Letter Nine
We coasted along pretty smoothly after the Sienna incident.
Spring arrived, and then it was April, and you became different, Casey, the closer it drew to your birthday. You started snapping at me for little things. Like leaving my dishes in the sink. Or coming home five minutes late. Or turning up my music too loud when Tinsley and I hung out after school.
The first birthday you spent with us fell on a Sunday. I woke up that day, planning to give you a big hug, but found your room empty when I peeked inside it on my way downstairs.
We had brunch as usual, but you never showed, Nic tossing worried glances at your empty seat all throughout the meal.
When he caught Michael texting underneath the table, Nic asked if he’d heard from you.
Michael said he hadn’t, that he’d been trying to reach you all morning, long before we’d ever sat down to brunch.
You’d seemed pretty upset about something when you two had hung out the night before, he said, and it worried him.
This information caused a look of alarm to pass over Nic’s face.
He excused himself from the table, already lifting his phone to his ear.
As the afternoon wore on, we really began to worry.
It wasn’t like you to disappear without a trace, or miss brunch without a reason, or ignore everyone’s texts and calls.
The Harrises and Eleanor left, but Nic asked Michael to hang back.
They stayed in Nic’s office, chatting forever.
When Michael finally came out, he found me sitting with Garland.
“Text me if he comes home. My dad and Hal are going to help me look for him.”
“Do you think this has something to do with it being his birthday today?” I asked.
Michael looked away. “Probably. Yeah.”
Later, I approached my dad in his office, where he was staring down at his phone, probably wishing he’d thought to track your location, his head propped between his hands.
“Dad, have you ever talked to Casey’s sister, Claire?”
Nic straightened, his desk chair squeaking across the floor. “No. Why?”
“I overheard her and Casey talking once on the phone. She asked him for your number. Said she wanted to talk to you about some stuff.”
“What stuff?” Nic asked.
“Casey spiraling? Self-destructing? Having to be pulled off a ledge? She sounded worried it might happen again if something didn’t go the way he hoped.”
Nic’s eyes grew wide with panic as he snatched his phone off the desk. “I’ll find her number right now. Why don’t you get started on your homework? Let me deal with this.”
I went upstairs, grabbed my homework, and brought it downstairs to do at the kitchen island, wanting to be there if you walked in the back door, needing to see—with my own eyes—that you were okay.
With a knot in my stomach, I shot you a text: Everyone’s worried about you, Casey. I am, too.
I thought of our tea routine. Our walks in the park. Dinners at the island, your elbow grazing mine. The new pockets of happiness that had formed in my life, now that you were there, making me laugh and smile over the simplest things. Desperate, I texted you again: Please come back to me.
After a while, three dots appeared on your end of our text exchange. Then disappeared. Then reappeared again.
In the end, you didn’t reply, but those dots gave me a small sliver of hope.
Nic sat up with me until well after eleven that night, both of us hunched over the island, weary with exhaustion, sluggishly scrolling on our phones. When we heard your key turn in the lock, my dad shoved his stool back and stood, gripping the edge of the counter.
You stumbled in the back door, clearly drunk, similar to that time before Christmas, your hair a tousled mess and your shirt buttoned wrong, as if you’d dressed in the dark.
You gazed back at us with bloodshot eyes, their usual warm shimmer missing entirely. A flat, dark blue. No longer the sparkly hue of the ocean.
“Where have you been?” Nic asked.
Head leaning back, you replied, “Out.”
“That’s not an answer, son.”
You flinched, your handsome features pinching together like my dad had just insulted you. “Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever the hell I want. Because this”—Nic jammed his finger down at the floor, or maybe the house in general—“is where you belong.”
A muscle in your jaw jumped, the knot in your throat bobbing up and down. Even in the dim light coming from the lone fixture Nic had left on over the stove, I saw the shimmer in your eyes. I didn’t quite understand back then, but I know now that you were trying not to break.
Nic’s voice shook as he said, “When I text you, you’re to answer me. When I call you, you’re to pick up your goddamn phone. You ever disappear on me again, and I’ll hunt you down. I’ll drag you right back here. Do you understand me?”
It took you several seconds to reply, and when you did, I’m pretty sure your voice cracked. “Yes.”
“I had a long talk with your sister earlier. It seems she’s been wanting to talk to me for a while now,” Nic said. “I’ll give you a pass tonight, but the second Elliot leaves for school in the morning—you and I, Casey—we have some very important issues to discuss.”
Dragging a shaky hand across your face, you nodded at him.
Nic turned to me. “I better hear you both on the stairs in ten minutes, Elliot.”
When he left, you sank into the stool beside mine and buried your face in your hands. I remembered Michael’s request for me to text when you got home, so I did. His reply came instantly: Thank God.
“You scared us, Casey. I’ve never seen my dad that worried before.”
“I’m so sorry,” you whispered.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, reaching over to twist your bracelet.
You lifted your head. “What do you have to be sorry for?”
“That you’re sad.” I twisted the bracelet again. “But I’m glad you came back.”
Your gaze dropped to my fingers on your wrist. Then—and I still break out in goosebumps when I remember this moment—you reached over and gripped my wrist, turned your body to face mine, and rested your forehead against my shoulder.
Breathtakingly slow, your hand slid up my bare arm, stilling beneath the sleeve of my t-shirt.
You clung to me like a drowning man to a life raft, your fingers digging into my skin so hard it hurt a little.
But I liked that. The burning. The pressure.
Your skin, sinking deeper into mine. In a weird way, it felt like being claimed.
Gripping your stool in the empty space between your legs, I lowered my face, catching a whiff of cigarette smoke, along with a girl’s perfume.
I definitely didn’t like that. But I put my free hand to your head, anyway, then dragged my fingers through your hair, marveling at how silky and soft and thick it was.
You ground your forehead against my shoulder, and my heart skipped, despite the circumstances. “I just want it to be over,” you said.
Your statement, on the other hand, cracked my chest open. “Want what to be over?”
“This day.” A tear hit my skin, then trickled down my arm.
I couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a parent so young, let alone on your birthday. “It is over, Casey. It’s after midnight.”
“It’s not over till I’m asleep.”
“Then let’s go upstairs,” I said. “So you can sleep.”
As you pulled away, I longed to climb in your lap, aching to brush those tears from your face.
But you brushed them away yourself.
A couple weeks later, when I got home from school early, the sound of voices greeted me as I walked through the front door. Quietly dropping my bag, I tiptoed closer to the Garland Room.
You’d just finished talking. Then Michael said, “Dude, stop making excuses.”
“But I don’t like letting Nic pay my bills. I could make loads of money back home,” you said. “And I don’t want to impose on your holiday, either.”
“You’re not imposing,” Michael said. “We want you on the Cape with us. This is your first summer here, and it would be nice to have another guy around so it’s not just me, stuck with the girls like I normally am.”
Michael’s words—stuck with the girls—might’ve caused my temper to flare if I hadn’t spent years listening to him grumble about being the only guy at the beach every summer. I listened for your response, but one never came.
“Come on, man,” Michael said. “If you don’t go, I’ll be stuck dealing with Elliot’s drama all by myself.”
That word again—stuck. Only this time, it made me see red.
“What drama?” you asked.
But I burst into the room before Michael could answer, aiming a glare at him. “Stuck dealing with me? Is that how you really feel?”
Michael dropped his hand from the mantle. “What the hell, Elliot? How long have you been standing there?”
Your eyes flared ominously as you rose from the sofa. “Have you been eavesdropping again?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now answer my question, Michael.”
He sighed. “You know exactly why summers aren’t fun for me anymore. And—yeah, actually—the drama you cause every year makes me feel stuck. Like I’m doomed to repeat the same thing. Over and over.”
You glanced between us with your eyes narrowed, not understanding. But I did. Like Michael said, I knew exactly what he felt doomed to repeat every summer: me and my fucked-up drama.
“Wow,” I whispered, folding my arms. “Thanks for the brutal honesty. Wasn’t expecting to be hit with that today.” I looked at you. “Do you also feel stuck, Casey? Stuck dealing with me in this house?”
“Well, no,” you said, arms crossed over a blue ribbed cardigan. “But I’m more of a homebody myself. What I find most difficult about our living situation is that I can never be sure whether you’re lurking in the shadows to invade my privacy or not.”
“The answer to that,” Michael said, hands casually stuffed in his pockets, “is always.”
“Shut up, Michael. And by the way, Casey, you following me around everywhere is a huge invasion of my privacy. If you don’t like the way I do things here, you’re more than welcome to leave.”
I turned and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” you called.
“Out,” I said over my shoulder.