“Should we call Erin and put her on speaker, or try to Skype?” I asked.
Shannon sat back and twisted her lips into an angry snarl.
“Yeah…about that. Erin emailed me last night. She’s back in the Azores and collecting samples of soil or rocks or something. There are a lot of volcanoes but not so much cell service,” Matt said. “She said we should go ahead without her.”
“Like I said,” Shannon muttered. “If it was important to her…”
The humor lighting the room dissolved, and everyone looked remarkably more sober. Sensing the gravity of the moment, Lauren stood and refilled the wine glasses. I noticed full bottles of whiskey in their kitchen, and knew we’d at least have liquor to soften the blows.
Yeah, that sounded about as healthy and well adjusted as it felt.
Lauren shifted to leave the table, but Matt shook his head, his arm wrapping around her waist while he hauled her into his lap. “Stay.”
“Ready?” Shannon asked, her fingers primed on the envelope. We nodded in agreement, and the whistling rip of the paper punctuated the silence. Shannon glanced at the cover sheet before holding up six smaller envelopes. “We each get a copy. The last page requires a signature acknowledging you read and understood the enclosed documents, and they have to be filed within thirty days of receipt.”
Once the envelopes were distributed, we continued to stare at each other, no one wanting to open first.
Sam tossed his envelope to the center of the table, sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed. In the two months since he and Angus had it out, he was no better at concealing his fury than he was in November. I studied him from across the table. This could be the night he cracked. It was going to happen. Sooner or later, Sam was going to unhinge.
All his life, Sam was a few degrees left of center. My mother said he’d be a late bloomer, and we all needed to look out for him, and she was right.
He was frequently sick and never strayed far from my mother’s side. He was smaller than kids his own age, and was often mistaken as Riley’s fraternal twin despite the two years between them.
He never fit in at school, and struggled with anxiety and crippling panic attacks after her death. He was a prime target for teasing, and kids loved to call him gay. He skipped a grade to avoid being stranded in middle school without Matt, but that only meant he wasn’t bullied in front of Matt.
Kids can be evil, and they terrorized him.
Angus knew all of this, and he knew exactly which buttons to push that day in November.
First he attacked Sam’s belief system: sustainability. To Angus, green design was a cheap fad attracting people who didn’t have the chops to do the real work of preservation. Angus saw it as a parody of the craft, a mockery, and he ripped into Sam on that count.
Next he went for the sore spot: Sam’s sexuality. Angus knew how much those taunts devastated Sam, and he exploited it. He went after Sam’s attachment to Mom, his size, his health, his clothing. He was merciless, and it cut Sam to the bone.
That Sam wasn’t gay was beside the point. He liked women. Alotof women. But when Angus hit him with that, he leveled Sam. The proof was sitting right in front of me.
“Shan…” I murmured, glancing at her fingers as they traveled over the edges of the envelope. “Could you read through the legal bullshit? Just tell us what it says?”
She nodded, and slipped her finger under the flap of the envelope. Holding the folded pages in her hands, she paused and looked around the table.
“I think we should agree, before this goes any further, that we’re putting Angus behind us. He’s gone. No matter what we find in here, he’s gone, and we’re not reliving any of it.”
“Agreed,” Matt said.
Shannon turned her attention to the legal documents, and I studied my siblings in the thick silence that ensued. Sam was still locked in his angry sneer, busy mounting arguments against whatever Angus left in the will.
I tried to look away from the wordless communication passing between Matt and Lauren, but I wanted to learn the private language of people in love. It felt voyeuristic to watch them, yet it occurred to me that I understood nothing about the inner workings of a serious relationship.
Matt’s head rested on Lauren’s shoulder while her hands stroked his fingers. I thought of Andy’s fingers and their silken texture as my fingertips coasted over her skin.
Why the fuck was I still thinking about that?
From the corner of my eye, I saw Shannon lean back in her chair and drop her hands to her lap. “Holy shit,” she sighed.
“I called it. Rusty nails for the win,” I said.
“Don’t tell me,” Sam said. “He’s leaving us a hoard of milk crates and bottle caps from the past twenty years that he expects us to transform into a monument in his honor, and he’s leaving the house to a group of doomsday survivalists.”
“No, I got it,” Matt said. “He’s left fifty grand buried in coffee cans all over the yard, and we have to find them. He left the rest of his money in a Cayman account and lost the number, and the house is going to self-destruct after we sign these papers.”
