Summer Sons(107)

Sam grunted, not agreement or argument. The golden, sun-scattered kitchen was homey. Nothing cast a real shadow. Andrew picked up his own coffee, paler brown than the two straight black pours, and took one sip. “Has it occurred to either of you that you’re not the only ones worried?” Riley asked. He kicked one foot up onto the table. “I’m real worried. This whole time I’ve been acting as the voice of reason and restraint for both of you, and now you’re treating me like a kid trying to eat dish soap.”

“That was one time, but it was memorable,” Sam shot back with deflecting humor.

“Shut up, dude, I’m not joking,” Riley said.

“We’ll be fine,” Andrew said. “What are you worried she could even do to the two of us, in broad daylight?”

“Arrogance,” Riley said, “is not attractive.”

“She’s a professor, she’s pushing late sixties, her husband is wasted to skin and bones, and she has no idea if we told someone where we were going,” Andrew said.

“Even so, you’re the only one of us who has aspirations, some goals and shit,” Sam gestured with his coffee. “I’d rather we triage according to who’s got the most to lose.”

Riley groaned, “As if you’re not worth worrying over, you dick. Text me the entire fucking time, please.”

Sam tapped Andrew on the ass with the flat of his hand. Riley barked a laugh at the startled glance Andrew shot him. Sam ducked out the back door before Riley finished chuckling. Outside, Sam spun on his heel and walked backward toward the WRX, maintaining a steady and damning eye contact. Andrew followed, messenger bag thumping against his thigh, heavy with notebooks and the monograph; all of Eddie’s research that he thought might be relevant to a conversation with Troth.

Once in the car, Andrew asked, “You sure about doing this with me?”

“Don’t say dumb shit. You’re one of mine, Blur, and we’re going to get you sorted out fine, okay?” Sam said as the engine growled to life.

Andrew shut his mouth. One of mine—that had a ring to it, and so did the promise of safety, of being taken in hand. If Riley had tried to slap a label on the thing budding between them, he’d have rejected it out of hand, because nothing encompassed the particular set of feelings he might sum up as owned. What did it mean that he found that comforting, still, now that Eddie was gone?

Anticipatory quiet stretched between them as the trip unspooled ahead, interstate spreading out before them with heat-shimmer as Sam merged onto it. After he hit fourth gear, Sam’s hand slipped briefly from the shifter to wrap around Andrew’s thigh, squeezing once before retreating again. The shape of his palm lay branded there. Spinning thoughts raced through Andrew’s head. The trap he’d set had sprung: the professor calling, dangling a morsel to drag him out to her, hinting at knowledge about Eddie’s death. He’d made her desperate. Maybe, in that desperation, she’d done some research of her own that had set her on the same trail as him—and that was his most generous interpretation.

“They said her husband’s relapse was recent, at the faculty party.” Andrew shared the thought as he happened upon it. “Wonder how recent. You think he’d have been strong enough a couple months ago, if he wasn’t as sick?”

“Or he paid someone,” Sam said. “A family like the Troths would have the money.”

Andrew gnawed the edge of his thumbnail, bitten almost to the quick. “I don’t feel like this should fall into our lap so easy.”

“Nah, but maybe we can use her, if she isn’t bullshitting us for her own reasons,” he said.

Andrew nodded. A muffled cloak of unreality settled over him as their pleasant sunny drive took them farther from Nashville, mimicking an afternoon excursion. Green forest and fields on either side of the highway were split up with billboards, exits to suburbs and neighborhoods, truck stops with McDonald’s attached. Even driving toward the Troth land, so close to Townsend, he had never felt further from the stifling horror of the caverns. A mad part of him wanted to beg Sam to pull over, get out and take in the scenery, have a quick fuck in the dirt and grass.

But he said nothing. The work he’d done, that the cousins had helped him with despite their misgivings and his intractability, crumbled like dry soil through his fingers when he tried to mold it into a logical whole. Looming at the center of a set of jagged spokes sat the curse, connected to the hollers and to the university alike, thanks to Eddie—to study carrels and double-wide trailers and interstates at night. The curse was his and Eddie’s bond; maybe it was an answer too, if he found the right question and put it to the right person.

“I got your text last night,” Andrew said as the road continued to unspool ahead.

Sam hummed, noncommittal.

“He’s dead, Sam.”

“I know that. He’s not gone, though. Look at us right this minute. Half the conversations we have, he’s in them. I was going to fuck you wearing his ring on your wedding finger.”

The hot flash that washed over him held discomfort and hunger in equal measure.

“Sorry—” he started.

“Don’t be,” Sam cut him short. “It’s a choice I made, getting in this thing with you, whatever it is. But don’t mistake me, I’m not interested in filling in for a ghost.”