Triune Read online

  Triune

  by Willow Polson

  Copyright © 2011 by Willow Polson.

  Smashwords edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Dedicated to Ray Bradbury

  ...whose book, Zen in the Art of Writing, gave me permission to finally write about

  what I'd wanted to

  all along.

  Additional acknowledgments go out to my beta readers for their help and enthusiastic feedback, and my amazing husband Craig who always supports me in this stuff.

  Thank you.

  ONE

  The two men sat across from each other in the booth at the combination Japanese/Chinese restaurant in Reno, Nevada, and couldn’t have been more different. Or alike. One, the older, was in a three-piece suit with a strong features and slightly wavy brown hair. The younger one was much smaller, almost petite, with a more curved jawline and darker brown straight hair, almost black. But their eyes were the same. Soulful hazel eyes that occasionally met over the awkward silence and sushi.

  They picked at their food, the television over the bar somewhat distracting, the decor a combination of generically Asian and Starbuck’s modern, neither style fully succeeding but not altogether unpleasant. It did nothing for their mood, however.

  Their middle brother, Mike, was missing. Not missing exactly, but... not there, where he was supposed to be. And this had been intended as a celebratory lunch for him.

  “Stop looking at me, he’ll call when he can,” muttered Barrett Mason, fiddling with the chopsticks and praying he didn’t drop anything on his new vest. He was never any good at using the things, unlike Brian, who had picked up the skill in elementary school during a week of Chinese-themed activities for the Lunar New Year. Brian was always picking up new skills and had a quick mind and clever hands.

  “Yeah, I have a phone too, you know,” the younger man muttered back. He didn’t know why he was more tense than usual, but Barrett had a way of making pointed statements and setting him on edge sometimes. Not all the time, certainly, and less now that they were all grown and had their own lives, but at the moment he found the man’s words particularly grating. Brian chalked it up to being worried about Mike.

  He took a calming breath and then smiled up at his oldest brother. “Look... he’s not here, but we are. So why don’t we catch up a little? He’ll be fine. Probably call soon and let us know what’s up.”

  Barrett nodded, his bid to get the sushi to his mouth with chopsticks successful, and quickly finished the bite. “All right. You’re right. It’s nice to see you, Bri.”

  Brian’s smile brightened and he reached over, touching his older brother’s hand briefly. “Great to see you too. How’s life in the amazing Silicon Valley? Start five more companies yet?”

  He snorted a laugh. “No, just trying to keep the one I’ve got running smoothly, and that’s plenty of work right there. Import laws and taxes seem to change every five minutes. What about you? How’s the art glass business?” Barrett looked around for the soy sauce as his brother’s smile slipped a little.

  “Three-plus years and you still don’t know what I do? It’s stained glass restoration. Well, mostly. I do new pieces too between the repair jobs.”

  “Oh, right. I knew it was something with glass and art.”

  Brian shrugged with a little sigh. “Fair enough. It’s not like we see each other that much. You’ve never even been to the studio.”

  “Studio?”

  A smirk played at the younger man’s lips. “Yeah, you know. Where I do my ‘art glass,’” he said, putting air quotes around the last words.

  Barrett’s wry smile was similar. “Right. Hey, how are things with you and your partner?”

  Now it was Brian’s turn to snort a little derisive laugh. “Oh him? Hardly my partner. Boyfriend, more like, and I dumped him two months ago. Caught the asshole smoking weed in my studio and it was like... no thanks. I don’t want it around. And I told him that at the start, too. The idiot.” He rolled his eyes and finished up the last of his sushi, then sat back a little to look at his brother. “Divorce go through yet?”

  Barrett paused, then nodded. “Yeah, it’s... she got half, of course. So now she can buy as many goddamn purses as she wants. She’s keeping the dog, too. Her little obnoxious yappy dog. And good riddance to the both of them.” He shook his head dismissively, but there was a hint of loss in his eyes. It had been a marriage of social status and convenience for the most part, but he still had feelings for the woman, and the new condo seemed so cold and big and empty. She’d gotten the house.

  “Sorry,” Brian said.

  “No, it’s okay. It’s just been kind of...”

  “No seriously... I shouldn’t have...”

  “Bri, you’re fine.” Barrett smiled a little sadly. “After all, here I am asking about your private life, it’s only fair.”

  Brian merely shrugged and nodded a little, another silence settling over them. Mike should have been there with them, they were both thinking at that moment. He’d come in with some kind of smartass joke and break the uncomfortable silence like he always did when they were kids.

  Their phones went off at the same time, and they looked at each other, then at their phones. A text message from Mike, brief but something, explained that he’d phone as soon as the plane took off from Las Vegas, and that he was going straight on to Sacramento instead of trying to stop in Reno. The brothers looked at each other, relieved but disappointed, each sending a quick text acknowledgment back.

  “Well, to us and to Mike’s safe flight, then,” said Brian, raising his soda. Chuckling softly, Barrett did the same, then they both took a final sip as the bill came, the older brother taking it out of his younger brother’s hand.

  “On me.”

  Brian grinned crookedly and nodded, knowing that it was a pointless argument. Once Barrett set his mind to something, that was the end of it. He did, however, take the opportunity to grab first choice of the fortune cookies.

  “You will find that good things come in threes,” he read aloud, then added the requisite in bed in his mind and chuckled a little. “Come by the studio at least? It’s only a few miles from here.”

  “Sorry, I have to get back.”

  The younger man mostly believed him. But partly didn’t. He let it go with a sigh and they hugged briefly, said their goodbyes, then Brian watched his older brother drive away in his upscale rental car, back to the airport and to San Jose and to his condo and business and life. Brian was alone again. They both were. All three of the Mason brothers, in fact, since Mike had never married anyone other than the Navy, and that had just finished chewing him up and spitting him out.

  With a deep sigh, Brian slid into his little hatchback Subaru and just sat there for a while in the parking lot. The day
hadn’t gone at all like they’d planned. But then neither had his life, for the most part. Orphaned at the age of one, realizing he was gay at the age of fifteen, somehow stumbling on a stained glass course at the rec center at seventeen near their Sacramento home, studying with a master artisan at eighteen who had died only last year and had left Brian, of all people, the entire contents of his studio there in Reno. A man he’d only known for three years, but who had told him he had a gift. Not just a gift, but “the” gift, whatever that meant.

  He felt the studio calling him, an unfinished repair job for a local church on the massive layout table. The space was huge, a small warehouse really, built in 1890 of brick (a dated stone lintel over the door told that tale), the double-height ceiling featuring a huge skylight that made it perfect for doing any kind of art, but even more so for glass because of the quality of light it let in during the day. The old man’s own works still lived around three sides of the building, the ordinary panes in the ridiculously tall double-hung windows long since replaced by elaborate scenes of wildlife, saints, landscapes and angelic visitations. It was like a cathedral dedicated to the art of stained glass. And Brian called it home, a loft making the perfect sleeping space, a small kitchen and bathroom at the back of the workspace all he needed or wanted.

  He arrived in his parking space, which was really just a patch of bare dirt next to the studio building on the outskirts of town. What was now the outskirts of Reno had been a completely different town during the 1849 gold rush, but had eventually been overtaken by sprawling development until the last remnants had been incorporated as a nameless, half-derelict industrial area, with only a few old buildings still standing – the ones made of brick or stone that had survived previous fires. A few scorch marks darkened the bricks at one corner of Brian’s building to serve as a reminder of the time before electric sprinkler systems and telephones to call the fire department with. The huge metal fire doors that were in vogue at the time had served their purpose in keeping the wooden doors and windows inside from burning, and now rested under the eaves in the alley behind the building, along the one wall without windows.

  Brian unlocked the front door just as Barrett opened the door of his rental car at the airport, and just as Mike walked through the door of the plane in Las Vegas. Coincidences happened frequently between the Mason brothers – so frequently that they’d all grown used to them – although occasionally Brian would call out “Jinx!” as if to point it out, and they’d buy him a soda and laugh about it. But much less lately. They were rarely together since Mike had joined the military and Barrett had his hands full with a wife and corporation. Ex-wife, Brian reminded himself.

  And Michael had been gone for what seemed like a lifetime. Basic training, combat training, SEAL training, then seven years in the desert, which had always seemed like such an ironic place for a Navy SEAL to end up.

  Mike was always the more aggressive of the three, always trying new things and pushing the limits. He’d lost count of how many bones he’d broken, but he always came up smiling and ready for more. Six years older than Brian and six years younger than Barrett, he always had something to prove. He didn’t remember when he’d latched onto the idea of becoming a fighter pilot, but it carried him through two whole years of training before everyone involved realized that it wasn’t for him. A buddy suggested he try for the SEALs, and something clicked. He’d found his calling, and excelled... then found what war could really do to a man, physically and emotionally. After several years on active duty in the Middle East with the scars to prove it, visible and invisible, he was done. More than done. He was sent home with a Purple Heart after a roadside attack did its dirty work one final time, leaving his entire left side pitted and torn. The day’s lunch had been meant not just to celebrate him coming home, but to celebrate that he was still breathing.

  Brian changed out of his button-down lunch shirt and into a more comfortable ringer tee, an old favorite that was now a little stained here and there from soldering flux and car repair grease and paint and who knew what else. He swapped out for his work jeans and favorite industrial black work shoes and then made himself some tea.

  He preferred having tea with his brothers, of course, a habit they’d all picked up at their last foster home which was run by a proper Brit named Martha Wainwright who was big on tea. Even the littlest ones were taught proper tea time manners, and they practiced with sweetened cups of fruity herbals with lots of cream, the older kids moving on to the hard stuff (Irish Breakfast, and not the decaf kind). The cucumber sandwiches and strict Afternoon Tea customs fell by the wayside as soon as they were out on their own, but they retained a deep love for the beverage in all its varieties.

  Barrett had an entire cabinet in his kitchen stuffed with a huge selection of teas from his travels all over the world, and enjoyed going to tastings like a sommelier would at a winery. Of course, the three brothers enjoyed their wine and coffee as well, but tea was special somehow, and it occupied a particularly large section in the wholesale warehouse and catalog of Mason Imports.

  Barrett was twelve when their parents died, and Brian had often asked about them as they grew up, having no memory himself of their mother and father. But he learned to stop asking his big brother after he became old enough to see how much the questions bothered him. The self-made man could sometimes be found daydreaming in his office, looking out the window, his back turned to the room as he searched in his own mind for his parents, his childhood. But they weren’t much more than a few hazy vignettes. A moment at Christmas here, a smile in the back yard there. He knew they looked much like himself and his brothers, but that was primarily based on the two existing photos that they had, and it bothered him.

  He was the one to take care of his brothers, even when the agency threatened to separate them, but he could not give them the one thing that mattered most – memories about their parents. And it ate him up inside when he let himself think about it, that and all the other things he wanted to do for them but couldn’t. So he buried himself in a sham of a socialite marriage, in his work as CEO of an import company, in his hobbies and classic cars and daily tasks of keeping his home and office spotlessly clean, almost obsessively. His brothers could take care of themselves, after all, so he could focus on keeping himself busy and... if not happy, then at least on an even keel. Even if it meant ignoring the very people he’d wanted so badly to provide for his whole life. At least he’d managed to keep them together until the last baby bird made his own nest.

  “Sir...? The key...?”

  The woman’s pleasant but firm voice suddenly snapped Barrett out of thoughts he didn’t realize he’d been in, and he smiled a little absently as he handed back the key of the rental car to the clerk. He walked with his planner to the little chartered commuter plane and got in, still pondering a few things, finally clipping the seatbelt and gazing out the window. In another few minutes, the plane skimmed along the runway, finally tilting skyward.

  Meanwhile, Mike had stashed his military duffel containing his meager belongings in the overhead bin, and sat down very slowly in the window seat of the passenger jet. One rib was still on the mend and hurt like hell, despite the metal holding it together, his muscles on fire at having to bend into the seat. He popped another painkiller and sat back for a moment, closing his eyes.

  Just another roadside attack. The news probably hadn’t even reported it, he thought to himself as he waited for the plane to start moving. He lost two from his unit that day, and wondered how he’d survived at all, considering. They figured a nearby car had been just enough of a shield that he’d been partially protected from the blast and had made it out alive. Scarred, but alive. Better than the alternative. And at least it had just torn up his side and part of his arm and left his face alone. He looked more like Brian than Barrett, a handsome combination of the two, and was relieved that his face hadn’t received more than a couple of surface scratches in the attack. He thanked his helmet for that.

  The sickenin
g force of takeoff pressed him back into his seat, ribs aching, and he knew he’d be ordering whatever tiny bottles of alcohol they offered on this leg of the trip. It was how he’d made it this far from DC, after all. While waiting, he entertained himself by looking out the window as the landscape grew smaller and smaller below. Then he noticed the logo of the airline in front of him, and squinted at it.

  A winged heart. Isn’t that... Sufi or something...? Funny I never noticed that before.

  Once at altitude, the seatbelt light turned off and Mike ordered a Jack Daniel’s since they didn’t offer Southern Comfort, perversely enjoying the burn of it going down his throat. He checked for the airline's promised internet signal for his phone, having gotten special clearance to make calls during the flight, then hit speed dial. Barrett's clicked straight over to voicemail, so he left a message and tried for Brian, his leg jiggling a little with nerves and excitement despite the pill and the whiskey.

  “Mike!”

  “Hey, Bri. I’m sorry about earlier but they screwed up my flight, and I figured as long as it was FUBAR anyway and I was going to miss lunch, I may as well just go on to Sacto.”

  “No, it’s okay. But are you coming to see me soon? I guess I can put off this project a couple days and drive to...”

  “No, no... let me get home and then I’ll come up to see you, all right? I want to check out this place of yours, it sounds amazing.”

  “Oh, god, it really is. Y... ha.... n............”

  “Shit. Brian? Goddamn...” The phone beeped weirdly and then the signal was lost completely. With a little growl of frustration, he shoved it back in his pocket and looked out the window at the mountains below, the plane heading up over the east edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Not too long now, and he’d finally be in his own bed. Or at least a bed. Barrett had rented him a little place in Sacramento, walking distance from his new desk job writing SOPs, and he knew it’d be slick and upscale and modern based on his older brother’s tastes. Fully furnished, too. Smiling at the thought of sleeping between soft, clean, white sheets in a safe, quiet place all to himself, he relaxed into the seat and hummed along to the music in his head, “Real Life” by Evermore. It had been stuck there for three days, not that he minded.