Page 39 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
I nod.
Her jaw drops. “How is that possible? You went to college in a town with a population of twenty thousand people, give or take. How did he miss a murder?”
Before answering, I raise an eyebrow at the fact that she researched us. She has the self-awareness to flush. “He wasn’t living there yet. He started graduate school five months after it happened, and I guess …,” I pause to search for a way to explain. “When I met him and realized he didn’t know that I was the murdered girl’s roommate, it was such a relief, refreshing. You can’t imagine what it’s like. Once you’ve been connected to a horrific crime, you never get your life back. To everyone who knows about it, I’ll always be that girl who found her dead roommate’s body. But with Tristan, I was just Emily.”
Her face softens. “I don’t have to imagine it. I know.”
Now I’m the one who’s confused. What does she mean? How could she possibly know?
I’m about to ask her, when she bolts to her feet.
“Let’s eat.”
Twenty-Three
Tristan
* * *
By 5 PM, my brain is mush. I can’t work anymore, and I know I’m missing something. I need to speak with my mother. I’m reaching for the phone when it rings. I pick it up to answer it, and my jaw hinges open when I read ‘Mom’ on the screen.
I fumble with the button to pick up the call and walk out into the kitchen. “Mom, I was just picking up the phone to call you.”
“Oh?” Her voice is strange, shaky, and full of emotion that I can’t place. “You must have sensed I need to talk.”
“Is something wrong?”
She doesn’t answer directly. “I have … news, Tristan.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” she hurries to assure me. I lean against the kitchen counter and wait. “I guess I just need to come out and say it. Your brother is dead.”
My mind goes completely blank. I say nothing.
“Honey, are you there?”
I struggle to remember how to speak and finally manage to string sounds into words and the words into a sentence. “What do you mean, Tate’s dead?”
“Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are.”
“I didn’t know you were in contact with Tate.”
“I’m not. I wasn’t,” she stammers. “I haven’t spoken to Tate since that bad haboob. When was that? Maybe twelve —?”
“Fourteen years ago,” I tell her with the certainty of a person who’s just relived that day.
She considers my answer for a moment, then says, “That’s right. It’s been fourteen years. I haven’t talked to him since … all of that.”
“Then how do you know he’s dead?”
“I got a phone call. Apparently, your brother was living in Ohio. His psychiatrist called because Tate had listed me as his next of kin.”
My stomach drops. “Tate was seeing a psychiatrist?”
“I couldn’t believe it either,” my mother says, misunderstanding the tone in my voice. “But Dr. Wilde said he’s been treating Tate for six years now.”
Dr. Wilde? My heart thumps so loudly I wonder if my mother can hear it through the phone.
