Beyond the end

The broken thread

Andrea stood a few seconds in front of Kelly's house. She wasn't sure what exactly she should have said and how to do it. She had noticed that Dylan's car was parked there in front. She didn't want to wait for him to show up at the hospital again to beg her to come in and talk to Brenda. Brandon was enraged when Andrea told him, she had let Dylan in once because she still thought Dylan's voice could have helped Brenda. The wrath had overwhelmed Brandon but Andrea didn't feel like lying to him or hiding what she had done to him. She didn't even know why he had revealed it to Brandon, perhaps to make him understand how deep the bond between his sister and Dylan was and that maybe it was worth listening to or maybe selfishly, Andrea wanted to get the time back to a few weeks before. When Brandon and Dylan smiled, when Brandon and Dylan were brothers, when everything was in its place.
The Walshs had taken Brenda away, claiming that she be transferred to a clinic where JT would stay with her. And so Andrea signed the transfer. She left like this, trying to recover the rubble scattered around her in order to be able to rebuild any figure that kept her standing.
From that moment Brandon had also disappeared. It was as if having entrusted her sister and knowing her far from Los Angeles had defined the margins of his pain, which he could now live and process. It was as if from that moment he could think about himself, despair himself, throw himself into work, make any attempt to dissipate what had happened.
"Hey" Kelly greeted her with a tired face "I wasn't expecting you."
"Sorry, I should have called, but I need to talk to Dylan, I passed by his house and didn't see the car, I thought he was here."
"In fact it's here, with Sammy," Kelly said unnecessarily, "did anything happen to Brenda?" Kelly seemed genuinely worried.
"No, no," Andrea hurried to say, "but I need to talk to him."
'Come in.'
Dylan appeared from outside in the garden. Andrea's gaze immediately made him understand what he had somehow already understood and had prepared to listen.
Kelly wasn't sure she could stay. She would have liked to ask Andrea about Brandon. She had tried at his house, but Steve had always told her that he wasn't there or that he was at work, Brandon had turned into a ghost, a presence that tried to avoid her in every way. Her calls did not pass at CBS, her secretary reported that he was always busy, and at the entrance they had called Kelly "unwelcome person".
The Cbs guy had even felt sorry for her. "I'm sorry," he had said not looking at Kelly's broken gaze.
However Kelly felt relieved that Brandon was still in town, that he hadn't abandoned everything, maybe with some time things could be fixed and she would have had a chance to explain. Kelly was Unable to accept the truth, the end of things, Kelly told herself another truth. She was drowning. She was drowning on her own.
It was no longer like the waltz rounds of adolescence, every morning she had to invent a new face for Sammy who still perceived the climate in the house, although Dylan also made enormous efforts.
Kelly was a mother she couldn't afford headshots. She tried to move forward in her life with her heart in pieces but still to move on .. And she constantly thought that her pain was nothing in the face of Brandon's but especially in the face of the pain that Brenda was experiencing.
"Tell me..." Dylan sighed at her, they look Andrea in the eye.
Andrea pulled out Brenda's ring and placed it on the table in front of him.
"I didn't want you to come to the hospital unnecessarily for the umpteenth time. Brenda knew about the loss of the child and the damage the accident brought her. She decided to leave. She said she doesn't want to spend her life wondering why, wanting explanations, let alone hating you. The Walshs took her away. Dylan she is gone."
Dylan took the ring between his fingers and looked at it closely but wasn't really looking at it. He was staring at the memories of her smiling, of their words, of the brilliant days. And Andrea saw him move.
"She never gave me a chance to clarify."
"She's not ready," Andrea hurried to say, "too many things all together.."
"Where did she go?"
"I'm sorry, but I don't know, a friend of hers, JT, came to pick her up to spend the convalescence somewhere, then I don't know I guess she's going back to London but she didn't specify anything."
"JT" whispered Dylan.
Kelly watched the scene from the entrance door of the garden. She didn't need to hear, she saw the ring passing from hand to hand. From one heart to the other and she understood for herself. She greeted Andrea with a hug but felt that in the last few weeks Andrea was no longer the same. Everyone was barely feeling, Steve was hasty, Clare had left, Andrea at work, David and Donna were diverted, the Beach Club days were gone. Sammy asked to go back to the beach and Kelly or Dylan took him but somewhere else and never together. After what had happened they spent time together just for Sammy. The rest was a continuous sense of guilt. Silence. They made an effort to play with him because he was actually alone. Maddy and Hannah weren't there. The cabin was in Brandon's name and Kelly really felt like an affront to go back to the Beach Club. Anyway, she wouldn't have found Brandon. She was sure. She was certain that he had dipped his head into work, that he had erased himself from the face of the earth, she knew him, his wounded pride, his protracted silence, Brandon was not an emotional, he kept everything inside and walled the environment around him.
Suddenly Kelly thought that all of her notes and work had remained there. Inside Brandon's laptop. She had never thought of saving a copy for herself, there was no need, she and B were one thing, she never thought she would be in such a situation. That she wouldn't see him again, that she couldn't touch him or talk to him and had no idea how long it would take them.
"Are you okay?" Kelly asked as he approached Dylan evidently wounded and unable to hide him.
"I have to go Kel," he simply told her.
"I know" she said.
Dylan looked at her in tear "I love her and I lost her. I can't give up"
Kelly looked at him, she was unable to deal with that situation alone, that she did not have the strength, that she was broken, that managing Sammy in those conditions became impossible for her, and that in any case, although they both shared a clear atrocious pain. Dylan was the only one left next to her in those days.
But she knew that sooner or later he would leave.
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know, in Minneapolis talking to Jim and Cindy, they will listen to me. In London, I don't know."
"You won't find her," Kelly told him with a nefarious announcement "because she won't be found."
"Maybe Brandon knows where she is."
"Dylan" Kelly gave a faint smile "Brandon is in exactly the same situation as her. They don't want to talk to us. They never gave us a chance to explain. They don't want to listen and I honestly don't understand why" then Kelly started crying "it seems to me that it's all over. He will never come back " Kel looked at him with desperate and atrocious eyes.
Kelly had lost the man she loved just as he had lost Brenda. He had never really paid attention to how much it had cost Kelly too. As much as she was drowning in pain. Like him.
Obviously both couldn't know about Sammy's words that morning "they don't want to be disturbed because they want to kiss." They were not aware of it. They didn't know that Sammy had revealed his truth.
When Brandon got out of the car he saw him across the street. On his face there was still some obvious signs of the beating taken and given as they were still on Brandon's.
They looked at each other from afar into the mute and empty city that still had to wake up.
He couldn't know Brandon would arrive at the office so early that Brandon was sure he had been waiting for him for who knows how long. He had no desire to talk to him. Really none. However, he could have guessed why he was there and he knew that turning his back would not really solve anything.
That's why he waited for him, without moving, without making any emotion shine.
"Hi," Dylan told him.
Brandon nodded.
A few seconds of silence followed in which Brandon could very clearly see the signs of the imbalance on Dylan's face. An imbalance that he probably showed himself too.
"I know you don't feel like talking to me."
"Indeed."
Dylan made a grimace wound on his face.
"Listen" resumed "I'm sorry for what happened but that's not what you think."
Brandon had a sarcastic laugh without answering.
"Bran I lost her, I lost everything to this mess."
"You? Did you Dylan lose everything? And what about Brenda? And what about me?"
B's eyes were on fire. They had set themselves on fire with an anger that he could hardly control.
"It didn't happen that what you believe."
"But don't you understand that it doesn't matter anymore?" Brandon asked him "that you've slept together or not, we don't care anymore. How do you catch up on such a thing. The trust. We saw you half naked in bed. Together." Brandon kept quiet about Sammy's innocent words condemning them.
"I know what you saw," Dylan whispered, "you're my brother, I would never do such a thing to you."
"You remembered late that I'm your brother."
"I would never do such a thing to you, neither to Brenda, i love her, I want to marry her"Dylan repeated sadly.
"Ah no? Yet you've already done it. Do you remember? travel against marriage and I chose me accordingly. Kelly was with me back then too. You got in the way. None of you came up with the thought of talking to me. To make me understand. I've had enough of your bullshit, Dylan. And Brenda too."
"Then it was different."
"In what?"
"I was different. Kelly was different.I was lost And I clung to anything. I was stupid."
Brandon looked down and then straight into his eyes.
"What do you want D?"
"I want to know where Brenda is."
Brandon began to laugh, a bad, tired laugh.
"Ah well, if you want to know what the problem is," he replied.
"Please," Dylan said
Brandon shook his head. How strange it was how people so close were forced into a certain distance. They didn't look like them anymore. They looked like shadows.
"I honestly don't know. And anyway I wouldn't tell you. But I appreciate the courage of coming here to ask me."
Dylan still kept traces of that ancient brotherhood that Brandon seemed to have lost.
"Sammy asked to be able to sleep with both of them."
"I don't want to hear it Dylan."
"Kelly was embarrassed and I told her that as soon as Sammy fell asleep I would go downstairs."
"God.." Brandon exclaimed as he walked away.
Dylan followed him "we talked a little. How much our lives had changed."
"Leave me alone" Brandon clutched his fists as he turned his back.
"We gave each other a goodbye, and then we fell asleep. She loves you Brandon, she always loved you and she is suffering terribly."
At that point Brandon stopped. Time stopped like a little magic without enthusiasm.
When Brandon turned around he was a mask, his eyes shiny " and I loved her. And you knew it. You knew it more than anyone else. The world doesn't revolve around the two of you, D. You can't live with the suspicion that it happened, it was even just a suspicion. Let alone a certainty."
"What certainty?"
Brandon didn't answer.
"I don't let Brenda go like that," he replied, "I'm going to look for her. I love her, much more than how she and you could ever Know"
"And what do you want to do? Sifting the planet?"
"Yes if necessary," Dylan seemed resolute and Brandon had an ironic half-smile.
"Do whatever you want."
"Kelly is alone," he replied.
"I'm not your replacement," Brandon replied, moving away permanently and entering the CBS building.
Dylan saw him disappear. For the first time he realized how hurt he and Brandon had done. A more hidden evil. Hidden by the brotherhood that seemed stronger than anything and instead was not.
Brandon went straight to his office. No one would arrive before an hour.
He thought back to Dylan's words. At his margins so determined. To Kelly. To the solitude of her that Brandon had touched in person. Worse than when he returned to Los Angeles. To Sammy whom he had promised not to hurt instead he had done it to him.
His heart hurt. The lack of her and those days did not allow him to breathe But the thought of Brenda and her strength kept Brandon standing.
It was a struggle between evil and good. Among the hostile and opposing forces.
He didn't want to go back. It was always too painful. Too much for him too or maybe more for him than for Brenda. She was more resilient. More at peace than him. He put his hands in his hair and closed his eyes for a moment. Then the office animated. The first employees. The Breaking news...The 13 o'clock news had to be prepared. There were things to do that would take him away. Luckily for him.