Summer Sons(72)

He’d always been with girls; he’d always fucked girls, and so had Eddie. Eddie was his best friend and then some, and maybe they’d been closer than the norm, but no one else could have understood what it meant to live with the ghosts and the haunt-dreams, the danger that lurked in cellars and attics of friends’ homes, the endless throat-closing, loitering horrors that held off sleep for whole weeks during the most uncontrolled period of it. No one else had been there with him in the cavern for hours spread across days, freezing, terrified of encroaching death. No one else was Eddie, and no one else held him the same as Eddie had.

He gnawed on the sore patch of skin over his wrist bone and tried to pack it all into the box where he kept the things they didn’t talk about, didn’t even fucking think about, but it wouldn’t go back neat.

He swiped the text alerts waiting for him away without looking and messaged Del, I didn’t mean to.

She didn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to.



* * *



hey dude can I come home yet

she’s gone

cool thanks

you okay?

Andrew rolled off of the couch. The two texts he’d received while Del was in the house weren’t from Sam, who hadn’t responded at all, but from West attempting to follow up on the meeting with Troth. He ignored them and texted Sam one more time, I have a list to run down. He wasn’t going to ask for help more directly than that. After a moment’s hesitation he picked the phone up one more time for another message: going out tonight?

The front door opened. He arranged his expression into the closest approximation of blandness he was able to manage. Riley still winced, a performative grimace. “That bad, huh?”

“Troth didn’t have the field journal either,” he said.

“Nah, I meant—” Riley started. Andrew glowered, a bitter flashback to his first nights in the house, and Riley smoothly shifted course. “Moving right along, then. What did Troth have on hand?”

“Her own mentor notes and some basic shit he had written about his family history. She said he’d gotten on that track, which makes sense, since he was really looking for…”

“Stuff about himself,” Riley finished helpfully.

“I told her the interviews were missing and she implied the carrels weren’t exactly secure. She was irritated, I figure from losing access herself,” he said.

Riley considered that, then echoed his sentiment: “Doesn’t seem coincidental, his phone and his interview notes both going missing.”

“Looks like someone’s hiding something, doesn’t it?” Andrew tossed him the Challenger’s key fob. Riley smacked it out of the air in his attempted catch, launching it clattering into the foyer. “A while ago, like when we first met, she gave me a bunch of books she’d gotten for Eddie. She’s been waiting for me to come to her, I guess. I told her I’d re-create the shit we were missing, and she said she’d help.”

“Why’s she been after you so much?” Riley asked as he chased down the lost fob.

“Wants her name on a published version of Eddie’s work, sounds like,” Andrew said.

Riley snorted. “Fuckin’ faculty. You’d think she’d have her hands full with West right now, and it’s not like she’s hurting for acclaim. She’s got tenure already.”

“What do you mean about West?” Andrew asked, perking up.

“You hadn’t heard?” Riley asked. He spun the fob around his index finger. “His revised draft got rejected, for the fourth time. He can’t get his dissertation off the ground, and he’s running out of time before the seven-year cap.”

“He hadn’t said—” Andrew’s phone buzzed, one-two-three, Halse’s number on the screen. Andrew answered. “Hey.”

“I was at work, calm your thirst.” Andrew removed his phone from his ear and stared at it. Sam’s voice kept going, words indistinguishable but tone jocular. Riley raised his eyebrows. Andrew put the receiver to his ear again in time to hear, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“The fuck?” he asked.

“Get that list ready,” he said and hung up.

Riley said, “So I guess Sam’s lending a hand.”

Andrew passed his phone from hand to hand, swallowed his pride, and said, “Guess so. Are you interested in putting some work in, too? Split things up, or something.”

“Duh,” Riley said with a feigned nonchalance.

“Found some names in Troth’s file, going to compare them to Sam’s business. In the meantime, I dunno, would you—read through his fucking notes, check out those books she foisted on me?”

His roommate glanced at the keys in his hand, visibly put the pieces together, confirmed that Andrew was genuinely offering him an in to help, and nodded his assent. Andrew would rather be struck dead than read those journals again, even if it meant exposing stories about himself to Riley. Raw vulnerability stung at his nerves, but he had to delegate.

“The books are in the car, stuck them in the back seat,” he clarified.

Riley gently joked, “Put the nerd on the boring part of the case, I see how it is.”

Anticipatory silence curtained the room. Andrew’s head felt full of fiberglass, biting and insulating at once. The two unanswered texts from West waited in his messages folder, one reading How was your meeting with Troth? and the other Would you like to unpack it with me later. He opened the thread and wrote having trouble with your research? then deleted it, what was your dissertation on again and deleted that as well. He settled on get coffee with me and we’ll talk about the meeting. Riley returned with the book-stuffed tote before he got a response. He dropped it next to the end table and picked up Troth’s folder.