A bad question, he thought. A rare miss. You could only really ever ask a patient to explain themselves: their own pain, their own side effects.
“It’s hard to talk about,” he answered. For himself. But probably for Michael, too.
He could tell that answer was unsatisfying for her—that there was a part of her that was angry at Michael, wanting answers from Michael for what he had done or not done when it came to Emily. But Griffin could not answer for Michael. He wouldn’t even try. He had spoken enough for Michael tonight, one sentence said to Emily that would probably lose him his best friend, and he could not bring himself to say more about whatever Michael’s motivations were. Whatever his demons and fears were.
His own were enough.
“She was my friend, too,” he said, loath to give Layla enough time to formulate another question. He wanted it over with. “Sara Beth. When Michael met her, we were fourteen years old. Of course I was a little prick about it at first, ragging on him for howhe mooned over her. Rushed off after classes so he could wait outside of whatever room she was in, bought her a carnation for every class period on the Valentine’s Day fundraiser. I was jealous, I can admit it. Because before that, it’d been me and Michael, for a lot of years. He’s…” He trailed off, inhaled.
“Your family,” Layla finished for him, and he blew out his breath. Of course she would get that.
“But Sara Beth, she didn’t have any time for me being like that. She was like me. Only lived with her mom, not much money, spent a lot of time alone growing up. Her mom was…I guess you’d say, a little more troubled than mine. So she was going to make her own family, and if I was a part of Michael’s, then I was a part of hers. She was like that.”
Scrappy, he had called her once: eleventh grade, homecoming photos, Paula holding the phone, Fitz looking typically frustrated.Posture, Fitz’d snapped at Michael, and she’d called back to him immediately.
I don’t want him looking like he has a stick up his butt in this picture, Sarge!
“Fitz and Paula really loved her. She could say things to them—Fitz especially—that no one else could get away with. She was good for them. They were a happier family with Sara Beth. Like they needed her. Like she completed them.”
He watched Layla close when he said this, knowing it would probably hit her forcefully, given her own history. And it was hard not to think now of Sara Beth, still alive. It was hard not to think of what she and Layla would make of each other.
Don’t, he scolded himself.Don’t think about things that can’t happen. Focus on the things that did.
“Fitz and Paula got married young. Fitz was nineteen, Paula eighteen. So that was…it was almost like they thought Michaelwaited too long to ask her. They probably would’ve liked it if Michael and Sara Beth got married before he went off to the Air Force Academy, and she could live with them while he was there.”
Layla did not like that. He could tell by the way she shifted on the couch.
“But Sara Beth wouldn’t have said yes to a proposal then. She didn’t have any insecurities about Michael. About whether they’d make it. She was going to work, go to community college part-time, save up money. She knew when he came back, her life would be a little more tied to his. Five years of active duty after he graduated, that was his commitment. She would eventually be moving wherever, to be a part of that. They had time.”
It hurt to say that part. He felt it, a slicing shock along his left side that made him jerk in his chair, Layla startling in response, half standing from the couch immediately.
He held up a hand. “I’m okay.”
But his own time was running out, he could feel it: ten minutes, maybe twenty, until he would have to get up and move. Until this got bad enough that he probably wouldn’t be able to say much at all for a while.
“You know I went to Rensselaer for school. Pretty lucky, it not being too far from where we grew up, and I had a good scholarship. My first year, I had a housing waiver so I could live at home with my mom, offset the cost a bit. But then, you know. I got more into it. More involved. Sophomore year, I was already in the lab working on the project that eventually turned into…”
He trailed off, flicked his wrist, sort of at the room he sat in, huge with a view, a drop in the bucket, really, nothing he couldn’t afford. He cleared his throat, ashamed. One lucky break after another, that’s what Rensselaer had been: the right school, the rightmentor, the right game of pretend in his mind, the right time. A fucking fluke, really, and then another one, the worst fluke of all.
That he’d lived, and Sara Beth hadn’t.
“My senior year, I rented in a house off campus. A real shithole. Cheap and falling apart, but we—my roommates and I—didn’t fucking care, most of us were never home. And I had—I had a sense things were about to break open for me. My mentor and I had the idea out there, we had interest. I was going to stay on for my master’s, that was settled, so I didn’t really give a fuck about where I lived.”
He could see the house in his mind: peeling countertops, no baseboards, vinyl siding falling off the side.Shitholewas an understatement.
It was a hazard, and he should’ve known.
“I graduated at the beginning of May, but had the lease until August. Had a way nicer apartment lined up for the fall, since we had investors locked in by then, money coming in, but it seemed stupid to waste what I’d already paid for.”
Harder now. Hurting more now, but he wanted to tell it to her, because he thought, somewhere in this city, Michael was telling Emily, and he did not want his friend to be doing it alone.
“Sara Beth did classes at Hudson Valley Community College. Real nearby, and by then, she was close to finishing an associate’s. It took her longer, with the way she worked, and how she was still commuting from a fair ways away. But that summer, if she took three classes, she’d be finished. Ready to go when it was time for her and Michael to move on to their next stop. So it made sense. It made sense for her to live with me for a bit.”
Michael thought it was such a good idea. He hated Sara Beth’s commute, how she took night classes, how she was tired from work when she drove back and forth.
He’d been so grateful.
“She moved in right after my graduation. Took the—” He broke off again, a wet catch in his throat. He could picture this, too. Ithauntedhim. The cheap paneled walls, a poorly done “finish” to part of the space, the rest of which was a utility room.
