Page 56 of Something Like Winter

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to breakfast but didn’t try to make conversation. The tables around them

were full of parents and kids. Travis fixated on these families like his

future was calling to him.

The day went downhill from there. Every house they visited had

family photos on the wall. Wives brought in drinks while the husbands

chatted with them about the good ol’ days. The background sounds of

children playing only drove the point home.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just when Travis was coming

around, all this stupid fund-raising had come along and wrecked it. Eric,

Quentin, all of it made Tim’s mood grow dark as the day wore on. When

they were finally through visiting the alumni, that anger found a target. Quentin.

He could have accepted Eric’s donation with grace. Here was a guy

who, despite being kicked out of the fraternity and treated as a joke, still

gave an enormous amount of money to them. And Quentin had stood in

front of everyone and talked trash about him like an ungrateful dick. Tim

wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Once they were back at the fraternity house, Travis slunk off

somewhere while Tim put in an appearance to show the other brothers

that everything was cool. He was even friendly to Quentin, giving him

the day’s checks and asking how the others had done. Then Tim made

himself a sandwich and ate it in the common room, keeping watch until

Quentin took the envelopes upstairs.

That’s all he needed to know. Quentin had the only bedroom on the

first floor—a sprawling space on one corner of the building. He wasn’t

keeping the checks there. That left the second floor office. Tim sat

around, watching a movie and waiting until most of the brothers went out

for drinks or on dates. Then he went upstairs.

The office door was locked, but the doorknobs were the cheap kind

that could be picked by inserting a paperclip into the hole. The brothers

trusted each other; such flimsy precautions were only to keep visitors

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