“Sounds good,” I reply. “Pretend I’m not here and do what you need.”
“Yeah, like that’ll be possible,” Andrew mutters under his breath.
“You’re just jealous because you knocked Cara up and she’s not putting out,” Dom throws back. I shudder and stand, ready to bail if this conversation goes where I fear it will. I don’t need to know about my sister’s sex life.
Andrew chuckles as my breakfast threatens to revolt. This type of banter is normal for guys, but fuck, they’re talking about my sister here! “I’ll have you know my sex life is as healthy as ever. Maybe even more so.”
“Guys, please remember who you’re talking about,” I beg. “I’d like to stay the clueless little brother who thinks his sister never has sex.”
“Uh, I think it’s hard to ignore that,” Dom quips. “Unless she’s going to give birth to the second coming of Christ.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean. Tell you what, I’m going to head down to the garage and you two can catch up when you’re done working and hurling insults back and forth. It’s safer that way.”
Besides, given the choice between getting on the four-wheeler and listening to them bicker like old women and talk shop, I’ll take the thrill of the trail any day. I swear I almost hear angels singing as I turn on the lights in the garage. This is a grown man’s mecca. Not only are there quads and a boat, there’s a dirt bike, two snowmobiles and two jet skis. Either my brother-in-law has a hell of a lot more money than he lets on or he’s the master of finding bargains. Knowing him and given the fact that nothing looks brand new, I’d put my money on the latter.
I open the garage door before turning the key in the ignition of a red beast of a four-wheeler. I take my time running a few laps around the north side of the garage to get acclimated to the machine. Once I’m comfortable, I kick up the throttle and head for the open fields.
My body jostles from side to side, but my footing is sure as I travel further from the house. As anticipated, there’s no feeling in the world like cruising through the countryside at over forty miles an hour. The moment I turn the handlebars to the left, I know something’s not right. I ease off the throttle, but not quick enough.
Something snaps and my quad jerks hard to the right. Before I have time to react, my body flies off the vehicle. I scream and grunt as I make hard contact with the ground, landing on a pile of downed timber before I’m airborne again. There’s no time to try to brace myself for the next impact. Low hanging branches slap and poke into my skin as I keep tumbling down the steep embankment. My body comes to rest and I offer up a prayer of thanks that I stopped before the next drop-off, which leads to the creek. Just as I stare up the hill, I let out one last weak scream before everything goes dark.
* * *
Dom
Something’s feltoff all day. It’s the pit in my stomach that Tony teases me about mercilessly. He loves to tell me that I must have been an old woman in a previous life with the amount of worrying I do. To my credit, living with Tony has caused me to force myself to stop obsessing over everything that could go wrong unless I wanted to eventually wind up hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer or a heart attack.
But today, that feeling is back. I tried telling myself that it’s because this is the first time Tony and I have been on an actual vacation and Andrew’s hell bent on taking the quads out. Luckily for all of us, Andrew didn’t push the issue when I said I didn’t want to go out on the boat. I’ve been on the water plenty of times, but not since Brandon and there’s an added element of paranoia when the people I love are with me. I know it makes no sense, but the last time I did anything adventurous with the man I loved, he died.
“You okay over there?” Andrew asks as he packs away his laptop. Tony wasn’t even out of sight when Andrew started trying to wrap up our little pow-wow. We were both amused by the fact that I was the one trying to make sure everything was in order before closing down for the day for once. I can’t help it; now that Andrew and Tony have me thinking about this new venture, I want to make sure it’s done right.
“I’m fine.” I’ve never told Andrew about my gut because it does make me seem like a sissy. After all, there’s no such thing as men’s intuition. That’s a gift stereotypically reserved for the softer sex.
“You sure about that? You look pale. If you want, I’ll go catch up with Tony and you can relax here. I’m sure Cara would love to start planning the next wedding,” Andrew teases, trying to ease my mood.
“Fuck that,” I huff. The therapist Jason got me in touch with says I have to face these fears when they arise. If I don’t, I’m continuing to let Brandon’s ghost lead my life and I’m dragging Tony down with me. That’s something I refuse to do. “Come on, let’s do this if we’re doing it.”
I bound down the stairs to the backyard with forced enthusiasm, tripping down the last two steps. “Did you hear that?” I ask, bile rising in my throat.
The noise was faint, but it sounded like someone screaming. Not just someone, but Tony.Get it together, Tricoli. Don’t let Brandon ruin today.
“Hear what?” Andrew asks. He opens the side door of the garage and we notice that one quad is already gone. “Shit.”
Andrew frantically straddles one of the remaining four-wheelers, peeling out of the garage the moment the rolling door is high enough. There’s no time for questions, so I follow suit. Andrew has always been the calm, level-headed one of the bunch, so the fact that something has him freaked out does nothing to ease my own trepidation. “Care to tell me what’s going on?” I scream so he can hear me over the roar of the engines.
“It might be nothing, but we need to catch him. The ATV he’s on needs some repairs before it’s ready to be ridden,” he yells back. I don’t say another word as I push the thumb-throttle as far forward as it’ll go.
Once I’m in the unmowed area of the property, I see matted grass where someone’s recently ridden. Seeing as we’re on private property, I decide to follow the trail. Tony’s the only person who should have been out here. When I find him, I’m going to kiss his face and then kick his ass for not making sure they were all safe vehicles. Then, I’m going to kick Andrew’s ass for not thinking to tell us ahead of time that one of them shouldn’t be ridden.
The tracks stop abruptly, so I take my thumb off the throttle. As I stand on the footboards, trying to figure out where Tony might have gone, I hear a soft noise to my right.
Please, God. Please let me be wrong. Just this once, let it turn out that I’m just being paranoid.
I jump off the four-wheeler and look over the edge of the embankment. There’s a section of the heavy thatch that’s disturbingly out of place. Again, I hear the noise but it’s fainter this time.
“TONY!” I scream, still praying as I sidestep my way down the rough terrain. More moaning. “Tony, I’m coming!”
This time, there’s no response. I start moving faster, my feet slipping on the grass. Looking down is a mistake when I see the red smears that shouldn’t be there.
