Normally, Tristan is someone who doesn’t leap to dramatics. But I don’t think I’ve ever called him unless it was a five-alarm crisis. He normally talks to Cade, and sometimes I happen to be there. We don’t seek each other out.
“Um,” I start, not sure what to follow up with.
There’s a brief pause before he talks, and I immediately recognize the calm, even tone he uses with his patients. It’s the same tone Cade has learned, and uses on me when I’m unraveling. Which I’m only just realizing I’m doing right now.
“Silas, take a breath for me. In for two… three… four… now out slowly.”
I do as he says, my heartbeat pounding too loudly to let the pending embarrassment settle in yet.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at home,” my voice sounds reedy, so I clear my throat and try again. “I’m at home.”
“Is everyone okay? Is anyone hurt?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I, um—”
I can almost feel the patience seeping into me from the other side of the phone as he waits for me to finish. Literally the only time he can be still seems to be if the world is on fire. It’s baffling to me.
“We went to see Kyle. I was hoping they might be able to talk. Clear things up a little. But of course they just fought, even though they weren’t really fighting about anything. And Cade’s just bottling everything up more and more. I—” There’s a pause while I gather myself and try to decide if I’m really, legitimately worried, or just overreacting. “I’m really scared. He seems off. He needs to blow off steam sometimes and I know he tends to avoid his shit, but this just feels different. I don’t know what todo.” Another pause, filled with the sound of my harsh breathing. “Tell me what to do, Tristan.”
Tears abruptly fill my eyes, but I blink them back. I have to focus.
Tristan exhales slowly through his nose, sounding like a bull about to charge.
“Okay, let’s go back. Start from the beginning, and tell me everything this time. What the fuck has been going on?”
And that’s all it takes for me to spill my guts.
I’m not sure how long I was on the phone to Tristan. Not that long, in the grand scheme of things, but enough talking to completely exhaust me.
I don’t think I even told him anything coherent. It was mostly just rambling about the weird ways I’ve noticed Cade seeming off and how worried I am about the fall out from the fight. I hate his dad being here at all, and how much it seems to eat away at his stability. And I hate even more that we seem to be having a lot of misunderstandings and hurt feelings when we try to talk, for the first time in a long time.
Tristan didn’t say much, but it still helped a little to spew it all out to him. He reminded me to stay calm and communicate clearly and not bottle shit up but also not turn a disagreement into atit for tatkind of thing, which is all stuff I knew, but helped to hear him say, anyway.
I’m barely finished hanging up when I hear Cade opening the front door and stomping back inside. At first, I think he’s going to ignore me, but when he walks into the living room and sees me, his eyes light up.
He has a twelve-pack in his good hand and his phone is balanced on his bad. I’m more relieved than I want to be that it looks like he hasn’t opened any of the drinks yet. He really doesn’t do that, but the paranoia has been totally unleashed in me.
“Oh, Silas!” he says, looking more energetic than I’ve seen him all day.
I turn to face him, waiting to see what’s got him so worked up. Once he knows he has my attention, he heads to the kitchen to start unloading his drinks while he half-yells to me across the open space, until I wake up and move closer to him.
“Hey, so you remember Wyatt from high school? He used to race with us until he enlisted. Anyway, I had to go to the gas station because the liquor store was closed, and I ran into him. And he was telling me about the custody drama he’s been having with his daughter. Because he had the kid with Breanna—you remember her, right?—just before he was deployed. But then Breanna ended up relapsing or something and skipped town, and left the baby with her parents. So all while he was deployed her parents and his mom took care of the baby. It sounds like a shitty situation for everyone involved, obviously. I hope Breanna’s okay, she always had it rough. But that’s not the point.”
Now he has a beer in his hand which he cracks the tab on before taking a swig and turning to look at me. He’s still animated, using big gestures as he speaks and waving the can in the air. I’ve seen him get worked up like this a million times before, but normally it’s for a reason I at least kind ofunderstand. I still have no idea where he’s going with this story. He continues to talk a mile a minute.
“Anyway. So they all made it work for a couple of years and he came back as much as he could, but now he’s home because he decided not to re-up, plus his mom’s MS has been getting a lot worse so he didn’t want to keep putting that burden on her. No one has heard from Bree this whole time. But it turns out that he never realized how fucking churchy her parents are. Like, everyone’s parents are churchy. Except mine. But I didn’t realize they werePentecostalchurchy. Not even the regular Pentecostal church in town, the weird one over on Rt 21 that still does like, snake handling or laying hands or whatever. So they’re saying he’s a demonic influence and so is his mom, and they’re trying to get full custody. Which should be impossible, right? He’s the kid’s dad and he’s home full-time now, apart from reserves shit once a month.”
Cade takes another swig, emptying the can before crushing it in his hand and throwing it in the recycling and then grabbing another from the fridge.
“So this whole time—this whole fucking time!—they’ve been building a case against him. Collecting affidavits and paper records and anything else they can to show that they’ve been the primary caregivers. It’s not like he’s a shitty dad, he just wasn’t here. But he’s here now and according to him, they actually have a case and he has to play fucking catch up. It sounds really stressful. All of a sudden he’s launched into this whole legal battle, and that poor little girl is in the middle of it.”
There’s a long pause while he drinks and looks at me. When no more words follow, I get the feeling I’m supposed to be responding with something, but I’m not sure what.
“That’s… really sad?”
It is, but I don’t think that’s what he wanted to hear specifically.
