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I didn’t even know you were flying in today.
I would have had someone cover me
He let the phone fall back to the seat, dropping sideways against the bank of low, uncomfortable chairs, his head landing on his gear bag in the same divot in which it had rested across three continents. Involving the others was an exercise in futility, for none of them had ever once picked him up from the airport. Anytime he came home, he would simply text Grayson before the final leg of his journey, confident that there would be a car waiting when he arrived and a bed for him in his brother’s house, a well-stocked refrigerator of sushi and organic vegetables, imported beer, and an excellent wine selection. Staying at Grayson’s was like being a guest in a boutique hotel, right down to the filtered, fruit-infused water, only missing the warm cookies in the lobby. He’d never needed to ask before, and Gray had never thrown him out. Now he’d changed the unspoken agreement with no notice or conversation.
It wasn’t as if he could just grab a cab, Lowell thought to himself for the hundredth time that hour. Service was temporarily suspended, as were the rideshare companies, and even if they weren’t, he wasn’t traveling with an average amount of luggage. When he went on shoots, his gear bag was the most essential thing in the world. Everything he needed was contained within, strapped around him as he set up on mountainsides or in caves or at the edge of a winding river in the heart of the rainforest . . . but that was hardly all he owned, for fuck’s sake. Six rolling cases surrounded him, and that wasjusthis camera gear. Two suitcases of luggage, a duffel, and a whispered prayer that everything he had already shipped home would make it back to Cambric Creek someday. He couldn’t simply go outside and hail a cab, and Grayson knew it.
You’re going to die here. Right here, in this airport. You’ve been in active war zones and hostile jungles, but this will be it. At gate 37B, right between an out-of-service restroom and a Mr. Toasty stand.
The phone buzzed against the vinyl of the seat next to him, the noise seeming over loud in the silent terminal. He fumbled for the handset, attempting to manifest the reality that one of his brothers was currently idling at the curb.I’m outside. I’m outside.He thought the words several times before swiping the screen open, slumping in disappointment as he read the most recent message, this time from his twin.
Sry I was in a meeting this morning & I’m walking into another one now
Only just seeing all this
I thought Gray was picking him up
Nearly another hour had passed, Lowell realized balefully. He could hear the droning whir of a floor cleaner several corridors away, evidence that he wasn’t completely alone, which oddly didn’t make him feel any better. When the phone buzzed again, he told himself he wasn’t going to look. It wouldn’t be anything useful; it wouldn’t be anything that would help his situation. He was going to ignore it, ignore them, and wait for Mr. Toasty to open, or else for death to embrace him at last.
He’d never been very good at ignoring things. It might have been someone from his office, someone from the publisher, someone calling with the first bit of good news he would have heard in several weeks. Or it might be Jackson texting to say he was leaving the university now, or Owen saying his meeting was canceled and he was on his way. His resolve to ignore things never seemed to last long, and this message would be no exception. Someday he might learn to control his impulses like a normal adult, he thought, but it was not this morning, not in this airport. After only a few moments, he was scrabbling for his phone once more, swiping open the screen and closing his eyes for a heartbeat, holding his breath.
Hold on, let me just tell the federal commission that I’m going to need to duck out of this hearing for an hour or two because my adult brother can’t figure out how to travel twenty miles on his own.
It’ll be fine.
I’m sure my client doesn’t really need to win this case.
Lowell had to restrain himself from flinging the phone across the terminal. Grayson always had a way of making it sound as if he were the most important person in the world and the only one with a real job, which meant the rest of them were peasants with hobbies, by comparison. He didn’t know what he’d done to earn his elder brother’s ire already; didn’t know for which invisible crime he was being punished, but some things hadn’t changed since childhood — Grayson was punitive and harsh, and when he felt he’d been personally slighted, he was pro-level mean.
He wanted to respond to Owen’s message that his twin was correct.Graysonwas supposed to be picking him up. Grayson, who had an office relatively close to the airport, who Lowell was certain regularly took the time for two-hour martini lunches and illicit rendezvous with the wives of his partners, who hadalwayspicked him up from the airport on his previous visits home. Grayson, who had never communicated the plan had changed. The time was now 8:22 a.m., according to the television monitor behind him, and Grayson’s snippy response to the text sent by his twin sealed the deal. He was going to die there.
Why isn’t Jackson there?
Jackson’s response to Gray’s needling was immediate.
Because I’m at work, just like you, and no one ever communicated that I needed to come all the way into the city to be at the airport.
His brothers were talking about him as if he were a carton of milk they were meant to pick up or a particularly disgusting old toilet bound for the dump. Not their flesh and blood sibling who had boarded a plane on the other side of the world thinking there was a plan in place for when he arrived home after nearly a year since his last visit; not their displaced brother who had nowhere to go, his entire life put on pause. A chore, an obligation, one that, if they talked around long enough, might disappear.
The phone buzzed again, Trapp once more.
Maybe you should call dad
The phone vibrated with another response almost instantly, and Lowell squinted at the message from Liam.
Dad has a meeting this morning
I just left his office and he was right behind me
I have a history test this afternoon, but I can cut the rest of the day & get you
Panicked responses from Trapp and Jackson, nearly simultaneously:
N O
Absolutely not
He wanted to ask what Liam was doing at their father’s downtown office an hour and a half after his classes started for the day but decided he didn’t actually care, not when his own fate still rested in uncertainty.Better yet, why the fuck didn’t dad come to get me two hours ago?
