Simon felt blood rushing to his face as he listened to the fourth ring of the unanswered call. When it went to voicemail, what was he going to say? Hi, it’s your brother, the one you haven’t spoken to in more than seven years. How’s it going?
He was surprised when the ringing sound suddenly stopped. Silence, followed by a tentative, “Hello?” The voice sounded almost exactly like his own. Ethan.
“It’s Simon,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what my phone said. I guess we both still have the same numbers.”
Simon felt the tension in his fingers as he gripped the phone tightly. He had so many conflicting emotions. All those hours spent with the police in the weeks and months after the murders, undergoing multiple interrogations, Simon had gotten a good sense of the evidence. Whoever killed his parents had used the family car, knew the family dog, knew the family gate code, knew how to access the family gun. There were only five members of the Harrington family. Two of them were dead. One was a little girl. And that left Simon and Ethan.
And what did Ethan go and do when confronted with that same evidence? He had pointed an accusatory finger at Simon. He had told the police that Simon was desperate to please their demanding father but that the psychological pressure of being the Harringtons’ favorite son had led Simon to suffer from pent-up resentments against the family. He made Simon sound like a volcano that would inevitably erupt. What Ethan had done to him was unforgivable.
And yet… The sound of his voice brought back so many memories. Body surfing at the beach. Basement Ping Pong tournaments. Wondering which one would get to kiss a girl first (it was Ethan). Fooling the teachers at school by impersonating each other.
He swallowed, as if he could literally ingest the intense feelings that had resurfaced. “Where are you right now?” he asked.
“At work.”
It dawned on him he had no idea where his own brother worked. He knew from Frankie that he still played lead guitar with a couple of local rock bands and made his living as a sound engineer, but he didn’t know where Ethan physically worked.
“But like where are you, as in the address? Where will you be in about half an hour?”
“Why?”
“There’s a woman here who needs to see you. Laurie Moran. She’s the producer—”
“Under Suspicion,” Ethan said. “Frankie told me. I’m not doing it. Frankie’s mad, but that’s a final decision.”
“No, it’s not,” Simon said.
Simon could imagine his brother’s sarcastic grin in the scoff that followed. “Excuse me?”
“We need to do this,” Simon said. “I know you’ve got a baby on the way. We need to clear our names.”
“That’s pretty rich coming from you. You told the police about Dad pressuring me to stop seeing Annabeth. You threw me under the bus.”
“Only after you pointed the finger at me,” he said.
“That’s such bull, Simon. You haven’t changed at all, have you? The mental gymnastics that you’re capable of playing, all so you can convince yourself you’re the good guy in every story. Sometimes I think you’ve convinced yourself of your own lies.”
“Give me the address,” Simon said.
“I’m not talking to her,” Ethan said.
“You think I threw you under the bus all those years ago? If you don’t do this show, you’re going to feel like you’re under the entire Greyhound station when I’m done talking about you on national television. What’s the address?”
A long silence followed and then the call ended. Ethan had hung up on him.
Seconds later, a new text message arrived. It was an address in Back Bay, followed by a note: You pulled the trigger. Don’t forget that.