"What about your Great Aunt Mariel?" Will dangles the labeled photograph inches away from my nose. We sit knee deep in pool couch cushions, old family snapshots, wedding invitations, envelopes, lists, lists and more lists. My fiancé chuckles, "She's a real looker." He says, holding the picture close to his face.

"She's eighty seven and lives in a very nice retirement village outside Fort Lauderdale," I pluck the photo from his fingers, "and she doesn't care about anything but cats."

"She ought to be the life of the party!" I roll my eyes at him. He shrugs, "I'll take that as a no then," and flicks the picture away. It glides through the air for several seconds before landing soundlessly atop the—and there is no kinder way to put this—rejection pile. I scribble her name off one of my many lists.

"Whhhaaatt aabbboouuttt," Will muses, stretching his long arms up over his head, "Bruce Wayne!" He relaxes and slumps against the cushions.

"Ha," I retort.

"Aw, it might be fun to have a celebrity there," he picks up a loose sheet of paper and begins to fold it into an airplane, "especially since he's local and poor Aunt Mariel isn't going to make it."

"What makes you think that, even if we did send him an invitation, a billionaire neither of us has met would ever want to attend our rinky dink wedding?"

"Hey!" Will acts hurt, "it won't be rinky dink. I promised you a nice wedding," He throws his paper creation into the air.

"For a multi-billionaire it might be," I catch the airplane as it zooms for my face. Will pouts, "besides isn't missing or something like that?"

"Something like that," Will yawns, "I don't follow the tabloids."

"Or the news apparently," I unfold and smooth out the folded paper. On it I've labeled the heading in big letters: Will's Side. The rest of the paper is empty.

"Too depressing," he picks up a pencil to twirl in his restless fingers, "I wouldn't care very much if another mindless gangster got himself shot for keeping too much of the bank job money and is now, how you say, sleepin' with the fishes," he sighs, "they're not very creative are they, the mobsters?"

I haven't been paying much attention to anything my fiancé has said. My eyes and mind are focused on the blank sheet of paper before me. We haven't talked about Will's family or friends. Though now thinking of it, Will doesn't have very many friends at all. He and Joe were never as close as I once thought them to be. The only person I've ever known him to be close to for a fact is me. He simply doesn't hold enough trust in people to allow anyone too deep. I don't know what made a fun loving practical joker like him like this…though I suppose…



"Father's profession?" I suddenly find myself asking.

"Alcoholic with the occasional wife beating," he says dryly, not a hint of humor in his voice.

…I could guess. We've never mentioned anything concerning his family since that day in the janitor's closest. I suck in a deep breath. He must have someone else.

"What about your side of the family?" I prompt. He shakes his head calmly.

"None," he says without making eye contact. He focuses on the pencil he now attempts to balance atop our coffee table.

"Oh come on," I add a giggle, "there must be somebody? Brother, sister, cousins…" no response, "A Great Aunt Mariel?"

I can spy the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. I lean closer, wrapping my arms around his torso and resting my head against his shoulder; one of his hands finds mine resting on his stomach.

"Pleeease?" I bat an eyelash or two. He sighs. He knows I'm not begging him to invite any of his relatives to our wedding. I just want to know why it is so taboo to even bring up the subject.

He clears his throat roughly, "My mother," he begins to appease me, "is…" I can feel his chest tighten, "is dead."

For a psychiatrist Harley you really are an idiot for forcing the subject on him.

"I am so sorry," for more than one thing, I whisper.

He peels my body from him, keeping my hands tucked into his. To my surprise doesn't cease his story, "she was killed when I was sixteen… by my father.

"Oh no, Will!" I squeal, my hands fly to cover my face now turning red. I regret making him talk about this now.

"No, no, don't stop me now," he lifts my hands from my shamed face and squeezes them, "wouldn't you tell anybody else they'd have to face this sort of thing?" I don't respond, he doesn't give me the chance, "Now then, my father was an alcoholic and—"

"A fiend!" I yell.

He uses one hand to ruffle my hair then continues slowly, "I would have said not a very nice person but that works too. He had his…moods and let's say I earned my share of bruises living with the guy. My, ah, mom…was too scared to leave him and too battered to go out in public half the time," I gasp, "I used to think about getting up in the middle of the night and just running away, but those plans always died whenever I thought about leaving my mother alone with him. Cause she was…" he laughs lightly, "so stupid to put up with that bastard! I knew she'd never leave willingly either," he pauses for a moment, when he starts again his voice is nearly frantic, "when I started chem., in high school, and 

realized I was actually good at it, I'd used to try and find all those household materials people say you could extract chemicals from to make bombs out of or some shit like that. I had this wild action movie idea that I could make a pipe bomb or something and slip it under the seat of his car or that I could poison his booze when he wasn't looking," our eye never meet, but he's begun tracing circles against the back of my hand with his thumb, "I would have done anything to get rid of him, to make him just stop hurting her—us! Of course I didn't do the smart thing and call the cops, or simply just knock him out right back. I wanted to be the hero but was still too much of a coward to stand up to him face to face," he presses my hand to his cheek, "but I never did anything I wanted to. I succeeded in making half those...things at least but I was exactly. Like. Her. Too scared and too stupid to see what was coming next.

"So he comes home one night, piss drunk as usual, and screaming that his dinner has gotten cold and what good was my mother if she," his voice shifts, and becomes deeper, " couldn't even give her loving husband a hot meal? She, now, in her one moment of minuscule courage responded with something like," Will's voice changes again, this time in an impression of his mother, "well if you had gotten home before one a.m. you might have actually had a hot meal!," his lip twitches, "he didn't like that," suddenly his forehead collides gently with mine to rest, "breaks a bottle over her head and just keeps slamming her with it, laughing too! I couldn't stand that sound, his laughter," Will grinds his teeth, practically growling now, "he finally spots me in the door frame, watching him beat my mother to death but, as usual, not lifting a tiny fucking finger to help. I let her die and watched him snicker at me when he was finished,"

I squeeze his hand, building up the strength to tell him that it's alright. It's not his fault. It's a tragedy. I'm here.

"Why so serious?" he suddenly asks. I blink, taken aback. He doesn't notice, "Why so serious? He says, no! giggles actually, as if he didn't know he was making me sick. So then he gets his bottle, "Will holds up a hand with an imaginary bottle and licks his lips, "takes a step forward, asks again, why so serious?," he growls, "I say…" he blinks, as if trying to remember, "nothing. And he," his tongue rolls over his lips again and his hand holding the invisible bottle collapses, "falls."

"What?" I finally say, unable to stop myself. He looks me in the eye for what feels like the first time in an eternity.

"He fell. He's dead," he says simply, "end of story."