Page 138 of String Boys

Unbidden, Kelly’s mind was brought back to that long-ago night when he and Matty had been peering outside the curtain, looking for their father, and Seth had been hoping his wouldn’t show up.

The world was a funny, twisted place, he thought bitterly. Matty had come and gone. Sometimes he’d show up with small gifts for Chloe, always looking like a hundred miles of bad road. They’d learned just to ask him in, to feed him, to take what he could give.

And not to expect him to return.

He’d visited the month before, and Agnes had remarked that she could see the track marks on his arms, and they were getting infected. Linda had been doing accounts at the time, and she’d made a little gasp in her throat. Craig—who’d been over cooking dinner, which he did a lot—had left everything to simmer and taken her away from her desk in the corner of the living room and outside for a walk. Kelly had finished dinner, and that had been that.

They all knew.

Matty was an addict, and Isela was nowhere to be found.

Kelly had heard Lily and Lulu talking about his yellow eyes and the red patches on his face.

He wasn’t stupid—he knew what it could add up to.

But he’d been telling himself his brother was dead to him for a long time now. He was too pissed off to grieve.

The lights went down, the curtain opened, and the play began—Agnes in the leading role. For an hour and a half, Kelly was able to bury his worry about Seth under his pride for his sister, but when the lights went up and she took a bow with her cast, he and Craig looked at each other again.

Fuck.

They managed to contain themselves, though, to congratulate Agnes, who was over the moon—and upset because Seth had promised her flowers. Lily and Lulu told her they’d take her out with her friends to get ice cream after set breakdown, and Kelly hugged them all before he tailed Craig and Linda out of the school auditorium, Chloe clutching his hand.

Once they got her unhappily situated in her car seat in the back of the minivan, Kelly sat in the middle and leaned forward between his mom and Seth’s dad, looking for answers.

“Did his plane get in?” Craig asked, looking at Kelly.

Kelly nodded. “Right on time. He texted me as soon as they landed, and he had a good hour. Here—I’m looking for traffic conditions—”

“I’ve got them,” Craig muttered. “Hell. Oh hell. Linda, here. You take Chloe inside once we get home.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the road but not losing the conversation either.

“There….” Craig took a deep breath. “There was a pileup. Multicar. On 5. Several big rigs involved. You go inside with Chloe. Kelly and I will call hospitals. I’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

“Oh God.” Linda covered her mouth with her hand. “Craig, he’s got to be—”

And Craig Arnold grabbed her hand and laced their fingers together, bringing them to his lips. “Have faith, honey. Have faith just this once. He’s Seth.” His voice cracked. “We just need to find out.”

She nodded, and Kelly got out so she could carry a sleeping Chloe upstairs. He was on his second phone call when he saw a movement from the shadows.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” came the harried clerk on the other end of the line.

“Shit! I’m sorry. I was looking to see if you had a patient from the car wreck—the big one on Highway 5?” Poor woman. Kelly watched his no-account brother walk out from the shadows behind the Arnold’s apartment, something dangling from his far hand. Kelly kept his eyes on Matty but his brain on his task.

“What is your relationship to the patient, sir?”

“He’s my boyfriend—Seth Arnold.”

“The violinist? The one on YouTube?”

Kelly blinked. Seth’s videos—the ones he made where he played the different parts—had gotten enough hits for Seth to hire someone to monetize his own YouTube station. He made a decent amount of money from it, but not once had Kelly ever heard anybody but his own family talk about watching.

“Yeah—”

“So you would be Kelly?”