Page 7 of The Path To Us

Chapter Two

Beau

Monday morning I arrive at work after the perfect weekend. Sleeping in, working out in my home gym, a little bit of yard work once the rain stopped, and quiet. The quiet is what makes me happy.

Alden can’t wipe the smile off his face, rightfully so after his girlfriend accepted his proposal, and everyone gives him shit for how sappy he seems. He takes it all pretty good, though, and doesn’t seem bothered by it. Just smiles and shrugs.

We spend the day cleaning up some messes that the storm over the weekend brought in and get calls for patch jobs, which means our week is going to be even busier than normal.

When it’s time to head for home, my body is more than just aching. The humidity in the air is stifling, making the heat that much more unbearable. When the temperatures reach into the mid-90s, we have to consider the health of our workers above getting a job done. We sometimes work until eight at night but with the weather the way it was today, we shut down around four. Let everyone get home and get cooled off and rested up. The heat can make a man exhausted pretty quickly.

I’ve just said goodbye to the last of our employees when my cell rings. I reach for it, seeing “Mom” light up my screen so I say goodbye to Alden and watch as he walks out the door and take the call.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Beau?” my mom whimpers.

The sound of her voice has me instantly on alert. My muscles strung tight and my hand that’s not holding my phone is fisted at my side. I might be over thirty now, but my urge to fix things with my hands hasn’t dulled in time. That’s not to say that I’m getting into bar fights — or any other kind, for that matter — but that’s only because I’ve learned how to control myself.

“What is it?”

She sniffles and hiccups. “It’s… it’s…”

“What,” I grind out, jaw clenched.

“Your brother. Christopher. He… he... Oh, god, Beau!”

Dread fills me and I plop back down in my chair, leaning over.

“What happened?”

“He’s...”

“Mom. What. Happened?”

The phone fumbles around a little bit before I hear my other brother’s voice come through the line telling her to sit down and breathe. Then all I hear is heavy breathing and the swoosh of what sounds like an electronic door sliding open. “Beau, it’s me, Max. Chris told one of the secretaries at the school that he had a migraine so he left the school to sleep it off,” my youngest brother Max says urgently. “He texted me when he got home, said he was going to let me know when he woke up. We were supposed to go to dinner tonight but I told him if he needed to sleep it off, that was okay, obviously. But, he never texted me, wouldn’t pick up. I couldn’t shake this bad feeling so I went over there to check on him. Something told me I needed to.”

He pauses for a few seconds and I hear a car door slam shut then rustling around before the sound of him taking in a smoke from his vape pen filters through the phone. He blows out the vape and I bite my tongue to stop myself from getting on his case about using it. “I let myself in because I didn’t want to wake him up in case he was just sleeping. Fuck, I wish he was just sleeping, Beau. Why wasn’t he just sleeping?” he asks but I know he’s not looking for an answer. “He was in his bed but something… dammit, I don’t know. I just… I knew without even checking.”

“What do you mean? Check what?” I growl.

“I did it, though. I fucking checked, Beau!” he shouts angrily, a sob escaping his throat. And then I only hear his cries. Gut wrenching sobs that have my blood turning to ice.

I want to reach through the phone and slap him to get his attention. “Max! Max. I need you to talk to me. What happened?”

“I checked on him. I promise I did. As soon as I felt like something wasn’t right, I went over there. I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“And?”

Neither of us are making that much sense. In my gut I know what happened but until I hear the words, I refuse to actually believe it.

“But it didn’t matter.”

“What didn’t matter? When, Max? When was this?”

“It was less than an hour ago. That’s it. And since then everything’s happened so fast. Fuck, man. He wasn’t…” His voice trails off and I hear him crying, sucking in air.

“No,” I croak out, shaking my head.

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