Chapter 16

16

Considering the nature of the event, Andrew wore a button-up and arrived an hour late—having napped through the afternoon, then loitered in bed, steeling himself for another hour. He hadn’t met the hosting professor before, but his home was grand: three stories brightly lit from top to bottom, set far back from a clipped lawn with a half-oval drive. Andrew entered into a foyer alive with the social noise of a large gathering. A younger woman he recognized from his introductory course greeted him near the door and directed him through the living room to a spacious dining room, where the table was lined with copious, generous amounts of alcohol. He poured two fingers of bourbon over a spherical ice cube in a squat glass snagged from the sideboard.

“Mr. Blur, hello,” greeted his intro seminar professor, Dr. Greene, from the kitchen across the way. “So glad to see you this evening.”

He tipped his glass in greeting. “You too.”

The cuffs of his shirt irritated his wrists, and his armpits had already begun to dampen. He paced the circular ground floor, passing through clusters of new students like himself, faculty, and the more senior cohort of students clumped around the faculty doing their dog-and-pony show with a mix of familiarity and desperation. He frowned, considering tactics for separating Dr. Troth off from the rest for a conversation. He made it almost back to the foyer before he found Riley and Luca, seated on a low couch in front of a bay window in the second den. The framed, ragged-edged original posters for silent films lining the den’s walls formed a strange audience as a ruckus in the dining room called the attention of the other mingling guests.

“Hey there,” Luca said.

She was wearing a cream blazer over a jet-black jumpsuit, belted at the waist with a gold cord. The cornflower blue of Riley’s dress shirt, cuffed to his elbows, complemented his black slacks. Riley’s smile lifted a notch.

“Glad you came, Andrew,” he said.

Andrew planted one cheek of his ass on the couch arm and crossed his ankles. Riley flung an arm over the back of the sofa and angled himself so he could look up at his face. The subdued air between them rang with unspoken, unprocessed meaning. Luca leaned across Riley to tap the edge of her glass to Andrew’s, a toast to nothing. She and Riley blended in to the posh get-together with a seamless prettiness that was at odds to the last time he’d seen them together: on the road, behind the wheel.

“How long am I expected to stay at these things again?” Andrew asked.

“I dunno, get comfortable and see how it goes,” Riley replied.

“We’ll duck out in a couple of hours—that’s usually about how long I can take the general atmosphere as a plus-one. The flavor of rudeness is more subdued than at Sam’s soirées, but a lot more … chilly, shall we say,” Luca added under her breath, conspiratorial.

Andrew’s phone buzzed. He slipped it from his pocket. Sam had texted, Guess you’re all being fancy tonight. Tell me if you get bored.

“Andrew,” called another voice from across the hall. West, displaying his usual mixture of sleek and tousled style from immaculate gleaming boots to a silver-threaded mauve shirt with two open buttons, stood framed in the doorway of the kitchen with a glass of wine loosely held at his side. “Did you just get here?”

“Yeah,” he said, straightening from his slouched perch as the other man approached.

“Bored already?” West asked, lifting his glass for a sip with long fingers spread across the rim rather than the stem.

Andrew said, “Working on it. Got anything interesting to talk about?”

Riley snorted. West glanced at him, smiled a flat, crooked smile, then nodded to Luca with a warmer exchange of murmured hellos. Standing close, Andrew caught the scent of his cologne: cardamom-edged and musky. The cluster of their bodies at angles to one another, observed by the magnified faces of dead celebrities from the room’s posters, carried a tense intimacy—and for once, the tension wasn’t about Andrew. Or at least, he assumed not.

“How’s your research going, Sowell?” West asked.

“Fine; revising my thesis proposal at the moment.”

West watched Riley over the rim of his wine glass as he savored a slow mouthful. “I heard it was rejected at the end of last term, that must have been frustrating.”

“Where’d that information come from?” Riley said.

“We all have our sources.”

“Boys, behave yourselves in front of company,” Luca said as she jerked a thumb surreptitiously toward the bustling chatter of faculty in the kitchen.

“Apologies,” West conceded with a grin that said he knew he’d won that round.

“Sure, sure, you’re right,” Riley said, patting Luca’s leg.

Andrew met Luca’s eyes over the top of Riley’s head. She rolled hers so dramatically that it almost made him snort while West and Riley bristled at each other and nursed their drinks. Andrew felt as if he were juggling three different lives and dropping the ball in all of them, but most of all this one. He had no place at ostentatious academic gatherings where people took thinly veiled potshots at each other’s writing over wine. On impulse, he slipped his phone out to respond to Sam: worse than bored

Oh really. Well come over and we’ll get drunk instead.

Despite his brief agreement, Riley opened his mouth again, like the words were being dragged out of him: “It was a request for revision, not a rejection. I agreed with the proposed narrowing of the research question. How’s your dissertation? Ed told me he thought you stalled out over the summer.”

Andrew’s hackles rose at Riley’s reference to Eddie, while West responded, “I’m not stalled, I’m investigating a fresh avenue for my third chapter my chair insisted on—”

A hand cupping his elbow startled him. He locked his phone screen with a twitch and Jane Troth laughed musically, recalling childhood memories of Eddie’s mother in a loose silk shell top and trim slacks.

“Sorry to scare you,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“Hello, Dr. Troth,” West said, the animation smoothing from his expression until his face was a polite mask. “How’s your evening going?”

She glanced at him, then said to Andrew, “May I borrow you from your friends?”

Andrew nodded, surprised to see his problem solving itself. As she turned to leave the room, clearly expecting him to follow, he caught sight of Luca wrinkling her nose and West glowering with exhausted irritation at the professor’s retreating back. Riley crimped his mouth too. Subdued, Luca had said, and he thought he maybe understood a glimmer of what she was trying to explain to him.

Nonetheless, he followed dutifully as she led him from the group. The upstairs study she retreated to possessed the signs of human life that the public spaces of the gathering lacked: a pair of discarded socks next to the desk; a closed Macbook on the blotter; a haphazard collection of coffee mugs lined up on the windowsill. Andrew inspected the books on the shelf without seeing the titles. Dr. Troth propped her hip on the desk.

“Eric won’t mind, so long as we ignore the clutter. He offered the space so we could speak in private.”

“Sorry I missed our meeting, things have been busy,” Andrew said.

She gestured to the fading bruises along his jaw and asked, “Were you in an accident?”

“Yeah, and I’ve been catching up on assignments this week to make up for lost time. What did you want to talk to me about?”

Dr. Troth stood straight, pulled a folded square of paper from her trouser pocket, and passed it to him with a cool brush of fingertips. The edges, folded under themselves, formed an elegant packet. His thumb pressed the dense weave of the stationery into a hard ridge on the object it contained.

“Edward’s ring,” she said. “I found it, after, but I hadn’t had the chance to meet with you without an audience, and I didn’t think it would be appropriate to give you in public.”

Andrew tucked the packet into his jeans without opening the flap, imagining the weight of the platinum burning a circle into his thigh. He flattened his palm against his leg to press an indentation of metal to flesh for a split second and said, “Where was it?”

“He’d come to my home for a small dinner party and helped with the dishes after. I found the ring next to the sink,” she said.

“A dinner party?” Andrew repeated dumbly.

Troth swept her palms along the desk behind her, leaned back, and nodded. She was as earnest as a well-bred greyhound. He had a difficult time picturing his Eddie washing dishes at her sink, sleeves rolled, ring on the countertop—considering he’d seen him open beer bottles with the selfsame ring more than once—but the man had contained hidden multitudes, as Andrew so richly understood these days.

“I’m sure he didn’t mention it to anyone, but I reached out to him when I saw his name on the roster, well before I realized how intriguing his research would be. I was an acquaintance of his parents, years ago,” she said.

The content of their first uncomfortable office conversation stood out to him in chilling relief: her implicit knowledge of him and his past, the panic attack he’d heaved through in the stairwell. Of course she knew Eddie’s parents, that was his fucking luck—no wonder she had been acting weird about Andrew avoiding her.

“He hadn’t told me that, no,” he said instead.

She shifted her weight from one modest high heel to another, relieving the pressure in a minute human gesture. Even leaning against the desk, she had several inches on him. Andrew fought the urge to draw himself taller while she observed his discomfort with the conversation, his fingers itching to ground themselves on the ring in his pocket.

When he said no more, she continued: “The Fultons and the Troths are old families, you know, but both our lines have dwindled to almost nothing. He said the old Townsend house was still standing. I suppose it’s yours now, as well. Have you been to see it?”

Prickling cool sweat spread across his scalp.

“No,” he said.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; he took a sip of his ice-diluted bourbon to cover. He shook his head in a second no. His phone buzzed once, twice, three times in quick succession, each message a faint audible hum in the stock-still room. Another sip of bourbon. His fingers itched to see what he’d been sent, but Troth remained perched against the desktop, unfinished, considering him with a tilt of her chin.

“I apologize, local histories are a passion of mine. I’m sure you’ve been busy. But have you had a chance to read any of the texts I loaned you?” Before he found an answer, she cut her own question off: “Ah, I suppose not, with the accident. Proposals will be reviewed at the end of the term for initial approval, you’re aware?”

“Yes,” he said, lost in the chop of the conversation.

She sighed, cracked her knuckles, and said, “I’ll be frank. I have an interest in working with the material Edward was gathering, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to adopt it, given the circumstances. The optics would be poor, don’t you think?”

Taking her dead student’s research—Andrew allowed, “Maybe, yeah.”

“So, let’s you and I meet in the coming week. If you’d be willing to consider continuing in his footsteps, and would allow me to participate in a hands-on capacity, I’ll do all within my power to assist. I’m aware this is unorthodox,” she said. “But it feels almost like returning the ring. Since you’re an heir yourself, after all, aren’t you?”

The briefest flicker in her expression set him on edge. Something akin to disdain, there and gone. To her, was Andrew another scholarship kid, a different sort than Riley but a charity case all the same? She was old blood, watching him pick up the leftovers of a family hers had known for generations. He pressed his thumb to the edge of the ring in his pocket and thought, hands-on means she’ll know who he was talking to.

“All right, I’m interested,” he said.

“Perfect. I hope I haven’t come across as rude; I don’t mean to pressure you. It was a delight for me to help a Fulton research the Fultons. They’ve always had a famous connection to the supernatural, you know,” she allowed, smiling like a conspirator.

Andrew finished his drink in a long gulp. The burn singed his healing gums. His phone buzzed again. Despite his scramble for ten total words in the entire conversation, she’d said more to him than she ever had to date. Maybe she’d been planning out her pitch, saving it up. Maybe he’d pissed her off by ignoring those emails, or maybe she was wine-drunk and feeling proprietary over the young wreck in front of her, connecting him to a namesake he’d never claim for himself.

The Fulton line, dwindled—a bitter taste in both their mouths.

“I imagine that fine, spooky history was what led you boys to tromp around the woods that summer. It’s hard to believe I’m looking at the young man from the newspaper all grown up,” she said. Andrew’s hand spasmed on the glass. Weaker crystal might have cracked. Troth stepped from the desk and laid delicate fingers on his shoulder in passing. “I remember the search, because my youngest was your age then. Edward’s parents were distraught. It was such a relief when you were both found.”

She left before he had a chance to ask his questions, or calm his pounding heart. Her heels clacked across the hall, then down the staircase in a decrescendo. Andrew set the empty glass on the floor at his feet before he could throw it. White noise roared in his head. She’d hinted before, but proof that she really knew ripped him open like a row of unhealed stitches—that was why he hadn’t wanted to be in Nashville, had argued with Eddie not to take him back to a place where people might remember him. And Troth had the gall to throw it at him while leaving a room.

When he passed through the den Luca called out to him, “Andrew, are you all right?”

“—and anyway, you’re flat fucking wrong,” Riley said with enthusiasm, gesticulating wildly at West as they stood toe-to-toe, refreshed wine glasses in hand. Riley’s cheeks were red; West’s eyes blazed.

“Listen, I’m not disagreeing the book is useful, but what I’m saying is—” West began in a rejoinder containing equal fervor.

“Sorry,” Andrew said to Luca as he waved her off and walked straight toward the door.

“Wait,” she called out.

Andrew didn’t pause in his flight, unbuttoning his cuffs as he jogged down the short porch steps. He swung himself into his car—his real car, his Supra, with its ugly wrap and sticky transmission—and pushed the clutch as he turned the key. The messages on his phone, which he read while he waited for the frantic shaking in his hands to quit, read:

I’ve got whiskey and two blunts

One blunt

Zero blunts but more weed

Tell me you’d rather stay there and listen to the nerds twist each other’s pigtails

He almost sounded like Eddie. Andrew put the car in gear and sent, what’s your address, then input it to his GPS as soon as he got a profanity-and-praise-laden response. The paper in his pocket jabbed into his thigh, pokey and unforgiving. He drove fast through the yellow-moonlit night, tracing steep hill roads to the house he was becoming familiar with. Troth was after him to fill Eddie’s shoes for her, to complete his research with her, to dredge the accident up for her—she forced her way into things no one else understood, probing secrets he’d rather leave buried.

But he had questions to ask, and he needed her answers for some of them.

“Fuck,” he barked, crunching to a stop on the gravel in front of Halse’s garage.

He wasn’t some whiskey-gentry scion playing historian for kicks, digging into his long-nursed wounds to find the festering bottom. He didn’t belong at Vanderbilt, and he didn’t belong in Troth’s world either. He hadn’t been groomed to inherit the Fulton name and legacy. He was just Andrew Blur. All he wanted to unearth was the truth of Eddie’s last hours, to set things as right as he was able.

The front door opened as he climbed out of the car and Sam jogged down the steps, his fingers looped through a plastic-ringed sixer of Old English tallboys and a smile on his face.

“I’ve got you covered,” Sam said.

Andrew met him halfway across the lawn and yanked a beer free. The rib-crushing squeeze in his chest hadn’t abated, but the hiss-crack of the can opening eased it a fraction. Bitter malt liquor on his tongue settled him another inch. Sam snagged the can and stole a swig. Companionable silence settled between them, unbroken by Riley’s chatter or the squabbling of other boys. It was the second time they’d been alone. In the ambient light, the square cut of Sam’s jaw was ghostly familiar.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Sam said.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine. I haven’t gotten to show her off yet,” Sam said.

Andrew grunted his agreement and moved his car to the side of the drive while Halse cut through his house. He clasped the OE between his knees, since the can wouldn’t fit in the console holder. With a clamoring grind, the garage rolled open to reveal the WRX, gunmetal and black chrome and anticipation. Andrew squeaked his thumb over the low spoiler, touching the car for the first time. Sam had left the bolts unpainted, bare metal.

“Get in,” Sam said as he locked the door to the house.

The passenger door was already unlocked. Andrew glanced over his shoulder as he settled into the seat. The rear compartment was empty, bench seats removed. Halse snagged a hat from the scattered detritus, and Andrew passed him a tallboy from the sixer.

“Thanks, man,” Sam said.

He planted his hand on the back of Andrew’s seat as he turned in his own to reverse the length of the drive, fast enough to feel fun-sloppy, comfortable with his maneuvering. Upon executing a two-point turn onto the main road, he released Andrew’s seat to face front—and somehow managed to skim the tips of his fingers across the join of Andrew’s neck and shoulder, raising the hair on his nape in a bristling twitch. Opposite the direction of the city where Andrew had come from, the road climbed farther into the hills; Sam headed that direction, seeking distance from the rest of the world. Once he’d hit third gear at a maintenance speed, he cracked his beer open.

“So it sucked,” he said.

Andrew nodded.

Sam hummed and passed his tallboy across the console. Andrew balanced it on his knee, dropping his head onto the seat rest when Sam thumbed the controls to roll their windows down. Fresh summer air filled his mouth with the taste of a forest in the hot dark. The engine revved and Sam laughed under his breath, laughed for himself. Andrew had done this more times than he could count, with a different man at his side. The road leveled out around the side of a hill, a track cut wide and long with a gentle curve and a precipitous drop past the steel barrier rail.

“Well, fuck ’em,” Halse barked, and gunned it.

Acceleration flattened Andrew into his seat, pinning him. With eyes closed and lips popped open he allowed the vertigo to slam through him, cold beer spilling on his crotch when Sam pumped the brakes to corner hard around the curve. The tires slipped in a wild second of drift before he wrangled the car over the center line. Sam Halse drove with the confidence of a man who knew he was a king. Andrew lolled his head to the side and peeked at the broad set of his smile and his loose shoulders. The relaxed pleasure in his posture spoke to the fact that he’d taken this route a million times and would drive it blindfolded if someone asked. Andrew chugged the rest of his beer and tossed his crumpled empty over his shoulder.

There were no streetlamps. Sam’s bluish headlights and the partial moon were all that illuminated the world. Trees towered mossy green, eerily verdant, from out of the blackness on either side of the road as they cut through a flatter strand of hillside. As their pace leveled, fast enough to entertain but slow enough to split his attention without the risk of death, Sam reclaimed his OE. He tilted it to the side of his mouth and watched the road while he sipped. Andrew watched his throat work, watched a trickle of sweat leaching into the collar of his shirt.

Andrew opened his mouth and said, “None of them ever shut up.”

Sam snorted. “Let me guess. My cousin and that rich dude he’s always getting irritable at sniped at each other about bullshit they technically agree on while Luca tried to smother their dumbass feud, and you hated every minute of it. Am I right, Blur?”

Andrew gulped another throat-challenging mouthful of OE in response. The grade of the road descended by degrees as they circled the other side of the hill. If Eddie were driving, he might’ve reached across the console to grab Andrew’s knee. He’d have dug his thumb into the notch on the outside for a moment of grounding discomfort. Sam just drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, left arm flung briefly out the window to grab the breeze.

“Call me Andrew,” he offered.

Without looking at him, Sam drawled, “All right, Andrew.”

His name lay full on Sam’s tongue, the two syllables spilling out rounder, less clipped than the one. The disembodiment of the department gathering, his pretense at scholar-gentleman, dropped away at Sam’s slur on the -drew.

Switchback pavement led them to the base of the hill. In a creek-split holler between the rolling heights of the forest, draped with night and interrupted only by the porch light of one farmhouse set a far distance from the road, Sam coasted to a casual stop. Humid air danced through the windows. Sam wiped his forehead with his wrist, dislodging his hat. The pair of them finished their sixer, elbows out their windows and silent as old friends—the night had spackled over his cracking façade with watchful silence and purposeful adrenaline, offering the right comfort without making him ask for it.

After Sam tossed his last can in the back, he asked, “Ready to head home?”