But today, there’s just the silence. Just the three of us, in this quiet, empty house.
Mom drops her bag on the couch and steps out of her shoes. Dad takes off his suit jacket and stands facing that wall—all those eyes, looking back.
The phone rings, shattering the silence, and my mom jumps. For a while, they had the ringer turned off, letting the calls from reporters and friends alike fill up the voice mail.
It rings again, and my mom just stares at it, and it reminds me of when Liam first went missing, how they had been waiting for a call, any call, that would tell them their son would be coming home soon—and now that call will never come.
I answer the phone, just to get it to stop.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” The voice on the other end belongs to a woman who sounds about my mother’s age, maybe older.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I say. Last thing I want is for them to call right back if I hang up.
“I’ve been trying to get through for days. I saw on the news…” Her voice wavers with emotion.
I close my eyes, willing this call to go faster, to get this over with. A well-meaning stranger. Or worse.
“I live in Collins County,” she continues, which doesn’t mean much to me. “And my house, it backs up to Northridge Forest.” Still nothing. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”
In the end, it’s a lawyer I’ve never met who convinces Elliot to see me. To talk to all of us, to try to piece together his fragmented mind.
I’ve taken this drive before, and I’m just about to direct Joe when he swerves over to the exit ramp. I check my phone one last time before sliding it into my bag. My nerves are frazzled. The initial excitement about seeing my brother again has turned to fear, and the only person I thought could read between the lines of my message—Going to see my brother today—still hasn’t responded to any of my texts. It’s been two days since I saw Nolan at the service, and still nothing.
Joe eases the car into a parking spot, and suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what to say, how to act. Joe opens his car door; then, seeing I’m still sitting there, he closes it again.
“I don’t know what to say,” I explain, shaking my head.
Joe sighs. “He’s your brother. You’ll know what to say.”
But it’s been six months, and I’ve been out here, and he’s been in there, and it suddenly seems like an impossible distance to bridge.
Joe shifts in his seat so he’s facing me. “Okay, so, a few things. He’s lost some weight. His hair is ridiculous again, always half in his eyes; it’s driving me crazy.”
I raise my head and crack a grin, picturing the Elliot he used to be. Remembering the look on my mother’s face when he cut his own hair. The laughter I could barely contain.
“And,” Joe continues, “he’s scared.”
“But I thought you said the lawyer was optimistic—”
“He’s scared of what you think of him. That’s why he didn’t want to see you, all this time. What he remembers…” Joe looks out the window, like he’s seeing it, too, then shakes it off. “What he remembers is seeing you through the glass, with the gun in his hand. You are the one thing he remembers.” The one thing that breached the divide that night. That cut straight through to him.
I stare out the glass, remembering his expression. The line that divides his life as well.
“I’m ready,” I say.
When we finally make it through—leaving our things, all connections to the outside world—the first thing I see is the lawyer’s back, leaning across the table as he speaks.
But then there’s the sound of metal on metal as his chair pushes back and Elliot stands, looking over the lawyer. He is exactly like Joe said: skinny, in desperate need of a haircut. I can see the toll of six months in here. Six months alone. But none of it matters right then; I only see my brother.
His eyes, shadowed underneath, jump from Joe to me, and he holds my gaze, his expression softening. Whatever he was looking for, he must already see it.
“Hi,” he says, and the word makes me smile, despite where we are, and everything that’s happened. It’s the sound of his voice—a thing I didn’t even realize I’d been missing these last six months.
And then I hug him, even though I know we’re not supposed to, but that’s okay, because Joe was right—he’s my brother, and I don’t even have to think about it. I hear him mumble “I’m sorry,” over and over, until he takes a seat at the table.
“No,” I say, sitting next to Joe, across from Elliot. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you there.” I look up at him, across the table, through my blurred vision, and he’s shaking his head, like he doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry I left you in here.” That’s what I’ve been thinking, all this time. If only I had called his name that night, called him back to me. Let him know that I believed him right then—that he hadn’t done this. If maybe that would’ve brought him back, right away.
“I should’ve done so many things differently,” he says. “Before. After.” He shakes his head. “I missed you a lot, Kennedy.”
My eyes lock with his across the table, and it’s then I believe it: he will come back to me.
The lawyer walks us through the case, but Elliot keeps his eyes down on the table the whole time, his hands folded together, like he can’t bear to hear it. How many times, I wonder, has he had to endure this? The horrors he’s seen, which I can only imagine.
“Elliot was sitting at his desk, working on a project, and didn’t hear his mother and Will come home. The first thing he remembers is the sound of a shot,” the lawyer says.
Joe puts a hand on Elliot’s arm, as if to steady him. Just as he did for me.
The lawyer lays out the things Elliot must have told him, about the Will none of us ever saw. The controlling, manipulative version, who used Elliot’s grades and his status at school to undermine his concerns, who isolated our mother from her colleagues—and us.
“The night of the crime,” the lawyer continues, “Elliot noted a bruise on his mother’s collarbone before she left the house, which she covered up with a scarf. He confronted her about it, asking if she had been hurt.”
I close my eyes, picturing it. Watching her in the mirror as she readjusted the fabric, examining her own reflection. I wonder if it was Elliot’s comment that finally tipped things; if my mother broke it off that night. If that’s what had Will so enraged, and had my mother running for her gun, for protection.
Elliot was the only one who could see the type of person Will was. He always saw more than the rest of us. He was always looking for signs.
“I remember the scarf,” I say, my voice scratching against my throat. “I didn’t know,” I say to Elliot.
The lawyer pauses, making a note. “Good,” he says. “Your statement will help.”
Elliot runs a hand through his too-long hair. “I pushed her to it. I set it in motion, that night, whatever happened.”
I shake my head. “He set it in motion.”
The lawyer looks between the two of us and continues. “The police have spoken with Hunter Long, confirming Elliot’s accounts,” he says. “Hunter can at least corroborate that Elliot confided in him his concerns about Will. Though Hunter has a history of running away, and he’s something of a flight risk as it is.”
But Elliot shakes his head. “He won’t testify. Don’t make him. Something happened to him the first time he ran away, when he was staying at some shelter nearby. He won’t want his name in the public….”
Something rattles in my chest, but the lawyer continues. “The hope is it won’t get to that point, anyway,” he explains. “The evidence supports Will firing the first shot. Forensics has confirmed: the only fingerprints on the gun safe behind the wall were your mother’s.”
They go over the evidence in support of their case—that Elliot was surprised by the sound of the first shot and ran out of his room straight into a horrific scene. Overwhelmed as he was by the blood, and the reality in front of him, his memory fractured. He acted on instinct, facing a man holding a gun.
But Elliot will have to live with what he’s done. It’s all still terrible. That feeling, he said, was what made him believe that he was guilty of something. Was why he couldn’t look me in the eye.
The trial has been postponed, with the gun safe as new evidence; they found it, untouched, behind the wall panel. The lawyer says he expects some sort of deal to be offered, at the very least. They are presenting Elliot’s shooting of Will as self-defense, and are waiting to hear back from the DA’s office.
I expect Elliot to look relieved, but he doesn’t.
And then I understand. Mom is still gone. None of this changes the past, or the present—though I hope it will help him move on.
It must be impossible, I think, to imagine a future when you can’t see beyond the walls that contain you.
“Elliot,” I say as we’re saying our goodbyes. “I’ll see you soon.”
He nods, but I stand there waiting until I hear his echoing See you soon.
* * *