Sterling’s bedroom was so quiet that Adrian heard the sound of his mother’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. She was yelling, sobbing, doing… something. He couldn’t tell whatitwas.
The message ended. Sterling set the phone on his chest, and when Adrian lifted his head to look at his face, Sterling’s gaze was distant and his expression wasdrawn.
“What did she want?” Adrian asked. “Was it nonsense? She does thatsometimes.”
“No. At least, I don’t think it was.” Sterling stared at the ceiling as though it was a mile away. It looked like he was trying to put the pieces together while understanding that he was missing at least half the puzzle. “There was urgency in her voice, and she kept crying so hard that she had to repeat herself several times. She kept telling you tocomeback.”
“Did she say why?” Adrian already knew the answer. His mother mistook him for Gabriel more often than she recognized him for who he really was. He was sure the confused look on Sterling’s face was a result of her calling him by thewrongname.
“Yeah.” Sterling paused, then sighed and shook his head dismissively. “Maybe you should just listen to it. I’m not sure it’s something I understand well enough toexplain.”
As Adrian braced himself for further heartbreak, Sterling accessed the voicemail and put it on speakerphone. The message started mid-sentence, like she’d been pleading her case to him before the callconnected.
“—me home. You have to come home. Adrian, baby,comehome.”
Adrian’s bloodrancold.
Adrian?
His mother never called him Adrian when she was going through one of her episodes. He was always Gabriel.Always.
Then she sobbed. The sound hitched in her throat and choked her words, but it wasn’t the frenetic, aggressive sobbing he was used to hearing—it wasoverjoyed.
“He’s home. He’shome. Gabriel camehome. You have to come, too. You have to come.He’shere.”
Adrian sat up abruptly. The world spun, but he didn’t feel nauseous. He didn’t know whattofeel.
“Adrian?” Sterling askedcautiously.
Adrian barely heard Sterling’s voice over the pounding of his heart in his ears. It didn’t matter. Right now, the only person that mattered was back at his parents’house.
“You have to take me home, Sterling.” Adrian could barely get the words out. His throat was tight. He couldn’t believe the words he spoke next. “I need to see mybrother.”
9
Adrian
Four years.Four long, torturous years. Adrian curled his hand around the handgrip on the door of Sterling’s car and stared out the window as each squat bollard light passed them by. Four years, and yet the forty minutes it took to drive from The Shepherd back to the Lowe estate wastoolong.
Adrian couldn’t sitstill.
His foot bounced as Sterling drove, and his mind raced to process half-baked thoughts. All of it could be a delusion brought on by his mother’s drug dependence, of course. On the drive back home, Adrian had braced himself to find his mother hunched over a burlap sack stuffed full of something that might give it human form. Cotton balls, oranges, potatoes—it wouldn’t surprise him in the least if that’s what ‘Gabriel’ turned out to be. But there was a quality of desperation in the way she’d wept that suggested relief unlike anything Adrian had heardbefore.
But until he knew for sure that Gabriel wasn’t actually home, he had to work under the assumption that he was. If his mother was telling the truth, he would never forgive himself for brushingheroff.
And if Gabriel washome,then…
Adrian looked from the window to Sterling. Conversation between them had been tense for the duration of the drive, but only because Adrian was too wired to engage. To think that Gabriel was alive and that he’d come home flipped off the talkative part of Adrian’s brain and set it to task focusing on more importantissues.
After four years, Gabrielwasback.
Adrian had never wanted to be home so badlybefore.
The last of the bollard lights became visible in the distance, and with them, the Lowe house. Cars clustered the garage and spilled onto the lawn, parked at odd angles and left abandoned. People clogged the area immediately surrounding the front door. How many? Twelve? Twenty? Adrian squinted and tried to count them through the dark, but he couldn’tbesure.
Even if the crowd wasn’t there because of Gabriel’s return, it was clear something important was happening, and Adrian didn’t want tomissit.
“Where should I park?” Sterling asked as they approached the end of thedriveway.
