21

Adam

“Another funeral,” Tommy said, ducking his head so his trucker cap shaded his eyes. He wiped away the tears. “I’m the only one left.”

Cousin Tommy, Sue’s oldest, was Tilla’s age.

He had brown hair, brown eyes. You could see the resemblance between him and Bobby. They were the same height, with broader shoulders than Adam. He’d always felt a little smaller, a little slighter around the other Binder men.

They sat in Tommy’s living room. It was a nice house, brick, in the better part of Enid. Bobby had to approve of Tommy’s middle-class life.

Not that their cousin felt blessed at the moment.

They’d never been close, mostly from the age difference, but Sue had liked her eldest son far more than she’d liked her daughter.

Tommy shook his head.

“Noreen and I didn’t get along, but she deserved better,” he said. “I just wish she’d had a different life.”

Bobby nodded, looking sympathetic, and Adam doubted he was acting. He’d wanted a different life for Adam. They hadn’t talked about it for a while. Adam didn’t know if his brother had let it go or if he was just distracted by his grief.

“We wanted to tell you in person that we’re so sorry,” Bobby said. The years he’d added since losing Annie had closed the distance between him and Tommy. They didn’t look so far apart in age anymore.

“I’m the only one left,” Tommy repeated, looking to the stone fireplace and its mantle full of framed photos.

Adam took his coffee cup and went to look.

There were pictures, a group of kids and their smiling mother, a much, much younger Sue. The dad was always out of frame, taking the photos instead of being in them.

“Is that Jimmy?” Adam asked.

The boy was blond. He wore a yellow polo shirt and brown corduroy pants. Tommy was obvious in a red sweater and jeans. They were clustered around Noreen, who sat on a tricycle.

“Yeah.” Tommy’s eyes dropped to his cup.

“She never talked about him,” Adam said.

“I don’t think she ever got over it,” Tommy said. “It broke her heart when he disappeared.”

Tilla had said the same thing.

“And you never heard from him?” Adam asked.

Tommy shook his head.

“I sometimes wonder,” Tommy said, “if she hadn’t taken you in because of him, because of the gay thing, you know? Dad was a monster about it. I don’t think Jimmy would have run off if he’d not said the things he did. And Mom . . .she was just done with our dad after that.”

“Jodi said Noreen hated Jimmy,” Adam said coolly. It made his stomach flip to think Sue hadn’t really cared about him for his own sake, that it might be because of Jimmy, of some mistake she couldn’t fix or some hole she was trying to fill in her life.

“Noreen blamed him for breaking up our parents, for coming out,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “But that’s not how it works. It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault.”

He sunk into the couch, staring into space, lost in memories.

“We’ll let you rest,” Bobby said, standing. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“If you need anything . . .” Tommy said quietly.

“Same,” Bobby said, pressing a hand to Tommy’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

Adam moved the small distance to the kitchen and deposited his cup in the sink.

They shuffled outside, keeping quiet until they were back in the Cutlass.

“Get anything?” Bobby asked.

Adam shook his head. “There’s no magic here, at least none I can sense. It really does skip around.”

“I feel bad for him,” Bobby said as Adam pulled onto the road.

“Me too,” Adam said.

It was an hour drive back to Guthrie. Adam was ready for it. He needed time to think.

Tommy had lost his mother and his sister. That had to be hard.

“He was wrong you know,” Bobby said. “Sue loved you. It wasn’t about Jimmy.”

“You don’t know that,” Adam said.

There wasn’t any way to be certain, and now he’d never get the chance to ask.

“Where to next?” Bobby asked after several miles of prairie had rolled by.

“Somewhere we can get a signal,” Adam said, glancing at his phone. “Spend some time on the Internet. The library, maybe the newspaper to search obituaries.”

“Should we be going into town?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam said. “The sheriff isn’t thrilled with me, but I don’t think he’s got a reason to arrest me.”

“I’m more worried about Mom,” Bobby said.

“I’d be more worried about what she’ll do if Jodi gets on her nerves,” Adam said.

He realized he’d made a bit of a murder joke and gripped the steering wheel, but Bobby chuckled.

“Do you think Jimmy’s the druid?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam said, sifting through his feelings on their missing cousin. “I’m honestly clutching at straws here. I thought it was Dad, until you told me what you told me.”

Bobby nodded. More prairie, more grass, and half-collapsed barns rolled by.

“We can pick up some food for Mom too,” Bobby said, clearly ready to change the subject. “She didn’t get much yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. She’d been kind enough to feed them, and Vic, but he didn’t want to think about Vic just then.

Be safe, Adam thought, willing it out through their connection. Please.

Guthrie was an anachronism, a little bit of history stuck in modern times. Redbrick streets, Victorian houses, and the big Masonic temple with all the rumors that swirled around it. Adam loved this town. Despite his need for more, he still felt a little pride in being from here.

Maybe, he thought, when this is over, I can show Vic around.

Adam had no idea whether or not Vic would appreciate it. The used bookstore, sure, but Adam wasn’t certain about so many things when it came to Vic’s interests.

They needed to date, to spend time together, and instead they’d been thrown into a deep connection without preamble. It was like an arranged marriage, only Adam hadn’t meant to arrange it.

Now Vic was stuck with him and Adam had no idea where things lay.

Too much was unsettled. It made his heart hurt.

Adam rubbed his chest with his fist and parked on the street.

“I’m going to try the library,” he said.

“I’ll get the groceries,” Bobby remarked. “See you in about an hour?”

Adam nodded and headed inside.

The building wasn’t very large. Adam had used it from time to time, reading for free when he didn’t have the money for paperbacks or when the used shop didn’t have part two in a series. He wanted to give audiobooks a try but needed a better phone.

Thankfully, he did have a card, and they had computers.

He opted for that, rather than tap out his sad data plan.

Adam paused. He hadn’t even thought of that. With Sue gone, he’d need a new contract for his phone. They were bound to shut it down at some point. He’d always just given her cash to pay his part, and she’d been kind enough to not keep him to strict dates. One more reason to go back to Denver and work for Jesse. A steady job was a new thing and Adam liked it. He especially liked having some money in his pocket for once.

Sue would have been proud of him, and her loss hit him like a punch to the chest. She hadn’t told him so much. Maybe she had taken Adam in so he wouldn’t vanish like Jimmy, but she’d loved him.

Adam had checked out of Liberty House on his eighteenth birthday. He’d walked away, dead broke and with just a worn-out backpack full of threadbare clothes.

He’d gone to Sue’s, hiked there, though it had taken all day.

She’d taken him in. She hadn’t had much and she’d shared it with Adam.

He pushed his doubts aside.

He wished he could show her the Cutlass, the work he’d done on it, not that there wasn’t a ton more to do when this was over.

Adam almost texted Jesse right then to say he was sorry again, to make sure he still had a job, but it could wait. Right now, he needed to find out what happened to Jimmy. Maybe he could put his cousin to rest, and maybe somewhere out there, Sue would know about it.

The library archives had the local paper, the Guthrie News Leader, on file for decades. They’d digitized most of it. Adam smiled. The building was small. Its hard drives weren’t.

It only took a moment to confirm that James Binder Jr. had gone to high school with Adam’s parents and Early West. He’d been on the high school football team. There was even a picture of him after a game.

Jimmy had pale blond hair that covered his ears and a nervous smile that Adam understood all too well.

“Your cousin?” a voice asked. The sheriff. He’d crept up without Adam hearing.

Adam blinked but tried not to look surprised. Early kept popping up. Maybe it was nothing. His office was close. He might have seen the Cutlass.

“That’s a sad story.” Early nodded to the monitor.

“Yeah, he wasn’t at the funeral,” Adam said. “I thought I’d look him up.”

“He disappeared one day,” Early said.

“But you remember him?” Adam asked.

“Of course. It’s a small town, a small high school. We didn’t have hardly any crime back then. We just figured he’d run off to California to be himself, to be queer out west, you know?”

Adam bristled at the q word. He knew a lot of people were using it now, had reclaimed it from being a slur, but in his ears, it still had echoes of the schoolyard, of the boys who’d chased him, bloodied his lip, and given him more than one black eye. Adam didn’t know how Sheriff Early meant it, but he wasn’t quite ready to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

“No one’s heard from him in years,” Adam said. “Sue never really talked about him. As far as I know he never came back.”

He looked away from the sheriff, back to the screen, to the broad-shouldered, corn-fed boy who’d been his predecessor.

“We just figured he died of AIDS,” Early said.

He lifted his hands in a gesture of peace at Adam’s expression.

“I didn’t mean anything. There was a lot of that then, Adam,” Early said.

“Times change,” Adam said. Even Guthrie changed, though maybe not enough, not so much that Adam wanted to show Vic around after all. Adam looked up at Early and asked, “Can I help you with something, Sheriff?”

“As a matter of fact,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”

Early shifted a little and his drawl deepened when he said, “I was wondering if she was seeing anyone.”

“You mean, like a psychiatrist?” Adam asked.

Early chuckled. “I mean romantically, like dating, hooking up—whatever you kids call it now.”

He scratched the back of his head.

Well, holy shit, Adam thought. I did not see that coming.

So much for his Sight.

“Um, I don’t think so,” Adam said honestly. “But please don’t say hooking up. It doesn’t mean what I think you think it means.”

The whole idea of his mother dating had thrown him off balance. He could picture it, though he’d never pictured it before. There were whole avenues open to his mom that hadn’t been there before. She didn’t have to stay in Guthrie. She didn’t have to live alone in the woods. She could date, or whatever, if she wanted to.

Looking a bit bashful, Early nodded to the screen. “I had such a crush on her back in the day. But she liked the bad boys, guys like your dad. But he’s been gone a long time, and Duncan’s mother left a while back.”

“I could ask her?” Adam stammered. He’d known that his mother had a soft spot for his dad, had loved him regardless of his temper and his laziness, but bad boys? Adam wasn’t ready to think of her like that.

“Or better, you could ask her,” Adam decided.

“You’re probably right,” Early said bashfully.

With a nod, he retreated, leaving Adam alone.

The whole thing might be cute if it weren’t so scary. What if Early knew exactly what had happened to Jimmy? What if he only wanted to talk to Tilla to get closer, to find out what happened to Robert Senior?

Adam knew he was likely being paranoid, but his encounter with the sheriff at the station hadn’t been so cordial. Early hadn’t mentioned the bones. Had they identified them?

Adam turned back to the screen, to the picture.

“What really happened to you, Jimmy?” he asked. “Where did you go?”