3. Callum
THREE
callum
NOW
This town hadn’t felt like home in years. Not since Sam and I were actually brothers and not the strangers who begrudgingly shared family dinners. I’d always been the one to try and mend fences, but Sam had wallowed in his hurt and his anger until it became his personality.
The town hadn’t changed much over the years. Some stores had closed. Others had opened. The city put in a new waterpark, but that was turned off now. Halloween had come and gone, and it was now too cold for waterparks.
The people hadn’t changed much either. The Millers still ran the gas station on the edge of town, the one I stopped at on my way out every time I visited.
The one the Uber drove past just now as I came back to a place I had no interest in being.
Growing up here hadn’t been bad. I’d liked my life.
Even as a closeted gay kid, it wasn’t bad.
I had friends, and when everything went down, they stood by me when I’d needed them the most.
A lot of them had since moved on. High school was ten years ago, after all.
But Ginny and Zeke were still here, and we still kept in touch.
I made it a point to see them whenever I came to town.
Yes, it was partly self-serving. The more people I had to see on my return trips, the less time I had to spend at home suffering through awkward family dinners.
I’d moved away for a reason. But Sam had stayed and remained the dutiful son. The one who lived near Mom and Dad. Who still came around more often than just holiday dinners.
It was kind of ironic, I supposed, that it was Sam and not me who died. I doubted Mom and Dad would notice much if I’d been the one to go. But that wasn’t what fate had in mind.
Three years ago, Sam got cancer. Mom begged me to come home until Sam himself stepped in and told her to stop. He’d promised to beat it without my help. And he had.
Fate was a cruel mistress, though, because he had been in remission for a year, almost to the day, when a cold autumn night, a wet road, and a deer sent him careening into a telephone pole. He was dead on impact.
All that work to fight cancer, and it only got him an extra year. It was like death had marked him and was going to take him no matter what.
After he got sick, I sort of thought we might make up. That maybe finally Sam would stop holding his grudge. I reached out to him, telling him that if he needed anything, that I was here. All he had to do was ask.
He never responded, and I never tried again.
I’d long since stopped begging him to hear me.
I loved Sam, but he’d let this petty grudge ruin our family.
There’d been no reason for him to hold on to his anger all these years.
My hand tightened on the steering wheel, gripping it so hard my knuckles turned white.
Mom was expecting me. I’d told her I was coming straight home, but as the town passed by and I neared my old neighborhood, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking… couldn’t think. I couldn’t fathom walking into that house knowing Sam wasn’t there. Would never be there again.
How was I supposed to go in there and comfort Mom and Dad when I was so fucking angry at Sam? How was I supposed to know what to say to them?
I didn’t go straight home. I passed the turnoff to their house and instead drove to the liquor store. The clerk looked like they were barely old enough to drink, let alone sell alcohol. I had half a mind to ask for their ID, which made me feel older than my years.
I bought a bottle of Dad’s favorite sipping whiskey.
The kind he never bought because he was a cheap bastard when it came to treating himself.
Mom didn’t drink, but the bakery was next door to the liquor store and I bought her one of their raspberry tarts.
The bakery was a family operation, and they’d known my family for years.
Part of me hoped that they wouldn’t say anything about Sam, that they’d let me slink in and out without stopping to offer me condolences I wasn’t sure I deserved.
Of course, I wasn’t that lucky. Pat, the owner, waved me off, refusing my payment for the tart after he boxed it up carefully.
“I was sorry to hear about your brother,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.” It felt like a dumb thing to say, but if it was, Pat was kind enough not to bat an eye.
“I stopped in the other morning to check in on them.” Pat shook his head and passed me the box with the raspberry tart. “See that she eats this.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“You take care.”
Walking out of the bakery and into the street where the autumn wind had picked up again, a wintery chill now riding on the breeze, I took a deep breath and tried not to scream.
I hadn’t cried yet. It hadn’t felt real and maybe that’s why I was scared to go home.
Because then it would be. And I’d have to look my parents in the face and try to make them feel okay, when nothing about this was okay.
Sam was gone, and they were left with me.
Pat’s comment about making sure Mom ate hit me in the chest and to further procrastinate my return home, I stopped by the grocery store for some readymade food from the deli.
I was the master of turning rotisserie chicken into ten different meals.
I bought a couple of those and a few containers of the soup of the day.
I suffered through more condolences and were it not for the way the sympathetic looks made my insides squirm, I might have found more ways to procrastinate.
The house looked the same as it always had. Though now I wondered why they hadn’t downsized. The house looked large and lonely. Most of the windows were dark, the only light coming from the living room window on the ground floor.
My heart thrashed in my chest and, for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
In a minute, I’d have to walk into that house and all of this would become real.
Because until now, I could sort of pretend that nothing had changed for me.
I hadn’t had Sam in my life in years. But I always kind of hoped that we’d mend fences eventually.
Even if we were little old men, he couldn’t stay mad forever.
Well, it turns out that yes, he could.
I turned the engine off and reluctantly got out of the car.
I stuffed the whiskey into one of the shopping bags and carried them with one hand while I held the bakery box in the other.
My suitcase would be fine in the trunk. There was a large part of me that didn’t want to stay here, but there was no way I could break Mom’s heart and stay in a hotel.
I didn’t bother knocking, but I did fumble with the doorknob, trying to open it without setting anything down. Rain had recently swept through the neighborhood, making everything damp.
The house was a tomb when I stepped inside. Dark and lifeless. Quiet. No sound. I’d been in this house when it was quiet, but it had never been like this. Like even the house was grieving the loss.
“Mom? Dad?” I toed out of my shoes so I wouldn’t track dirt and water through the house.
They didn’t answer, but they did appear, coming from the kitchen.
I’d been here last Christmas, but in the months since, they’d aged a decade.
I expected that most of that happened in the last few days.
Dad, who’d always been this tall man, this presence, the kind you felt the minute he walked into a room, was a shadow of himself.
His hands were tucked deep in his pockets, and his shoulders were rounded.
He looked dead tired, like sleep was a thing that used to happen.
Mom wasn’t much better. She needed a shower and a nap, and some food by the looks of her.
“Cal,” her voice broke as she walked toward me. “Oh, Cal. I—”
I set the bags down so I could wrap an arm around her.
Mom had been shorter than me since the seventh grade, and she felt impossibly tiny now.
She was a speck of a person, and it wasn’t a wonder Pat told me to make sure she ate.
She’d always been a small woman, but right now she felt as frail as a crisp autumn leaf.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.” I kissed the top of her head. “I got you a raspberry tart, and you have to eat it because Pat wouldn’t let me pay.”
Mom pulled back and dabbed the tears from her eyes. “Nothing tastes like anything. That’s what they don’t tell you.”
She took the box and tried to force a smile. “But I’ll try.”
Dad wasn’t much of a hugger. He never had been.
He was the kind of dad who’d watch you fall and tell you dumb dad jokes to make you feel better, and maybe at Christmas you’d get a hug if you were on Santa’s nice list. But I grabbed the whiskey from the bags and went to him anyway.
I thrust the bottle at him and he pulled his hands out of his pockets to take it, and before he could protest, I pulled him into a hug.
It was quick, and even then Dad was pulling away before me.
“Thanks for the whiskey, son. It’s been awhile.”
“We can have a drink while I make something for us to eat.”
Dad started to say something, but I shot him a look that dared him to argue. “Pat ratted you out. Said he’d been here to check on you and then made a point to tell me to make sure Mom ate something.”
Dad nodded along, then followed me to the kitchen.
They both did. They shuffled around behind me, clearly lost for words.
Dad grabbed a couple glasses out of the cupboard while I unloaded the food.
I put the chickens in the fridge, but I popped the lids off the soup, which was still hot, and slid a container across to Dad.
“Whiskey and soup?” Dad looked down at the chicken noodle soup with a frown. “I’m not sure they pair well.”
“Then start with the soup.”
Mom picked at her raspberry tart, managing to eat half before closing the box. “I don’t think I can eat more right now, Cal. I’m sorry.” Her chin quivered and she sucked in a shaky breath.
“That’s fine. We can try again later.” I put the lid back on her container of soup and silently wondered how I was going to get them through this.
Sam had been the son they were close to.
He’d been the one who came back after college.
The one who lived close and saw them more often than Christmas and the occasional Thanksgiving.
It would have been kinder if I had been the one they lost.
“Did you need help with any of the arrangements?”
Dad shook his head. “When Sam was sick, it didn’t look good for a while.
So he, uh—he had everything pre-arranged.
” He coughed to clear his throat and took a sip of the whiskey.
He stared down at the soup like it offended him, and I quietly put the lid back on, feeling small and useless and kind of stupid. Why did I think soup was a good idea?
“How long can you stay?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her, which was the truth. More because I didn’t know how long I could handle staying. Time off work wasn’t the issue. Staying in this place without going crazy was the problem.
“You have to stay for the will reading, at least.”
“The what?” I blinked at her, the words not quite making sense.
“Sam had a will.”
“And I was in it?” That was news to me. The will made sense.
Sam had been sick, and part of the reality of fighting cancer that bad was recognizing that sometimes cancer won and it was a kindness to have your affairs in order.
So the will wasn’t a shock. If Mom wanted me at the reading, it meant I was likely in the will.
Or maybe Sam had written me out entirely.
I almost didn’t want to know which it was.