So I, better than anyone, should know just what to say to make my brother feel better. But it’s a trick question. The truth is, there’s nothing anyone can say.
“Jamie, talk to me. Or, fine. Don’t talk to me. Talk to Alexei!”
At this, my brother only glares.
We’re behind the embassy, right by the wall. Alexei is just on the other side of the fence, but Jamie is acting like they’re strangers.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask.
“Of course I haven’t talked to him,” Jamie says, and I can’t help myself. I take his basketball and throw it with all my might, high over the fence, into Russia’s backyard.
“Hey!” my brother snaps.
“Alexei’s probably home.” I shrug. “Go ask him for your ball back.”
“Brat,” he tells me, and starts toward the doors.
“What can I say? I’m mentally unstable.”
“Don’t joke.” Jamie is spinning on me.
Instinctively, I step back. “You used to have a sense of humor.”
“Not about that. Never about that,” he says. “Besides, someone murdered my friend, Grace. Forgive me if I don’t crack up.”
“Who said anything about murder? We don’t know what happened.”
“Oh,” he says, turning slowly to look at the Russian embassy, “I think we know a little bit of what happened.”
I follow his gaze, but I can’t believe them — the words he isn’t saying.
“No, Jamie. You can’t possibly think that Alexei …”
“He never left the island. Did you know that?” Jamie turns again, this time as if he can see through Adria’s great outer wall, as if he can look all the way out to the island, back into the past. “Spence. He was killed out there.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Our grandfather is the United States ambassador to Adria, Gracie. He gets briefed on these things.”
And Grandpa briefs Jamie. Nobody ever briefs me.
I try to follow where Jamie’s going with this. “So Spence never left the island. Okay. Maybe he got drunk and wandered off and fell. Hit his head. Drowned.”
“He didn’t drown, Gracie. His neck was broken.”
“So he fell and broke his neck!”
I am so used to Jamie being the calm one, the smart one. I’m not used to him being the cold one. But that’s exactly what he is as he looks back at the Russian fence.
“He’d been in a fight.”
“You can’t think Alexei did this. You can’t really, honestly think that.”
“Alexei’s been doing a lot of things I never thought he’d do.”
“Like what?” I demand.
“Like you guys got close.”
“You’re the one who asked him to look out for me.”
“Did he take advantage of you?”
“Did he … Ew. No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Gracie. I see the way he looks at you. How you two are together.”
“Spence is dead and that’s awful. It is so, so awful, and I’d give anything to go back and change that night. I know you would, too. But we can’t. Spence is gone. But if you don’t stop this you’re going to lose Alexei, too. And that would be tragic. Because that is something that you can still stop.”
“Maybe some men deserve to be left behind.”
I know this isn’t just some army thing, some West Point thing. Spence was alive and now he’s not, and Jamie isn’t mad at Alexei. He’s mad at himself. Alexei is just the closest target.
Alexei is my brother’s Scarred Man.
“Spence was an adult, Jamie. He could take care of himself. He wasn’t your responsibility.”
“Like you’re not my responsibility?”
“No,” I tell him. “Don’t you remember? You gave that job to Alexei.”
“Well, then I guess I’ve made a lot of bad decisions this summer.”
Jamie is my family. My blood. If I ever need a kidney, he is totally my first call. But we have never been so alike until this moment. He is changed. Broken.
It’s the one thing I had hoped we would never have in common.
“Ms. Chancellor?” I say. She’s in front of one of the big round windows upstairs, looking out onto the street, when I find her. Dusk is falling, but she holds a coffee cup with both hands, slowly sipping. It’s the middle of summer on the Mediterranean, but it’s like she’s standing beside a pane of frosty glass, watching it snow. I can feel the cold descending.
The crowd is smaller now, here at the end of the day, but there are still protestors chanting, clogging the street and blocking off Embassy Row. Are these people angry with us or the Russians next door? Sometimes it’s hard to say. Some people, after all, don’t care who they yell at as long as they have a reason to keep shouting.
“It’s not going to go away quickly, is it?” I ask, staring at the crowd.
Ms. Chancellor takes a sip. “No, dear. I don’t believe it will.”
“That’s why the prime minister was here, wasn’t it? Because of the crowds?”
“Because of what they represent, yes.”
That’s when I realize Ms. Chancellor isn’t looking at the street — not at the protestors or the massive television trucks that stand right behind the barricades. No. Her gaze is locked on the building next door. There’s an almost identical window on the Russian side of the fence. I half expect to see Alexei standing there, staring back.