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SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG, GUYS... JUST HAD TO DRAW INSPIRATION FROM EVERYWHERE, AND EVERYWHERE WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND...

HOPE YOU ALL LIKE THIS ENOUGH FOR ANOTHER CHAPTER...

  1. CAUSE THERE’S NO CHRISTMAS WITHOUT MISERY

 

I’m not sure what I expected, but I felt a bit disappointed when we were allowed to visit Brian. It didn’t look like anything had changed. The doctor hadn’t been wrong when he told us it was a small step in the right direction. Everything looked just like the way before. Our friend still lay motionless in the too large bed, clearly unconscious. There still wasn’t any signal of life coming off of him, except the beep of the heart-monitor. The only thing that was different was that the constant, annoying hiss of the ventilator had turned into the much less louder breathing of Brian Littrell. The ventilator had taken on a role as an almost unnoticeable background noise. And seeing him breathing made my chest swell with pride. I knew you could do it.

I looked around to see if Leighanne felt the same as I did. Kevin had offered to take Baylee back to the hotel she had booked. Not the Westminster, never the Westminster. Leighanne had accepted the offer gratefully. Her mind seems to have turned around completely, and she doesn’t want to leave the love of her life on his own anymore. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

We’d been allowed to visit Brian, but only two at a time. It was really funny actually, cause now he was doing a little better, everyone seemed to be really careful again. Nick and Harold had gone in first and when they came back out I saw nothing but relief on their faces. Relief and pride. Nick had boasted that he thought Brian looked a lot better. well, not so much, Nick. Call me a pessimist, cause I know that I am.

Kevin had visited briefly with Baylee. The little boy was reluctant to leave at first, but when he found out who was going to bring him back, he eagerly gave in. The kid might love Nick, he adores Kevin. Probably because Kevin has no idea how to say no to small children. My best guess is that Baylee is going to be stuffed with candy by tomorrow morning.

Last turn had been Leighanne and I. And it had been painfully silent so far.

“You know what, doc says if you continue to improve the next week, they’ll get that annoying thing out of your throat,” I smiled. It is going to end right after all, I just know it.

“Howard?” a voice came from behind me and I jumped. Leighanne had been silent for so long, keeping her thoughts for herself, that I’d almost forgotten that she was in the room. It occurs to me that everyone calls me ‘Howard’ since a few months. Wonder how that happened?

“Hmmm?” I answered in non-existing words, due to lack of inspiration.

“Do you really think Harold’s story could be true? Do you think someone did this to my husband?” she demanded. I turned to look at her and saw the desperation in her eyes, heard it in her voice. She wanted a real answer, she demanded a resolution, begged for a way out of the twilight world that had become our present. I wasn’t the person that could give her that. No one could, only Brian himself.

“I don’t know, Leigh, I have no idea what to think anymore…” I felt so lost. Wasn’t I supposed to get closer to the answer, if I found out the truth little by little? The only thing my discoveries seemed to do, was bring up more questions. My dad used to say that the truth would come out eventually, but you had to dig deeper than you thought, go beyond the obvious assumptions and never give up before you’ve completed the entire puzzle, no matter how many pieces there are, no matter how unclear the picture may be. My dad is a smart man, he may not have been a detective, but he worked with them, and I’m sure he could have been one. “All I know is that there’s definitely more to this whole situation than we think. I have no idea what Brian has gotten himself into, but I’m determined to find out. And it would help a lot if you just opened your eyes and told us, buddy,” I added softly as I turned to Brian again.

“But if he didn’t do this, it means someone else did, it means someone wanted him dead. It means someone poisoned my husband, cut him up, and got away with it. It means that there’s a killer on the loose, waiting to strike again! Do you really believe that?”

Fuck! I hadn’t thought of it that way yet! She was right! I realized that if Brian really didn’t kill himself, the truth could be even more complicated than if he did. And more dangerous. If only Harry had remembered a name.

“We need a name!”

“Howie, you’re not listening to me! Why would someone want to kill Brian? And how could they have possibly managed to do so?”

I don’t know!  I don’t know, alright? As far as I can tell, there’s only one person that knows the entire truth, and I don’t think he’s gonna wake up anytime soon, so ‘til then, we’ll just have to figure things out for ourselves! I just know that I believe Harry’s story. He said someone was after Brian.”

“No, he didn’t say that Howie! He said Brian told him someone was after him. He also said he thought his brother was paranoid. And he was right! Brian had been acting paranoid like hell these past months!” she shouted at me. I didn’t know when our conversation had turned into a screaming match.

“What if Brian had every reason to be paranoid,” I muttered.

“So you’re saying that some crazy idiot somehow broke into my husband’s hotel room, cut into his arms, drugged him to hell and wrote a suicide note in Brian’s handwriting, just for the fun of it?” she was flaming with anger now, not at me, but at the thought that someone could have had the possibility to do the things she had listed, no matter how crazy it sounded.

“Okay, look, that’s not what I’m saying, alright? Just calm down. We simply don’t know what happened, so we can’t just go and assume stuff we can’t back up. All I’m saying is that we try and find a name, cause there is evidence that there might have been someone other than Brian involved in this…” no there wasn’t, not anything tangible anyway. Just my own assumptions. But she didn’t know that. I just have this feeling, this hunch, that I’m on the right path. My father used to say that he thought that I could be a detective, even though he knew I’ve always wanted to make it in the show business. My instincts have never failed me.

Leighanne just shook her head. “Oh Howie, Brian may have been paranoid, but so are you.”

“Harry thinks I’m right. And he knows the name, but can’t tell us… somehow…”

“You should listen to yourself. Since when did we get caught up in a cop show? Or better, since when do we not call the police anymore when we found new evidence?”

“They’re never gonna believe us, besides, do you want the entire country to know what we’re onto?”

“So you decided to play the policeman all by yourself, making your own crazy conclusions.”

She had no right to say that. All I’ve been doing was for Brian’s sake, wasn’t it? Why did she doubt me? It’s not like she spent the last six weeks trying to figure everything out, and now that I’m this close, she’s gonna bring me down? Seething, I turned around to face her and give her my uncensored opinion, but then I could see the obvious desperation on her face again. She wanted an answer, didn’t matter what kind, if only it made sense. She wanted to hear a lie that told her to stop worrying, that the whole ordeal was over and she just had to wait for Brian to wake up and that they never had to thought about it again. She didn’t want to hear the truth, I realized, because the truth would simply not make sense.

 

25th of December 2005

Going home for the holidays has never brought as much relief to me as it did this year. Well, it was supposed to anyway. Desperately wanting to get out of Livingston, I headed to Orlando to meet up with the rest of the family.

For some reason, Christmas always goes down in the same routine every year. It does in my family anyway. We all come together, tell each other it has been absolutely too long since we’ve last spoken to one another, sit down, eat ‘til we feel we’re about to explode, and try desperately not to think about the one person missing in our family. Since a few years back, there has been a new rule added to our Christmas dinner: do not ask Howard about the Backstreet Boys. Apparently I cannot stop talking about my job once someone asks me about it, and we really don’t want our little Christmas to be all about work, do we?  Usually there’s always somebody that breaks the rule, and I gladly tell them everything they want to know.

This year was different. This year I didn’t want anyone to bring up the band I’m in, or certain band members in that same band. I deliberately hadn’t given anyone details on what has been going one these past few months, but I’m sure they can all read, hear or see the news. I only hoped they didn’t believe the words that have been spoken in the media. None of us have given an official statement on the matter, and I’m kinda suspecting that will be my job when the time comes, but it leaves the media to take wild guesses. And most of them are humiliating, disappointing and denigrating.

But of course, it was only a matter of time before John brought it up.

“So Howard, what’s it gonna be like now that that short blond decided to check out?”

I felt my veins fill themselves with anger and kept my eyes on my plate. I hate John. He knows the names of my band mates very well, but still loves to tease me about it. Being the youngest is probably never easy, but it gets about ten times worse when you’ve got John Dorough for a brother. I decided to play along in his little game and act like I had no idea what he was talking about.

“You mean Kevin?” Short, blond, seemed like an accurate description.

“No, I don’t mean Kevin, you smart ass!” I finally looked up. John was angry. John was angry? But as I looked around the table, I saw everyone staring at me with the same worried, angry expression on their faces.

“What?” I sighed.

“What?! What?!,” my mother busted in, “are you kidding me, honey? How  about you tell us what has been going on for the past 2 months? We’ve been scared to death by the news, and we don’t know what to believe!”

“I thought you didn’t want me talking about work when we’re having Christmas dinner?” I thought it was a reasonable point, my mom didn’t think so.

“I hardly think this is just about work. What have you boys gotten yourselves into?”

“Nothing, Mom.” Which wasn’t entirely a lie, cause we hadn’t gotten ourselves into anything.

“Then all those things I read in the magazines aren’t true?”

“No, of course not, you should know better than to read that stuff, Ma!’’ I yelled, I couldn’t help myself.

“Howard! Sit down and apologize to your mother!” my father yelled from across the table. Of course, he hadn’t heard a single thing of our conversation, except for the last part. I heaved a deep sigh. “Sorry mom…”

“That’s okay. Are you sure everything’s alright? You seem a little on edge…”

“Yeah, cause normally you can’t stop bragging about your job!” John chimed in again. “And you know, I may have not read the same magazines as mom did, but I’ve heard a great deal about your little singing group as well.”

“Yeah so? We’re on the news all the time, welcome to showbiz brother! It’s no big deal.” I didn’t know for how much longer I could keep this act up, pretending I had no idea what they were getting at.

“Oh really? Cause I happened to be in China the other day, you know, working on our business, and they got you guys on their screens too! So don’t give me that crap about being famous, bro! Just tell me if it’s true what I’ve heard.”

“Depends on what you’ve heard,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?” Oh dear, John’s patience is running out, better hurry.

“It depends on what you’ve heard!” I yelled a little louder.

“Oh honey, it’s terrible, they’re talking about hospitals and suicide and… and… death…” my mother looked like she was going to choke on that last word.

“Death?” I repeated rather loudly.

“Sweetie, just tell me he’s not dead? Please?” I looked at her, dumbfounded and I realized that I wasn’t the only one at this table who knew Brian, my family knew him as well and they used to like him. Just like I knew his family and we all knew each other’s family and all of our family knew us. Leaving mine as outsiders on the matter was the wrong thing to do, but then what was I supposed to do? It’s not like you can just call up your mom and be like, hey, guess what… but then there was the media that talked about Brian dying, and my family believes it. For all they know, he’s dead. And now they’re angry, cause, shouldn’t I have been the one to tell them that? Why is everything so screwed up?

“No mom! He’s not dead!” I exclaimed as quickly as I found my voice again.

“Oh thank God!” mom said as she fell back into her chair. I looked around the table again, where everyone was still staring expectantly at me. I raised my eyebrows in return of their stares. My brother was of course the one to speak up again.

“Okay Howie, let me spell this out for you. What. The. Hell. Happened?” I looked into his demanding eyes and I broke. I told them everything, from the strange things Brian used to do before the tragedy, to the hotel room, to the seizures, to the note, to Harry’s story, and finally to him getting better again. When I was finished, a heavy silence fell upon the table and I wondered if I were the first or the last of the group to tell my family about our ‘adventures’.

“So that’s it? He’s just gonna wake up and no one will ever know about what happened to him?” John wanted to know.

“Oh no, I’ll find it out, see I’ve written this entire… wait a sec… if he’s waking up, why won’t he be able to tell us about it?”

“Oh I don’t know… and excuse me for bursting your tiny, cosy bubble, but if you would be in a coma for two months, I bet my money you wouldn’t even remember my name, much less what happened.” Fuck, why hadn’t I thought of that?

“You don’t know that…” I tried weakly. Cause he did know. John used to be surrounded by a lot of comatose people, he worked with them before he set up the real estate business with me.

“Oh believe me Lil’Bro, I know… I’m sorry dude…” I didn’t respond. Why were we even talking about this kind of stuff at Christmas? I sighed for the umpteenth time that evening and turned my attention to my food again, indicating that the conversation was officially over. My food had long gone cold by this point. The diversion seemed to work, and the room filled with small talk about Christmas again.

Suddenly my cell phone began to ring and I excused myself when I saw the threatening warning in my father’s eyes. No cell phones at dinner, especially not at Christmas dinner. I looked at the tiny screen, wondering who had the guts to call me on Christmas. Harold. My eyes got big and I got up from the table, apologizing that sorry, but it could be really important.

“And who’s so important that they can veto my rule about mobile phones Howard?” My father roared.

“Harold,’’ was all I said and it was enough, as I saw my father pause for a second, then flick his hand towards the kitchen door, gesturing that I was dismissed.

“Hello?” I began once I was out of earshot.

“Howie? Why don’t you ever answer on the first ring, dude?”

“Because it’s Christmas , Harold! You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with my father’s wrath tonight.”

“Can’t be worse than my father’s,” he said darkly. He really has some family issues since his brother’s in the hospital.

“Why are you calling me on Christmas, Harold? Something happened with Bri?’’

“Nah, not much… oh hey, they’re gonna get the ventilator out tomorrow.”

“Oh great… anything else, Harry?”

“No, oh wait! I’ve got the name!”

“You’re kidding! Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”

“Ummm, I don’t know…”

“Doesn’t matter. So who is it?”

“It’s Peter!”

“Aha… Peter any last name, Peter?”

“Oh right, I’m sorry, I don’t know, he didn’t say, he just said Peter.”

“Well, that’s terrific… I don’t know no Peter!”

“… me neither.”

“So that’s getting us exactly… nowhere…”

“No?”

“No.”

“You sure you don’t know a Peter? Cause way I figured, if I don’t know no Peter, maybe Howard knows a Peter…”

“Harold, have you been drinking?”

“Yeah…”

“But it’s Christmas…”

“Exactly… and look where I am, next to my little brother, who’s as out as a baboon. My family doesn’t want to talk to me, I think they’re cutting us out… my wife left me two years ago… so yeah I’m drinking, cause it’s fucking Christmas…”

“Right, so Peter? That’s all we’ve got?” It’s not that I didn’t feel bad for him, I just didn’t have time for his misery, cause I did have a very angry family waiting for me. Which sounds so horrible…

“That’s all we’ve got, mate. I’m sorry, I wish I had more.”

“That’s okay, we’ll found out more, you’ll see…”

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