He should ignore it.He’s due in Dumfries by late afternoon for soundcheck, and he’s already behind.But the number flashes again, insistent, and something in his gut tightens as if it recognizes trouble before his brain does.
He answers through the steering wheel button.“Yeah?”
A pause.Not the breathless pause of someone lost, not the awkward pause of a wrong number.A pause that feels… careful.
“Mr.Fraser?”a man asks.
Callum’s grip tightens.“Speaking.”
“This is Andrew Bell of Bell & Morrison.Keir MacLaren’s attorney.”The voice is polished, controlled, Scottish, clipped, trained to deliver bad news without being stained by it.“I’m afraid I have some very difficult news.”
Callum’s chest constricts as if a hand has closed around his ribs.“About what?”
“Keir MacLaren.”
The road wavers.His vision narrows down to the white lines and the strip of gray pavement ahead.
“What about him?”Callum hears himself ask.He doesn’t like his own voice; it sounds too calm, too steady, as if he’s pretending this is a normal call.
The pause returns.Longer.
“I’m very sorry to tell you that Mr.MacLaren passed away late last night.It appears to have been a heart attack.”
The world doesn’t explode.It tilts.
For a second, Callum thinks the words didn’t land.That the sentence slid past him without meaning.Heart attack.Passed away.Late last night.
“No,” he says, so quietly he almost can’t hear it over the tires.“No.That’s not possible.”
“I’m very sorry.”
Callum pulls the car onto the shoulder without signaling.Gravel crunches beneath the tires.The car shudders, then stills.He stares straight ahead at a smear of sky and the blur of trees, hands locked on the wheel like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” he says.“You must.”
“I assure you, Mr.Fraser?—”
“I talked to him three days ago.”The words come out sharp.“He was, he was fine.He was complaining about my setlist and telling me to sleep more.He doesn’t just?—”
Die.
The word jams in his throat like a bone.
“We’ve confirmed his identity,” Bell says gently.“Emergency services responded, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Callum’s forehead drops against the steering wheel.The horn gives a short, pathetic sound, like the car is mocking him.
Keir is dead.
The man who had been more than a mentor.More than a bandmate.More than a legend.The man who had been – when Callum was fourteen, and the world had decided he was a lost cause – his lifeline.
Callum breathes in once, but it doesn’t feel like air.It feels like emptiness.
Bell keeps talking, words turning into mush, arrangements, immediate matters, the estate, the need for Callum to return as soon as possible.
“Home,” Bell says at one point, and that one word slices through Callum with a clean, ruthless edge.
Home.
