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entered the picture.
    Gilley ordered the salmon and we made small talk until our meal arrived. “So!” Gil said as he tucked into his fish. “When’s the wedding?”
    Courtney and Steven exchanged a look that suggested they’d had more than a few discussions about that. “We’re hoping for sometime in early September,” she said.
    “First we have to deal with the living situation,” Steven said, more to Courtney than to us. I could tell that was also a much talked-about topic between them.
    “You’re welcome to move in with me,” Courtney said, her smile sly.
    Steven sighed and focused his attention back on me. “She won’t leave her brother alone in that house.”
    Heath cut off a small section of his crepe dish and set it on his bread plate, then offered it to me without my asking. I realized I’d been staring hungrily at his meal with more than a little buyer’s remorse because it looked and smelled amazing—far better than my ravioli. “So, what’s going on with your brother exactly?” Heath asked Courtney.
    She stopped cutting into her filet and looked up at him, and I was shocked by the tears that began to fill her eyes. “I wish I knew,” she whispered.
    Steven laid a hand on her back to comfort her. “It’s all right,” he encouraged. “Tell them what’s been going on,
bella
. They can help.”
    Courtney took a sip of water and shook her head a little, trying to collect herself. “Luke moved in with me about six weeks ago,” she began. “He’d been having a lot of trouble at school, and that’s not like him. He was top in his class going into his senior year at BU, but then he seemed to have some sort of a breakdown. . . .” Courtney’s voice faded away as her eyes misted again.
    “What was he studying?” I asked gently, trying to coax the story out of her.
    She cleared her throat and took another sip of water. “Nanotechnology,” she said, smiling gratefully at me. “Luke is so smart. He always excelled in school, even with all the stuff happening at home.”
    “What happened at home?” Gil asked.
    Courtney shrugged. “Our parents were both alcoholics, and for a time we lived in foster care. It was harder on Luke, I think. He was more sensitive to the erratic and unpredictable nature of my mom and dad. I graduated early and went to college on a scholarship, but Luke is eight years younger, so he was home alone with them for a longer, more troubling period. I finally had him come live with me when he was a freshman in high school, and I was the one that kept him off the streets and focused on school. I managed to get him a job briefly at the hospital and then he got a scholarship to BU and I thought he’d escaped all the hard stuff that comes from having such a dysfunctional home life, but maybe it all caught up to him and he invited this . . . whatever this is.”
    My brow furrowed. “Whatever what is?” I asked.
    Courtney took a deep breath and I could tell that whatever was going on with Luke, it was affecting her deeply. “Something changed,” she whispered, almost as if she was afraid that confessing it would bring something bad into the atmosphere. “Luke was living alone in a house he was renting. It was a dump of a house, and I hadn’t heard from him in a week or two, so I went over to check on him. I found him alone in the dark, all the blinds closed, the house a complete mess—we’re talking garbage on the floor, clothes and bedding tossed everywhere, and my brother sitting on the floor, wrapped in a blanket with a set of headphones on, rocking back and forth maniacally.
    “At first I thought Luke had had some sort of psychotic break—I mean, the scene in that house was just so antithetical to his usual neat and highly organized character. But when I bent down to him, he opened his eyes and said, ‘Make him go away, sis. Make him go away!’”
    I put my elbow on the table and leaned forward. “Make who go away, Courtney?”
    She shook her head