Page 59 of The Night We Lost Him

Tommy turns toward Sam. “Who told you that?”

“Who told me that?” Sam says. “That’s what you have to say?”

Tommy stares at Sam, his smile disappearing. Then he steps off the trampoline and turns to me.

“We need somewhere private if you guys want to get into this,” he says.

“Lead the way,” Sam says.

Tommy motions toward the Airstream. And we follow him up the small stairs and inside. The cabin is hot and tight, a space heater going at full blast. Tommy pulls off his puffy vest, sweat pooling under each arm.

He grabs a kombucha and takes a seat behind his makeshift desk, leaving us to find room on the built-in couch, covered with boxes of files and endless cases of additional kombucha.

“Before you go losing your shit,” he says, “it’s not like Dad told me about any of this. I just found out he was planning to sell to her a couple of weeks ago.”

“How?” Sam says.

“One of the lawyers was talking to Joe after the will reading and I overheard him say something about Salinger, so I started digging. I got the sale confirmed by a couple of people who are in-house with Cece.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“How do you want me to answer that?”

“By explaining why you didn’t think to tell me, for starters.”

Sam holds Tommy’s eyes and I see it pass between them: this mix of anger and love and resentment. This quiet understanding that the two of them are always in it together and somehow, like now, the opposite of that.

“You’re seriously going to give me a hard time? You’ve been totally fucking absent, man.”

“Since Dad died?” Sam says. “I think that’s understandable.”

“It’s been a lot worse since then, sure. But if we are going to be honest, then let’s be honest,” he says. “You’re not exactly the partner around here you say you want to be.”

“That’s such bullshit,” Sam says. “You just want to believe it should be you here without me.”

“You know that isn’t it,” he says. “You’re perfectly good at your job when you choose to be.”

“Don’t make me blush.”

Tommy shakes his head, like the last thing he has time for is to convince Sam of what is true. And I certainly don’t know if what Tommy is saying is accurate, but I can see how small it’s making Sam feel. I feel a pull to lean in and make it stop.

“We don’t need to get into all of this, Tommy,” I say. “We are just trying to figure out what was going on with Dad.”

“I literally don’t even know what you are doing here,” he says.

“Quite honestly, that makes two of us.”

He looks at me and softens.

“There were things going on with Dad that we didn’t know,” I say. “That none of us knew…”

“Like the fact that he was involved with Cece?” Tommy asks.

Like the fact he may have been murdered.

I nod. “Among other things.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, Joe told me, categorically, that whatever happened with them happened a really long time ago.”