Summer Sons(87)
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Andrew let himself into the house on Capitol at 7:30 A.M., buzzed on gas station coffee and Sam’s good-morning blunt, and was relieved to find that the other cousin wasn’t waiting for him on the couch like a sitcom dad. Andrew showered, washed a few dishes, swept the dirt outdoors, spending the first hours of the morning on mechanical tasks to distract him while he twisted the information he’d gathered into mental knots and then unpicked them again, trying to find a clearer angle of approach. There was a curse on the Fultons, their land or their line or both, and Eddie had been searching for an explanation—a search that seemed to also be connected to his murder, no matter the angle Andrew held his internal puzzle at. If he found the monograph, that might point him in the right direction, since it was Eddie’s last stop too.
After he took the garbage out to the cans, he gripped the frame of the back door and used it to stretch, popping his shoulders, rolling his neck. Sleeping on a couch wasn’t the most comfortable experience, but the reprieve from bad dreams left him more rested anyway. He felt scoured from the intimate conversation, occupied by the picture of a miserable teenage Sam Halse tumbling through a single-pane glass door ass-first, bleeding on the upholstery of some cheap sedan on a long ride to a hospital. Mundane, personal, and monumental at the same time.
“Hey,” said Riley from the stairs.
Andrew jumped, fingers slipping off of the lintel. His roommate squinted at the clean kitchen in his boxers, bedhead puffed out in crowning glory. Andrew dragged his glance past the scars on his bare chest, caught out the moment he met Riley’s eyes.
“Stayed with Sam again?” Riley asked.
Andrew said, “It was closer.”
“Sure, yeah.” Riley patted his waist companionably as he shuffled past him to the fridge. “Good for you, putting yourself out there. Also, I’m feeling charitable this morning, so if you want to ask me a set of invasive, personal questions you’ve been stocking up, now’s the time.”
Andrew paused, then asked: “Are the glasses only for aesthetics?”
Riley burst into surprised laughter and thumped his forehead onto the fridge door, continuing to chuckle for a long moment after. Andrew had questions, but as he crossed to the living room and flopped onto the couch, he thought he’d made the right choice not to ask them. His firm limit on hard conversations per month had been exceeded multiple times over, and the one with Del lingered like a leviathan under the rest. Riley joined him a few minutes later with two mugs of coffee. He offered the second to Andrew as he asked, “How long has it been since you actually made it to class?”
Rather than answering, Andrew sipped his coffee too soon and seared his taste buds.
“Okay, uh, consider fixing that before you can’t. If you want to, that is,” Riley said.
“Message received,” he said.
With the rest of the bullshit going on, time passed fast and loose, but he’d managed a couple of course meetings for each class so far, and had turned in a few assignments, sort of on schedule. He had to get it together, he couldn’t afford to lose his access to Troth and her ilk while he kept searching. Riley got up and scratched his flat, lightly furred lower stomach; Andrew looked elsewhere a second late.
“I’m heading out, morning class to teach and all. Hit me up if you’re on campus later,” Riley said.
He carried his coffee upstairs, floorboards creaking overhead as he prepared for the day. Andrew logged onto his student email, laptop precariously balanced on one thigh and coffee in his free hand. Two from West, the unanswered warning from Troth, and several from his courses. He responded to Troth first: I had an interesting breakthrough with the McCormicks, can we meet to discuss? Free this afternoon. The emails from his mentor came from five minutes after their ill-advised beer and then the previous night at 11 P.M.
West’s first email was brief:
Hey Andrew,
Sorry for the abrupt departure. Full disclosure, I was already pissed about Troth spending half of our first dissertation meeting in a month going on about you and Ed and that missing notebook. I can’t pretend to be in a good place about it. The problems I have with her aren’t yours to deal with, though, so again, apologies.
—West
The second email, sent after Andrew had missed the class he shared with West and Riley to go off hunting stories with Sam, read,
Hey Andrew,
I haven’t seen you in class. Troth asked me about our mentorship meetings and I had to admit we hadn’t had one in forever. Let’s meet this week?
—West
Andrew popped another sliver off the ragged edge of his thumbnail with his eyeteeth. His cursor blinked at the start of an unwritten response. During the vision, or haunting, from the trunk—the scabs on his arms ached as he remembered—the person had been strong enough to lift and drop Eddie’s body into the trunk. That narrowed the field considerably. Out of the minuscule list of potentially culpable parties in Andrew’s head, West ticked the boxes for access, ability, and motive. The relationship between West and Troth had been fraught before Eddie came into the picture, and worsened after—suggestive in a way that his other options, all suspect due to circumstance or opportunism, weren’t.
He typed, Yeah sure, when’s good? and received another message almost instantaneously, this one from Troth: Come to my office this afternoon around 3pm, if you’re able? Andrew responded with a quick agreement. The shower’s hiss traveled through the vents. He ducked upstairs to change into another lightweight shirt with long sleeves, and scribbled a note for his roommate that he slapped on the closed bathroom door. It read going to look for the monograph myself text me the title.