by Rachel Kane
That would’ve been an appropriate end. A roof couldn’t kill his tough and hardy dad, but Mason? He’d just tumble down and die, and that would be the end of him, and all because he couldn’t hold his phone and the hose at the same time. The hose was snaking down the vent pipe, flushing out the bird’s nest that had somehow buried itself about two yards down inside it, causing the Meyers’ sinks to gurgle, from the old white porcelain sink in the kitchen with that one dark metallic spot where three generations of Meyers forearms had rested while washing dishes, rubbing the white clean off of it, to the powder-blue sink back in the bathroom, which had been spitting up water like a colicky infant.
It was a message from Alex that did it. Did you know Liam’s back?
As his eyes focused on the screen, his understanding flickered to life, and his sense of surprise was only heightened when that bird’s nest finally gave way, its twiggy foundations snapping and separating, gallons of water flooding past it, pushing its remains into the larger world of the sewer pipes, where it became a raft, a passengerless boat floating out to the county water treatment plant, but with such force that the hose jumped in his hand, and the phone jumped in his hand, and he jumped from his perch on the roof, and the phone, slick with water, leapt for freedom, skittering down the shingles, and that’s when the fatal accident happened, his hand outstretched, a guttural yell in his throat, his mind caught between ideas in an instant: He’s coming back! Why is he coming back? Why didn’t he tell me himself? Did he not tell me because he wants to avoid me? Oh shit I am going to DIE—
That last thought, fortunately, kicked in the survival mechanism of letting the phone go and steadying himself. The roof’s slope wasn’t steep at all, and a simple shifting of his boots saved him from a humiliating death (or, worse, a broken ankle, and having to explain the circumstances to his friends and never living it down). The phone itself, hell-bent on its own demise, tripped over the gutter and kept tumbling; he heard the glassy chunk of it hitting the flagstones in the Meyers’ backyard.
And then it began to ring.
“Listen,” said the voicemail, after Mason’s explanations to the Meyers, a promise to return to put a screen on the vent pipe, a promise to eventually send an invoice, “this is Liam…Liam Cooper? I was the one—well, hopefully, you know who I am—”
He had the phone in his hands, willing Liam to get over the inevitable awkwardness of the first part of his message, wishing he could press the phone to his ear to hear him more clearly; the speaker buzzed, and the spikes of broken glass made the thing look more like a weapon than a phone. “I know who you are,” he whispered, as though Liam could hear him.
“Anyway,” he said with a shy laugh, “I guess I’m coming back to town. More house business. And I thought… Well, I wondered, really, if you— Hm. Look, I’ll just call you again when I’m there, okay? I’m sure we’ll be staying at the motor lodge again.”
We. We’ll be staying. Was he bringing his whole family again? That made things a little difficult, didn’t it? House business. What kind of house business? Alex was still researching grant options, and hadn’t come up with the silver-bullet plan that would make everything okay, that would allow Liam to keep the house.
Now, listening to Liam’s voice, Mason wondered if it was a little weird that Alex was doing so without Liam’s knowledge. Was that strange? I kissed you one time, and now I’m scheming behind your back to help you buy a house you don’t want?
Yeah. Definitely a little weird.
Weirder still that he was actually coming back. The joy that Mason felt was oddly like fear, a twist in the gut, an excitement that had no place. He had no right to be this happy that Liam was returning. Aside from the five text messages he’d typed out and never sent, he hadn’t said a word to Liam since he left, relying instead of emanations through the psychic ether to say what he needed to say: I miss you. I wish it hadn’t ended so suddenly.
What was that? What gave him the right to wish anything? It was one kiss. It was practically chaste, what had happened between them. Yet Liam had been on his mind, so on his mind, that it was like he’d lost one of his best friends.
There was no explanation for it, other than a burdensome loneliness that was wearing out his friends. You could drive up there and see him, Toby had suggested. Oh, sure, just show up at his door, hi, remember me, I’m the contractor who did an estimate, now it’s time to…to… What’s a good construction-related double-entendre? His insistence that it had all been nothing, just a passing thing, just two ships in the night, was a topic brought up so frequently that Alex had begun to cringe whenever Mason stepped foot into the bookstore.
He wanted to text Liam that he’d gotten the message and looked forward to his return, but the broken phone would demand a blood sacrifice for that feat, sliding his thumbs over shards of space-age glass. The ads had talked about how that glass was nearly unbreakable, so strong it could be dropped from six feet without damage. Roofs were another matter, he supposed.
Well. He’d been meaning to get a new screen for his phone, anyway. They got scratched up so easily in his line of work. Far better to repair what he had, than get a new one. He certainly wouldn’t get one of these newest ones, with the face recognition and the four-figure price tag; those sleek, futuristic toys were far out of reach, for what his little business brought in. There were only so many new ceiling fans to install, so many plugged drains to unplug, in Superbia. No, he had a nice, solid model from five years ago, one that nobody was celebrating anymore, but at least when it got fixed, the screen wouldn’t look like a mouthful of monstrously clear jagged teeth.
There are plenty of ways to die, of which falling off a roof is only one of the more painful, physical and obvious. There are social deaths too, and these are often smaller, subtler, harder to pinpoint the moment of demise. When Mason walked into the phone store and saw Justin Mulgrew was there, he felt a sense of that death, teetering on the edge of a precipice, ready to fall against the social flagstones.
He would’ve turned around and walked right back out, but Justin saw him first, and he smiled, that weird flat Mulgrew smile that was all teeth and no lip, the unhappiest smile in the world.
“Mason,” he said, putting an odd emphasis on the second syllable, drawing it out. “I guess you’ve heard the news.”
Keeping his composure, Mason shook his hand, not remarking on the reptilian coolness of Justin’s palm, the way the tendons in his hand seemed to move without relation to the hand itself, like something coiling under the skin. “What’re you doing here?” he asked in the most conversational tone he could manage.
“Oh, time to upgrade, I suppose. Moving up in the world, you know. Wonderful thing, a phone. A real sign of where you are, don’t you think? Just a little way to tell people your proper place in life, without having to be obvious about it. I take it from your change of subject that you haven’t heard.”
He set the broken phone on the counter, and heard Justin’s delighted little tsk when he saw the broken glass.
“That thing is a brick,” Justin said. “Good grief, when did you buy that, the 1800s?”
“It’s just a phone,” said Mason, “not a status symbol.”
“Clearly.”
“It needs a new screen.”
“It needs throwing away.”
How had there ever been a time when he thought he and Justin might—? When he’d looked at Justin and seen him as a real human being, rather than a machine designed to produce anger and humiliation in others?
In the tiny cadre of Superbia residents who knew the truth about Mason, Justin was the one Mason regretted most. How easy his life would’ve been, if Justin had never found out.
“Tell me your big news,” said Mason, “since clearly you’re dying to. I assume it’s something terrible. Did you and your mother find a nice orphanage to burn down?”
Justin’s laugh was like a cold winter breeze through dying reeds by the side of a frozen lake. A death-rattle laugh, with all the amusement drained
away.
“An orphanage. Oh, Mason, you never stop, do you? Making me the villain of the story of your life. It’s kind of sad, really. Who’s the hero in that story? You? Or are you only the victim?”
Of all the conversations he didn’t want to have in public, in the middle of a phone store, with people hanging around pretending not to listen, this conversation would’ve been in the top three.
Fortunately he was spared having to respond by the technician who came up to the counter. “Morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you today?”
Mason put his hand out to push his phone forward on the counter. Then he paused, watching Justin’s grim smile. He took his hand away from it. “He was here first,” he said to the man. “Justin, you go.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine waiting. I know what I’m here for. I’m celebrating, you see. My mother is about to put in an offer for Cooper’s Folly. Finally, after all these years, that property will be ours. It’s glorious, really.”
A wild emotion took hold of Mason, one he could not possibly name, but felt equal parts disappointment, despair, and a jealous rage he had no right to feel. “Liam’s selling to you?”
“Liam, is it? First-name basis? My goodness, Mason, I had no idea. I knew you’d given him some kind of exorbitant estimate for the repairs, so high it ran him straight out of town. But don’t worry about that. Whatever we do with the property, I assure you it won’t involve the Tisdales.”
So that was why Liam was coming back to town. To sell to Justin Fucking Mulgrew.
Not to see Mason, not really.
He took a breath. It was okay. Really, it was. It had to be. Liam didn’t know. He wasn’t from here. He didn’t realize what a bad decision this was, for anyone who loved Cooper’s Folly. The Mulgrews were going to raze the place to the ground, and build their little empire on top of the rubble. Oh god, they would be insufferable when that happened. More so. Justin would feel like he had finally taken the throne, like he finally ruled the town.
They were going to be so sickeningly rich, if they sold that property off to developers.
Richer still if they held onto it and developed it themselves.
The whole town would change.
“Sir?” asked the man at the counter. “Can I help you?”
Mason turned back to him. “My old phone broke. I need a new one. The biggest, fastest one you have. Money is no object.”
Justin looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but Mason was careful to keep his eyes affixed to the technician.
A million ways to die in this world, and he would be damned if this day would be fatal to him.
15
Liam
Liam knew the first thing he had to do, once he got to town, was to visit Mr. Edwards. Mama had a lot of questions for him about how Liam’s dad had responded to the inheritance, about whether there were any written records, any correspondence, anything that would give them further insight into why Dad had turned down the house…or why he had been willed it in the first place.
All he wanted to do, though, was to call Mason. He’d realized on the drive down just how much he was looking forward to seeing him again. Mason hadn’t returned his call, which was a little odd, but he swore to himself he wouldn’t try to read anything into that. Wasn’t that a healthy, sane response? His normal reaction would’ve been to think about it, to try to get inside Mason’s head, to understand what might be going on in there. Truth be told, he’d done a little of that, ruminating late at night, listening to the soft sounds of Roo on the baby monitor, wondering if Mason was thinking of him, wondering if he wanted a second chance at that first time.
He had to be practical, though. Not emotional, even though the whole reason for being here was, really, an emotional one. He had Roo in his lap, both of them turning when the law office door opened, and Mr. Edwards came in.
“Would you look at that child? You had better not let Renee see her,” said the lawyer, “or she’ll try to feed her everything in the Red Cat Cafe.”
“They’ve met. I think they may be best friends now.”
The two men shook hands before Mr. Edwards took his seat, settling his glasses halfway down the long bridge of his nose.
What was it about this place that made him feel safe? He realized it wasn’t something he often felt back home in the city. Not a crime-related safety, it wasn’t that Superbia had fewer muggings, although the clean, pretty streets didn’t look like a haven for thieves. No, it was something else, a sense that Mr. Edwards had decided to look after Liam, a business-like adoption into the fold. Nothing would go too wrong, as long as Liam was in this office.
“If you got my message—”
“I did, I did,” said the lawyer, “and it’s a very interesting question, one that I want to be very careful in answering. There are aspects of attorney-client privilege here, you see, and that makes things slightly more complicated.”
“Was my dad a client of yours?”
Mr. Edwards looked up from his papers, glancing at first Liam and then Roo over the tops of his glasses, a smile playing across his face. “You cut straight to it. No, in fact, your father was not a client. Only your great-uncle was. What I can reveal to you, then, is bordered on one side. The only things I can tell you about your great-uncle, involves your part of the inheritance, and not any other communications—”
As safe as he felt in the office, Liam couldn’t help but feel a little frustrated, like Edwards was putting up a tall fence between him and what he needed to know. Still, he couldn’t rush the man. Clearly Edwards had a point he wanted to reach.
So he kept silent.
“Having said that, there is a difference between attorney-client privilege, and a man’s right to some privacy about his life. I think you know, your father had…aspects of his life, he did not want to divulge.”
Oh god. Oh, this again.
Mama was going to be furious.
It had come up so many times, during Dad’s final illness, during those last lingering days of hospital beds and morphine, his shaky voice ordering the whole family out of the room, the old steely strength somehow still there as he kept them from seeing the moment of his death, refused to let them share in it, refused to let them understand it.
So much of what they knew about his dad came from later, during the funeral.
“Dah-dah?” asked Roo, looking up at Liam. She knew. She could tell how tense he was, and it worried her. She started to fuss, and so he put her on his shoulder and bounced her the way she liked, which made her laugh and reach out, trying to take some of the colorful pens from Mr. Edwards’ desk.
Carefully, through an act of sheer will and practicality, Liam closed the door on his feelings about his father, and forced the tension to drain out of his body.
“So his refusal of the house had something to do with… To do with all that?”
Edwards rubbed his jaw with his hand, considering. “Oh, Mr. Cooper, I’m limited… There are things… What I will say is that I found it utterly surprising that he would refuse the house. But when he explained, I understood. And that’s all I can really tell you.”
Liam sat back in the chair, the leather warm beneath him. Roo took the opportunity to sit forward and snatch up a pen, laughing at her victory.
What could he say? “I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me about it.” Also, you’ll be lucky if Mama doesn’t crash down your doors and demand answers, after I tell her.
“Of course…”
Liam paused from getting up. “Of course…?”
“Of course, if your great-uncle had left behind papers, correspondence, other matters, those might explain what happened. I have a few of his records here…but it’s a big house, Mr. Cooper, full of hiding places. I’m sure if there were things he did not want brought to light—things he could not even trust me with—there might be some record of them there in the house.”
The number up on his phone was an unfamiliar one, but local. He finished buckling Roo into the car se
at before answering. She was not pleased at having to give Mr. Edwards’ pen back, but was mollified by being covered in stuffed animals once she was strapped in.
“Hello?”
“Oh…hey. Liam. Hi.” The voice on the other end was as uncertain as it was welcome to Liam’s ears.
“Mason, is that you? I didn’t recognize the number.”
“New phone. God, you don’t even want to hear the story, my old one was so old they couldn’t move my contacts over, and the screen was broken, and I cut my finger trying to find your number, and—”
“Sounds like you’ve had quite a day.”
Mason laughed, and it sounded simultaneously far away yet intimate, that strange magic of technology that lets someone whisper in your ear when you’re a world apart. “Listen, did you make it to town?”
“I did. I just got out of the lawyer’s office.”
“Perfect. We need to talk. Which, I know, sounds crazy—”
“No, no, I definitely want to talk to you, it’s just—”
“Oh…oh, is something up? No, I know I shouldn’t have asked—”
“Nothing’s up! I just don’t have my full crew here. Right now it’s just me and Roo. So we couldn’t— I mean, not that you were asking, but we’d have to—”
His cheeks were rosy with embarrassment, and the heat on his skin made him remember Mason’s own blushes, how ruddy they’d made him under that tanned skin.
“Okay, let me just see if I can get a sentence out,” Mason said, “without interrupting myself. Having your kid around is fine. I need to talk to you. Want to meet at the Red Cat?”
“Roo would like that.”
“We’ll have to be careful, Renee has a thing for babies, she’ll try to feed Roo peach pie and ice cream.”
“She does like ice cream,” Liam said, glancing in the rear-view mirror. “She also knows the phrase. Do you like ice cream, Roo?”
“Aye!” agreed the baby.
“Perfect. See you there in, say, half an hour?”
