Chapter Five: Tribulations

Don was furious. Charlie knew it when he arrived outside the FBI building and from a distance watched his brother march out the front entrance across the bridge, suit jacket over his shoulder, and bump into an elderly woman without excusing himself or apparently noticing.

Jogging, Charlie zigzagged through the stream of pedestrians and caught up with him halfway through the courtyard. "What's wrong?" he said. "I left a message."

"Shit," Don said, but didn't slow down. He was headed straight for the adjacent park.

Charlie jogged faster, struggling to match Don's slightly longer stride—why didn't I grow at least as tall as he did?—and stumbled on a crooked slab in the sidewalk. "What's going on?"

"They aren't giving me any choice." His voice boomed into a breezeway and a young couple nuzzling by a railing detached their lips long enough to see who was stomping through. Don seemed unconcerned with the impression left in his wake and thrust his jacket into Charlie's belly. "Hold this," he said, rolling up a cuff.

Charlie clutched it, surprised. "I don't understand," he said, and stopped cold. They'd reached the pathway into the park and he was taken aback. Ahead, clusters of pine trees awaited him, towering like those in the forest, filled with hiding places. Stop it, he thought, you're in the middle of the second largest city in the U.S., for God's sake, it's irrational. He hurried on, intercepted Don. "Do we have to go this way?"

Don was about to reply when his cell phone rang. "I hate that thing, shut the damned thing off," he said, and shoved a sleeve back up his elbow, speeded up.

"Don't you have it?" Charlie said, listening over the noise of a passing airplane. The phone rang again and he realized it was in the jacket. Falling behind, he fumbled through the pockets and plucked it out, then dropped and lost sight of it. "Wait up," he said, searching around him. But Don was thirty feet away, fists tight, mumbling.

The phone's ringing led Charlie to a row of cracks in the pathway where weeds and ground cover had taken root along the grassy perimeter. There he found the device and answered it. The caller had disconnected but he recognized Megan's number. Slipping the phone back into the pocket, he saw that Don had arrived at the waterfalls which were part of the fountain in the center of the park. He sprinted to catch up, grasping Don's arm, and pleaded with him to slow down, state what the trouble was.

Don jerked away, passing the fountain, and left him behind. Damn you.

A bristling sensation crept up Charlie's neck and he pressed the jacket to his body, scrutinized the area, feeling exposed, vulnerable. The number of people had multiplied on the path and others were sitting round the fountain and on benches or having picnics in the middle of patchy fields, a few on blankets in the shade. Beneath an ancient oak, a young woman set a case down on the grass and knelt to open it. She resembled the woman who'd come to the door searching for her cat. Taking out a flute, she deftly assembled it and briefly tuned up, then began a classical piece Charlie didn't recognize, her sheet music propped between tree limbs. Around her, people listened, tilting their heads.

Don—find him. He forced himself onward, rushing, and discovered his brother sitting on the cobblestones, his back against the base of a statue near the pergola, legs folded up. Charlie decided to wait until Don was prepared to confide, extending the jacket to him.

He looked up at it, then at the cobblestones. "Go home, Charlie."

"I have a request."

"That why you're here? From now on, all my answers are no."

Charlie sat next to him, wrinkling the jacket over his thighs. "Well, there's obviously another reason now."

Don said, "Damn them."

He kept silent.

"They're punishing me, Charlie." His tone was angry again. "Reylott's grasp is long and wide and everlasting. He's making crap of my life."

"Our lives."

Don squinted, studied Charlie as if sizing up his tribulations as well. "He's in your head right now, isn't he?"

"I can't seem to get rid of him," Charlie said. "You going to share your secret?"

"My embarrassing secret?—it's no secret. No sir, can't show my face, they'll be looking at me funny."

"What happened?"

Don took a breath that meant business. "I'm on paid leave, effective immediately. They called me in after lunch. No warning, nothing. Filled me in on what happened yesterday, like I didn't know."

"Somebody complained?"

"Heck, no. The whole department knew I'd freaked out in minutes."

Charlie said, "How do they justify it?"

"Evidently, I'm a liability to my team. I'm unstable, unreliable. Told me somebody could've died, that they can't depend on me anymore, so, until I get some counseling, get cleared by a doc, I'm persona non grata."

"They can't do that."

"Can. Have," Don said briskly. "Didn't even have the courtesy to offer me a desk assignment. Not that I would've taken it. It's insulting."

"Okay, this is significant. Very timely. Fits in with why I called you."

"Significant?" Don's phone rang and with Charlie still holding onto the jacket, he snatched it out of the pocket nearest him. "Good riddance to you, too," he said, and, sitting forward, skillfully pitched it out within range like the ball player he was, right into the fountain. The resultant splash sprayed droplets over the retaining ledge, noise masked by the waterfalls.

Charlie ducked, wholly astounded. "Shutting if off would've been sufficient."

"You do it your way, I'll do it mine."

"Warn me next time." He glanced at a pair of legs below a bench, clad in corduroy and loafers, the rest of the body hidden behind a newspaper. "I saw a counselor today," he said. "He wants me to ask you…ask if you'll come in and see him, both of us, together. He feels it would facilitate—"

"Whoa. A shrink? Strike out, pal." Don abruptly reclaimed his jacket. "No way," he said, and sprung up.

"How can you say that?' Charlie said, also rising. "It's your job on the line."

"I'll take a vacation. I've accumulated a chunk of time. Fight it. Get a lawyer. Appeal. There's ways. Even feds have a right to due process. I'm not giving in yet."

"But wouldn't it be easier to comply? I mean, I know you'll get better."

"Get better? Charlie, I'm okay, yesterday was one bad day, one event. Up 'til then, I was fine. Fine!" He slung the jacket over his arm. "Let's get out of here, my vacation's expecting me."

Charlie watched Don retreat toward the fountain, thinking he would notice he wasn't with him and turn around, ask that he join him on the walk back. In the wilderness, Don had been the hero, saving his life, kept them going. To his last ounce of strength, he'd fought for their lives. Here today, it felt different. Difficult. Complicated.

I'm being abandoned.

"This is important," he shouted after him, but Don was well on his way. On the bench, the man with the newspaper lowered and refolded it and Charlie zoomed in on the man's denim coat, similar to Reylott's, with silver buttons and zippers, frayed collar, and backed away. With an eye on the stranger, he half-circled the fountain and forgot about his brother for a time, made sure no one was tailing him.

Finally, he gave up on finding Don and traveled back toward the courtyard on a winding path, lagging behind on a bench to sort things out, partly hidden behind a grounds keeping truck parked on the lawn. Trying to relax, he watched a gardener tend to a sprinkler head nearby.

I won't be driven by you, Reylott, by the past, he thought, and another plane flew by, its shadow flickering rapidly over the bench. In that interval, Reylott's ghost taunted him in return: Your brother doesn't care—not enough.

Don doesn't hear me. Or is it that he doesn't want to? He's forgotten. In the end, I was the one who saved his life.

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