Lineage(40)

Lance shook his head and smiled in spite of himself. “Oh man. Now you sound like Andy.”

“Well, I always said he was a very intelligent person.”

“He’s a foulmouthed Aspie that thinks he knows what’s best for me.”

“Like I said, he’s a very intelligent person.”

Lance laughed loudly and genuinely, and a smile remained after the laughter receded. “Thanks so much, Doc. I really owe you a lot.”

“Lance, you were my first patient when I was fresh out of my internship. You were my favorite back then, and you still are today.” Lance’s eyes softened and he looked at his reflection in window across from him, the background beginning to brighten. For a moment he expected to see a boy staring back.

“Sorry again for waking you.”

“No need to apologize, but do me a favor and call me sometime just to chat. I want to know how your book ends before it’s published, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” Lance said, laughing again.

“Good night, Lance.”

“Good night, Doc.”

Lance pressed the end button and laid the phone face-down on the desk. He could just make out the looming silhouettes of trees in the growing light. His eyelids dipped slightly as fatigue, which had been elbowed aside by his terror a half-hour before, finally caught him firmly in an undeniable grip.

He stood from the chair and made his way back through the house, turning off the same lights he had flipped on earlier. He paused at the base of the stairway and peered up at the unlit rectangle of his bedroom door. Instead of turning right and heading up the stairs, he went straight, into the sunken living room. He sprawled out on the large sectional couch and pulled a down comforter over him. Without so much as another thought, Lance looked one last time at the steadily graying light in the east before closing his eyes to the morning. As he gradually dropped into darkness, he heard the sound of scuffing footsteps, but they did not pursue him as he finally slipped deep into sleep.



A muted chiming pried Lance’s sealed eyelids open to the sunlight-flooded living room. He licked his dried lips and tried to blink away the crusted sleep that scratched the corners of his eyes. The musical alarm continued until Lance sat up and looked about for its cause. By the time he realized that his cell phone all the way upstairs in his bedroom was the culprit of the noise, it had fallen silent.

Lance sat up from the couch and squinted at the digital clock on the stove in the kitchen. “Shit, almost noon,” Lance croaked to the empty room. He stretched his jaw, as was his routine, and listened to the snap of tendons and bone. A deep rumble issued from his stomach and he felt hunger pangs working their way through his guts like thin knives. His head felt as though heavy syrup had been poured in one ear while he slept. As he rose from the couch, his phone began to vibrate and chime again above him. Lance stopped to listen to it for a moment, his head cocked to one side, before continuing to the kitchen to make breakfast.

“Fuck it.”



Lance placed the clean plate in the wire dish-drainer and wiped his hands on the towel near his waist. His stomach was overly full due to the seven-egg omelet he had consumed along with two pieces of toast and a glass of orange juice.

As he climbed the stairs to his room to see who had incessantly called him during the morning hours, he had a sudden stab of melancholy. He mulled over the feeling, like a man rolling a misshapen rock in his hands, before realizing that Ellen might never climb these stairs with him again. He paused at the landing until the feeling became less poignant, and then entered his room.

When he turned his phone on, the list of missed text messages and phone calls filled the screen. Most of the numbers had a New York area code.

“E and effin’ F,” Lance murmured as he scrolled down the messages. There were two from Andy, both encouraging him in no uncertain words to call his publisher and basically set them straight, and five from Rashir Smith, the assistant to the executive publishing rights agent at Ellington & Field.

Lance threw the phone onto the bed and made his way back downstairs without answering a single request. As he strode purposefully in the direction of the basement with full intentions of putting himself through a grueling workout, something stopped him near the door to the study. Lance’s eyes narrowed as he listened to the silence of the house. He had heard something. Something like a word, a whisper in the air the second before as he stepped toward the stairway. He shook his head and began to move again, but paused when he noticed another sensation.