like he used to!" she cried, gritting her teeth audibly. Her face contorted in a sort of sickly rage. Spittle glistened on her lips.
"He won't, please calm down, sweetheart." Steven Drake rose halfway from his chair, pondering franticly whether he should risk approaching his wife.
"He was smart! He was good! Why? Steven, why? We've lost our child, our life! What did we do?"
Ronny sat forgotten. His world was spinning, with hatred toward Bobby and yet an unspeakable guilt over his betrayal. The image of his remorseful face turned toward Ronny in his mother's protective embrace flashed behind his eyelids, and suddenly, Maddy Drake began to scream.
"It never stops Steve! He's always in my head, he's trying to drive me crazy, our beautiful baby boy, he's trying to kill me, our freak, our mistake!" She went off into unintelligible mutterings and Steven thought it better to keep his distance as he stared at the less than edible meatloaf. The images haunted him too, of Bobby's face and all those flames…those flames that killed the policeman, those flames that consumed Bobby's report cards and school pictures, that ate their family portrait like their guilt ate the family themselves. They were images so bright and vivid, he thought sometimes that he was reliving the moment…
Ronny lept up, sending his chair flying behind him into the wall. The images grinded into his parents heads, and his mother began to scream louder, her words lost in the agony of her soul. He clamped his hands over his ears and ran from the dining room. His parents barely heard his door slam.
In his room Ronny stared at his hands as though they were foreign to him.. His head was still spinning with images. Horrible ones, of killing, and hating, and betraying. He could see a weird rippling in the air around his fingertips. Tears spilled from his eyes as he realized what was happening to him. He hung his head and let them fall, watching how eerily slow their decent to his floorboards was.
They ate no breakfast. Medeline had barely the will to cook dinner, and even that meal did not sustain the family. Steven foraged as best he could, while Ronny grew thin and pale. The house and its occupants had become shells, and no one knew it.
Ronny stared out the window, his face dry from his tears. There were still sections of dead grass on theirs and the neighbors lawns, morbid yet subtle reminders of that day. What was he going to do? How could he live with this?
His father knocked on the bedroom door, and Ronny winced, his tears burning his eyes as he thought of the true abandonment he would receive. Bobby had friends. He had always been accepted, no matter what. Ronny…well, he'd always been rejected. And he was the normal one.
"Ronald." Steven Drake said, his voice raspy. He had an idea. Oh, he had a terrible idea. If only he was wrong, if only they could be normal, and pick up the pieces of their lives.
Ronny opened the door. Steven denied the evidence on Ronny's face. "Please." He said. "Not you."
They snaked down his face, so slowly…as if they were made of denser liquid then normal tears. "Father, I—"
Steven Drake gripped his sons arms, so tightly that they both knew there would be bruises. "Tell me." He growled. "Please, God, tell me Ronny!"
He sobbed. "I can't, I can't…" And he felt it rising in him. A primal instinct with a terrifying feeling of more than human. His father's eyes widened, because he saw himself many other times in his life, shaking Ronny by his shoulders, screaming Why can't you be more like your brother? He saw Bobby being born, but not Ronny, no, he was at work, couldn't miss the deal he was making. The images raked across him mind, like the talons of his own sin.
"STOP IT! STOP IT!" And Steven Drake was aging before Ronny's eyes. His face wrinkled, his eyes yellowed, his hair faded to silver white.
Ronny whimpered.