Curtis pulled the car over to the side of the road and looked out at the row of modest detached homes, each carrying an orange tinge from the streetlights now that darkness had descended. The drive here was only a couple of hours, but he’d needed hours longer to find this address. He checked his phone before he got out of the car. He didn’t know what he felt more after his day of secretive amateur sleuthing: pride or shame. He’d received a multitude of pings through the day, mostly emails from work colleagues and clients, and he’d yet to reply to a single one. He amazed himself at how quickly he’d shut himself off from that world. How liberating it felt, in fact.
What did that say about the work-obsessed man he’d become?
He’d last received a prompt from the office some three hours ago, so apparently people there were starting to get the point. The most recent pings were all from Rachel.
Do you want dinner or not?
It was the latest in a short series of messages from her, a more agitated edge to each one, he could tell.
Go ahead without me. I’ll be home late x
He hoped the kiss would go some way to appeasing her. While he felt no remorse for leaving his coworkers in the lurch, he did feel bad for not telling Rachel what he was doing, even if he didn’t feel bad for not being at home with her. It wasn’t as though they had wonderful, relaxing evenings together much these days.
He pushed the thought aside when he spotted movement outside the car window. A couple were walking by, arm in arm. They casually strode up the driveway to a house two along from where Curtis had parked. He didn’t recognize either of their faces in the dark, but that was the house he had in his sights.
The owners? Greg and Amy Thatcher. Curtis had never met Amy before, but he had met Greg, a long time ago when both Greg and Finn were students at Clemson University, and back before Finn’s and Curtis’s lives had fully drifted. Finn had enjoyed a globe-trotting existence since then. Greg Thatcher apparently less so. Did that mean that Curtis was wasting his time here if the two men’s lives had likely diverged many years ago? Possibly, but Curtis had decided to start here nonetheless.
If anything, he’d taken the more than a hundred-mile journey into South Carolina on something of a whim. The last postal address he had for his brother – from some ten years ago – was in Charlotte, another drive further north and east from here, so he’d felt stopping in the city where Finn had spent several years studying was worthwhile, and would hopefully save him some time. He had no clue of any friends or associates of Finn’s from Charlotte, but he did recall some of them from Clemson, and it wasn’t a stretch that one or more of them remained in touch with Finn, or at least had been in touch with him more recently than Curtis had.
Not that it had been easy to find Greg Thatcher; Curtis hadn’t even known the guy’s surname until a couple of hours ago. But Curtis had scoured Google Street View and eventually recognized the shared house where Finn had spent his last year in Clemson as a post-grad.
He’d also found that the house remained rented out by the same landlord as all those years ago, and Curtis had tracked him down earlier after first arriving in the small city. Now in his seventies, Adbul Ahmed had been more than reluctant to provide any details of his previous tenants, and in fact had claimed to not even have kept the records.
He’d been lying, and some gentle pressure by Curtis – who brought out his best legal speak, threatening to expose the dodgy state of some of Ahmed’s student properties if he didn’t help – had done the trick and Ahmed had handily ‘found’ the old tenant records shortly after that. Four names, including Finn Delaney. Greg Thatcher was the only one of the four who still lived in Clemson, so he was the one Curtis had decided to go to first.
He stepped out of the car and looked around before he approached the front door. He rang the bell and waited. A few seconds later he heard footsteps before the door opened a few inches and the face of a woman he didn’t know at all poked out.
‘I’m looking for Greg Thatcher,’ Curtis said, suddenly feeling lame.
The woman, who he recognized as Amy Thatcher from her husband’s Facebook posts, frowned and opened her mouth, but before she said anything Greg appeared behind her. Late thirties, but he looked a little older with silvery, messy hair and weary eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, his voice gruff and a little unwelcoming as he came up behind his wife.
‘Greg? You remember me? Curtis Delaney. Finn’s brother.’
Curtis held out his hand. The woman stepped aside as Greg came to the front. He paused for a moment before somewhat reluctantly giving Curtis’s hand a limp shake.
‘Honey, go back in, it’s cold out.’
The woman gave Greg a suspicious look but then disappeared inside.
‘Yeah, I think I remember you,’ Greg said, squinting as though to aid his recollection. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘It has.’
‘And you’re here because…?’
‘I’m looking for Finn.’
Greg frowned. ‘Your brother. You came to me, to look for your own brother. Why would I know—’
‘You two were close—’
‘Fifteen years ago, yeah. I’ve not heard from Finn for a long time. To be honest, I’m quite happy about that.’
Greg glared at Curtis as though he was supposed to know what that meant.
‘Something happened between you two?’
‘Yeah… Look, sorry, Curtis, but, you can see how odd this is, right? You knocking on my door, at night, asking about your brother who—’
‘So you haven’t been in touch with him at all?’ Curtis interrupted, looking over Greg’s shoulder, as though expecting to see Finn inside somewhere, hiding. Was that possible? Would Finn have come here?
But why would he be hiding at all?
‘No,’ Greg said, ‘I haven’t. I’m sorry.’
Curtis reached inside his jacket and pulled out a business card and handed it to Greg who scrutinized it for a second.
‘If you do see or hear from him… It’s very important.’
‘Sandy Springs? You came all the way from Georgia to – to ask about Finn?’
‘Sorry for the intrusion,’ Curtis said.
He turned and made to walk away.
‘Is he in trouble?’ Greg asked, and something about his tone caused Curtis to pause and turn back.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Greg said, ‘but I always felt that one day… I dunno. Your brother had a way of irritating people. Sometimes the wrong people.’
Curtis smiled a little, though he didn’t really know why.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘He certainly did. Trouble? I honestly don’t know. But I really do need to find him.’
Greg waved the business card in some sort of mock salute, as though a gesture of his commitment to informing Curtis if he came across anything of use.
‘Goodnight,’ Curtis said, before moving back toward his car.
He had his hand on the door when he jerked back, spinning around, certain someone was coming up behind him.
But there was no one there. He scanned the street, spotted movement, but not close by. Probably twenty, thirty yards in front of him. He was sure he’d spotted a figure scuttling between the parked cars, but they hadn’t emerged in the road the other side.
He took a few steps that way, eyes never leaving the spot, but he saw nothing in the darkness now. He kept going, his heart rate steadily building.
What the hell was he doing? And what would happen if there was someone hiding? Confront them? He’d never had his brother’s knack – or confidence – for fighting.
‘Finn?’ Curtis said, little more than a whisper, immediately feeling foolish for doing so. Did he really expect his brother to be cowering between cars?
Curtis shook his head to try and find some clarity. He turned around and looked back at the Thatchers’ home, where his eyes rested on the downstairs front window where a shadowy figure stood behind the glass in a near-dark room.
Greg, or his wife – Curtis really couldn’t tell, and he averted his eyes and set off at pace for his car. When he took one more glance at the house there was no one there.
Weird.
In the dark, he didn’t see the uneven slab. His big toe kicked it and he stumbled forward. He tried to keep upright but he failed on the third step and rolled into an ungainly fall, bouncing across the soggy, grassy verge.
He pulled himself to his feet, not even bothering to check himself over or brush himself down before he jogged to his car.
Moments later he pulled away into the road. He glanced in the rearview mirror to where the Thatchers’ home faded in the distance. No sign of anyone or anything lurking. He shook his head, disappointed with himself, then cringed as the stench took over. He felt down to his wet trousers and squirmed when his fingers found the sticky mess. He lifted his hand back up. He didn’t need any light to see what it was.
‘Shit,’ he said, with no hint of irony.
* * *
The journey home was long and uncomfortable. He stopped at a gas station to at least attempt to clean off some of the excrement, but his clothes remained damp and smelly for the duration.
He pulled onto the drive a little before 10 p.m.
Lights were still on downstairs. Rachel was up, although he hadn’t heard from her in over two hours, as though she’d given up on any hope of an evening together long ago.
He opened the door to the house quietly, on the off-chance that she had gone to bed already and simply left the lights on downstairs. But he heard soft voices from the TV as he closed the door behind him. He took off his shoes and walked slowly across the hall to the lounge doorway. Rachel, lying down on the sofa, propped herself up when she realized he was standing there. She looked tired at first but became more alert when she took in the state of him.
‘What happened?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘I think I just did.’ She didn’t sound happy.
‘I fell over. In the dark. Right in some dog shit.’
She pulled a disgusted face. She had no idea; he’d had to sit through the smell for over two hours.
‘Drinking again?’ he said, indicating the wine glass and bottle of white, both empty.
‘You’re judging me?’
He didn’t respond to that. ‘I’m going for a shower.’
A heavenly shower. Though as refreshed as his body felt after, cleaned and wrapped up in his thick robe, his mind remained busy and unfulfilled.
He headed back downstairs where he once again found Rachel on the sofa, though she’d turned the TV off and was sitting upright, poised.
‘So?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Are you going to tell me where you’ve been all night? And why you came home looking like a bum?’
‘Just work. You know what it’s been like.’
She stood up from the sofa.
‘I know something’s going on,’ she said, holding his eye. ‘What I can’t work out is if the lies are because it’s something you’re protecting me from, or something you’re protecting yourself from.’
He thought about that for a moment, though couldn’t figure the answer out.
‘If you’re—’
‘It’s just… It’s just been a really long day,’ he said, hanging his head.
The most common excuse of all. For both of them.
He felt so useless. In many ways he wanted to tell her. With the strain between them growing for all sorts of reasons, he hated the idea of keeping secrets from his wife, knew it’d only make things worse. But… where would he even start in telling her about Finn, after all these years?
She came up to him and he relaxed a little, thinking she was about to hug him. He really wanted that. After a full day of turmoil in his mind, he really needed that feeling of closeness, and wanted her to feel it too. They didn’t share little interactions like that anywhere near as much as they should do. As much as they used to.
But she didn’t hug him. Instead, she stood there and looked at him disappointedly.
‘If you do anything to hurt me…’
He didn’t say anything to the unfinished threat.
‘I don’t know what’s going on, Curtis, but you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Until you’re ready to let me in… Best get used to that sofa.’
She swaggered past. How much had she drunk? He shuddered when she slammed the bedroom door shut, then let out a long, disgruntled sigh as he settled down for another night in his new resting place.