Page 31 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth

Twenty-Nine

Tristan

W hen I hang up with Emily, I’m keyed up, worried Alex will tell her about my family and she’ll draw the wrong conclusions. I really don’t like the idea of them spending time together. This damned storm could send my house of cards tumbling.

I pull up the weather map and am gratified to see the snow is changing over to rain.

Rain means it should be warm enough for Em to return to the little cabin tomorrow and keep her distance from her host. I exhale, relieved.

The less Emily interacts with Alex/Lexi/whatever the hell she’s calling herself, the better.

It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for what she went through. Believe me, I do. But I’ve built an entire life around plausible deniability, and the thought of losing it now is unbearable. I know what my brother did, but I don’t know. Alex Liu knows.

Tate stopped short of telling me point-blank that he attacked Lexi and killed Dana. And I’ve clung to that. The only crime Tate didn’t at least obliquely reference was killing Cassie. Of course, I haven’t seen him since that night in Kansas, or I’m sure he would’ve.

But, he didn’t need to. Once I saw the photograph of Emily that ran with the newspaper article about Cassie Baughman’s murder, I knew two things: My brother killed Cassie, and Emily had been the intended victim.

Consumed by the thought that Tate would want to finish the job, I moved to Hope Falls.

I spent the first semester watching Emily, learning her patterns and routines.

When I glimpsed her in the lobby of Dr. Wilde’s office building and realized we were both seeing the same psychotherapist, it felt like a sign.

So I engineered to meet her. Not to be creepy, and certainly not to weasel my way into her life.

I never planned to date, fall in love with, and marry her.

My intention was to keep my brother at bay.

But, trite as it is, the heart wants what it wants.

And my heart wants Emily. It did then, and it still does.

If she finds out about my history and all the truths I’ve withheld from her, she’ll never believe I was trying to, am still trying to, protect her.

The entire time I lived in Hope Falls, I looked for Tate.

Once I started working as a teaching assistant, I accessed the university records, but Tate wasn’t working at my school.

So I made it a point to get friendly with a guy who worked in the human resources department at Emily’s college. They had no record of Tate either.

He was a ghost, a cipher. Eventually, I decided he must’ve moved on and Emily wasn’t in any immediate danger. But by that point, I was in love with her.

I’ve never stopped trying to protect her. I never will.

Case in point: the moment Giselle Ward’s body was found, I understood what her murder meant: Tate was back.

So I found a way to get Emily out of town to keep her safe until I could find him and end this once and for all.

Now, though, the tightness in my chest makes me wonder if sending her to that cabin on the mountaintop is the worst mistake I could’ve made.

Worrying about what Alex might tell Emily is a distraction I don’t need. I have to focus on Tate. Why would he fake his death and arrange for Dr. Wilde to call our mother? It’s clearly a message for me. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means.

Six months ago

Even through the videoconferencing software, Dr. Wilde’s eyes communicated concern. His expression radiated empathy. But his words, despite the soft delivery, were razor sharp. They sliced through me like a knife.

“Tate, isn’t it possible your brother doesn’t think about you at all?”

I hesitated. Was it? No.

I shook my head. “No,” I told him. “You have to understand, he’s been trying to get a reaction out of me for more than twenty years.”

“Twenty years, hmm. Isn’t that when your mother took you and moved away, leaving him behind?”

“Yes.”

So I told him my name is Tate, but I’m not pretending to be Tate. When we talk, I tell him my real story—Tristan’s story—I just swap our names. And leave out a few details.

He squinted at me. “Do you think he’s jealous of you?”

I thought about it. “No. Not jealous, exactly. I think he knows I’ve had a better life than he has. But I also think he understands that’s not my fault. He’s bitter, but not toward me.” I hope.

“Toward your mother?”

I sighed. “Maybe. He should direct his anger toward our father. Or the social conventions that let an entire town turn a blind eye to an abuser.”

“Perhaps.” Dr. Wilde steepled his fingers, and I wondered if some program taught this body language or if therapists just settled on it naturally.

“But it’s difficult to hold abstract concepts accountable for our pain.

And a dead man, a town? These aren’t real.

Not in the way the mother and brother who abandoned him are. ”

I bristled at the framing—I was nine , I didn’t abandon anyone. But I didn’t go there. I only had thirty minutes, after all. I needed to focus.

“We’ve talked about whether I have an obligation to try to find him, and I know you say no. But …”

He leaned forward. “What, Tate?”

“What if he’s gearing up to hurt someone again? Or worse?”

His eyes flashed. “Do you have actionable information? Evidence?”

We did this weird dance every so often, Dr. Wilde and I.

Ohio law required him to report it to the authorities if I told him my brother intended to harm or kill a specific identifiable person.

But anything I told him about past actions was privileged, off-limits unless he was subpoenaed by a court.

So, anything I tell him about things my brother’s done—or that I think he’s done—is confidential.

What he’s going to do, that’s a different story.

“Well, no.”

He gave me a long-suffering look. I ignored it.

“It’s cyclical. Every seven years.”

“Hypothetically, who is he going to attack?”

“I don’t know. A woman. In her twenties. With red hair.”

“Cassie Baughman was a blonde,” he countered.

I huffed. “Don’t fight the hypo.”

It’s a turn of phrase I’ve picked up from the prosecutors I work with. Lawyers call it ‘fighting the hypo’ when you resist the facts of a case as stated.

He rolled his eyes. I was pretty sure they didn’t teach him that body language in school.

“If you told me he was going to hurt a specific, named person, I’d call the police.

If you truly believe he’s going to hurt someone, soon, but you don’t know who or when, you might want to try to contact him.

Not because you’re obligated to, because I don’t think you are.

But because you want to stop him. It’s valid to act because you want to, Tate, and not just because you have to. ”

It sounded so obvious when he puts it that way.

That was his job, after all—to cut through the bullshit and expose the truth, the heart of the matter.

But he was wrong to think I secretly wanted to find my brother.

I’d do it if I had to—if the law, or morality, or my psychotherapist told me I must—but I couldn’t justify exposing my life, my wife, to the monster that was my brother if I didn’t have to.

This was, I knew, the same calculus that my mother had used when we basically fled from Maine. She hadn’t wanted to cut ties with her firstborn. But her safety, and, at that time, mine had required her to do so.

I left the session with Dr. Wilde resolute in my decision not to connect with Tate.

Six months later, Giselle Ward’s neck will be sliced open, resulting in the complete transection of her carotid artery. The fully severed artery will cause a massive hemorrhage. Her death will be nearly instantaneous. And it will be my fault.