by Lee Mandelo
“You sensed it, whatever, that’s fine.” The dismissal rang false, but Andrew was grateful. “I can’t fucking imagine what you’re going through. This doesn’t feel real.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Andrew admitted.
“How’d Sam take it?”
“Told me to stop messing around with spooky bullshit.”
“Sounds like him.”
Andrew worked the stress-tensed muscles of his jaw with his thumbs. Should he apologize for suspecting the cousins, for continuing to harbor a smoldering coal of blame while accepting their help?
Before he solved that conundrum, Riley asked, “Trying to be delicate here, but—are you going to listen to, uh, the ghost, now that you know he’s trying to communicate?”
Communicate, right. Andrew chewed his lip. He said, “No, there’s a difference between … me using the shit I used, and giving a haunt free rein. It isn’t him, don’t mistake that. It doesn’t care about us.”
“But if it knows something about what happened to him, why not listen?” Riley insisted.
“It’s not that simple.” The end came out strangled; he cleared his throat of the blockage. “I’m more interested in the fact that Sam said he was taking Eddie on his errands, introducing him to people, and that he thinks he wasn’t being smart about his mouth. You know about that?”
Riley nodded. Andrew felt as if he’d fallen out of his body, as if his roommate could see straight through him. After a night spent driving, crawling, fighting, and spilling confessions, he was a different version of himself than he had been that morning. It was rare to feel a shift so clearly. He wasn’t sure he welcomed the defamiliarization.
“I mean, off the top of my head, I’m not sure who all he spoke to, but he took lots of notes in field interviews. He used Sam as the easy in for gathering his participants, so those chats and his research were one and the same,” Riley said.
Andrew straightened in his seat and said, “I’ve gone through his notes some, but I hadn’t seen a field journal, nothing that particular.”
“No offense, but how thorough a search was that? Last time I checked, you weren’t super into his whole business,” Riley said with a gentle grin to ease the sting.
“I’m not, but—fuck.” Andrew covered his face again. Riley wasn’t wrong; he had no desire to dig through the minefield of papers again—not if he could ask a human instead. “Guess I’m going to have to be.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Riley said.
Andrew’s mouth moved on its own, numb with the shock of remembering, and he said, “Someone cut his goddamn wrists for him and left him to bleed out alone. He died pissed off and scared and knowing it was happening, and I was so fucking far away.”
“Jesus, Andrew,” Riley said, sounding strangled.
Tears streaked the bridge of Andrew’s nose, salt on his lips. He hiccupped with the force of stifling the broken, miserable wave of sobs that swept him under. Riley’s deep, wet, nose-clogged breathing next to him was also hid from sight in the gloomy dark. Sam—sitting on his couch, maybe, or on his porch with a smoke—was probably mired in the same loss. And worse than the pain was the gladness lurking underneath, Andrew monstrously pleased to know he hadn’t been cast off, hadn’t been left behind, that Eddie still wanted him in his final moment, even if he’d failed him in the grandest possible sense. Eddie had tripped himself into some trouble that even he couldn’t fix, had been taken from him.
The revenant was notably silent, absent, and Andrew’s usual humming awareness of the ground under his feet had gone dormant too. As if he’d spent himself dry reaching into the roots of the burial tree to pull forth blood from nothing—from stone, from water, he thought with the tiniest flare of panic. Before he got too caught up in the horror of it, Riley parked the car behind their house and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Two snot-clogged snuffles echoed in the enclosed space as he caught his breath. Though some barriers had crumbled in the face of grief, others remained upright; both men went to bed without speaking.
The first texts he saw in the morning were from Riley, asking: you going to the faculty party tomorrow? i’ll be there with luca. it’d be cool to go together maybe. you could ask Troth more about eddie
I’ll go, he agreed and sent Troth a similar email—because as West had said, and Sam too, Eddie had been asking people a lot of questions. Maybe too many.
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, cro
oked 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 th
an 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.
