Summer Sons(11)

“Sam, I’m seeing Luca this afternoon when she gets off, I can’t just—”

“You really can,” Halse said.

The speed with which Sam hustled Riley into his shoes and out the front door was impressive. When the sudden silence of their departure descended on the living room, Andrew found himself standing stupidly next to the couch holding his phone. Halse had spared him from further interrogation, though he had probably been trying to save his cousin from an anticipated blowup. Andrew collapsed onto the warm impression of his roommate’s ass on the couch and propped his phone on his knee to thumb the password in. The missed calls list—five from Del, two from his mother, one from a number he didn’t recognize—he cleared. The voicemails he marked as read without listening. He could guess what was in them.

Most of the texts were from Del too. Instead of tackling those, he clicked through to his mother’s thread, asking if he had made it safe. He typed back a brief I’m fine, just busy. Family brunch with him and Eddie, once a month for the past few years, was the extent of their usual interaction. Del probably spoke to his mom more than he did, and he briefly wished his mom luck with that, because Del’s name on his phone had an impressive blue “24” in the alert bubble next to it. He halfheartedly scrolled through a wall of texts without reading. Another flick brought him to the bottom, where the last handful of messages read:

Please please answer me

You’re such an asshole please text me back

Are you dead

This isn’t funny I’m not laughing

He typed back, I had to move in and take care of some estate stuff, please calm down. Morbid curiosity about the paragraphs lingering hidden in the scroll was outweighed by the preemptive fatigue he felt just thinking about reading whatever she had thrown at him.

The phone vibrated in his hand a split second after: incoming call. He answered, “Hey.”

“You’re the most inconsiderate person I’ve ever met,” Del said.

After eight years with Del, Andrew had a good sense of when he had pushed too far, and her brittle-bright tone was a strong indicator. But he had his own concerns to deal with. “Has it occurred to you that I might have some shit I need to work through right now?”

“I’m sure you do. So do I, you fucking asshole.”

The line disconnected. Andrew sighed and pressed the phone to his forehead. Thirty seconds later, it rang again. He swiped to answer and didn’t bother to say anything, just tapped speakerphone and set it on the table as he leaned back against the couch.

Cold with distance and fuzzy through magnification, Del said, “I thought you were dead. Literally, actually dead. I thought I was going to get a second call in a month from somebody telling me, hey, that guy you care a lot about? He killed himself.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, you aren’t.”

Silence crackled between them. He slumped forward again, ran his hands through his hair, and stared at the phone display; seconds ticked past, then minutes. She was waiting for him to speak.

He said, “You don’t need to worry. I wouldn’t.”

She laughed like crying. “Andrew, babe, I don’t believe you. Eddie spun all sorts of stories about how great he was doing. He didn’t tell me something was wrong. Worse, he didn’t tell you. So why would you tell me?”

He didn’t do it warred with he wouldn’t have told you and the impossibility of telling her what Eddie had been hiding from him—that fucking research—without exposing a host of other secrets.

So he said, “How am I supposed to argue with that?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Tell me the truth, are you okay down there?”

“I met his roommate, and the guy’s cousin—the one with the WRX, I think.” He paused. “He set me up a bedroom. It’s a good bedroom. He was here without me for like six months, Del.”

“Maybe you should leave the good memories, then, and stop looking to fill in the gaps. He’s gone, you don’t have to follow him into the trouble he made for you,” she said.

Andrew flopped limp onto the couch, one foot hanging over the arm. The ceiling above him had a water stain at the corner; he stared at that ’til his eyes smarted. He’s gone—she said it so simple, like a knife to his brain.

“Uncalled for,” she said, quieter. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I hate seeing him still doing this to you from … from beyond the fucking grave.”

He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “He would not have left me, Del. Not possible. I’m going to find out what happened to him.”

“Andrew, come on,” she said.

“You don’t get it,” he said.

“I get that he hurt you, and you’re not accepting the truth about that,” she said.

“I don’t know what I think did happen, but I know it wasn’t—that. He didn’t fucking turn into a different person and kill himself for no reason without telling me a goddamn thing. He wouldn’t do that to me.” He ended on a choked note.

“He wasn’t that good, Andrew,” she said, her voice hitching to match, conflicting emotions swelling between them across the phone line. “He was always self-centered, and you know that. You can’t argue with that. I don’t think he thought about us at all.”