As I wandered around, I began to think about my brother and how his life had turned out so differently because of that prom night.  He’d gone to Rhode Island to attend Brown, met a beautiful co-ed, and now he’s a married college professor with a beautiful baby boy.  His wife seemed nice, but I had only met her once.  She had attended the previous Carlin family Christmas.  I’d missed the year before, and she’d missed the year before that.  I had a huge trial the day of their wedding, and I was in meetings the day that Jeremiah was born.

The paint on the canvas soothed me as my thoughts wandered back to Clay when we were young.  The day he came to live with us.  The day he broke his arm trying to get our cat out of a tree because I was crying.  The day he was learning how to drive and he ran over our mailbox.  Mom really had a fit about that.  The day he stood up for Ashley and me.  I missed my brother.  I’d never been to Rhode Island; he’d never been to Chicago.  Except for that one time when we were in middle school and Mom drug us to Chicago on some family trip.  I remembered it being fun.  That’s all I remembered about it though.

“Shit.  I am sooooo sorry.  You will never believe what happened at work today.  They hired a new publicist and now I have to train her.  I don’t see why they felt the need.  Apparently, that was the plan the whole time—to put us in teams.  They’re driving me crazy.”  Madison.  I wiped tears from my eyes—tears I didn’t know that I had—and I turned to look at the very pissed off publicist of the Chicago Bulls.

“Sorry.  Bosses are bitches like that.  Check it out.  Chelsea still rocks,” I said motioning to the walls around me.  

“Wow, yeah.  These are great.  Where is she anyway?”  I shrugged at her in response.

“Right here.  Sorry about disappearing on you, Spence.  I just had some paperwork to finish before tomorrow.  Eddie, my partner in crime, doesn’t know anything about finances.  Our books are a mess.”  I felt relieved that she hadn’t bailed because of me, but I wasn’t sure that she was being truthful.