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That’s what it took. For Kyle’s old house to be burned to the ground. To burn his mother’s body. His father. Kaleb. None of whom had to die. What body did Tristan find to act as Kyle’s? How did Tristan handle his own disappearance? These are things Kyle never asked. He let Tristan take care of it all and didn’t do anything but count sheep, just as he was told.
He couldn’t bear to think of that night again, ever since.
And now, staring into Brock’s anguished eyes, hearing his words, Kyle finds himself struck through the heart, as if with an actual wooden stake, gutted. Memories of that night rushing to the front, drowning him, clinging to his skin like the raindrops from the sky right now, raindrops in the middle of a desert.
Kyle takes a breath, closes his eyes. “Where’s your car?”
“Fuck you!” screams Brock.
Kyle takes Brock by the arm, causing him to shout out, but he makes no further protest as Kyle drags the stubborn man to the only vehicle that can be his, an entirely out-of-place white sports car on the curb down the street some ways. He fishes a set of keys straight out of Brock’s pocket, startling him, opens the door, puts a bewildered Brock in the passenger seat, then lets himself into the driver’s side and takes off.
At a stoplight by the bakery, Kyle glances at Brock across the center console. Brock stares forward, still holding his hand against his chest, eyes unblinking, drops of rain on his face and hands. It is such a strange feeling, to gaze at Brock, this person he once knew, to see him sitting right next to him.
As if the fight in the locker room long ago never ended.
This was just the next punch, twenty-seven years late.
“This is my friend Brock Hastings,” says Kyle when they arrive at the front counter. Brock glares at him, likely confused by being called a friend. “He injured his hand punching a brick wall like an idiot.”
Brock scowls. “Fuck you.”
The nurse tiredly slides a clipboard over the counter. “It’s a slow day. Fill this out, we’ll get your idiot friend right in.”
It’s merely half an hour later that the two of them are in a room, waiting on the doctor. There is silence, save for the soft drumming of rain on the window. Brock is on the edge of the examination bed. Kyle is in a chair in the corner by a biohazard bin and a counter with cotton swabs and tongue depressors.
Brock breaks the silence. “I fuckin’ hate you.”
“That’s fine,” says Kyle after a moment.
“And you called me a friend to that nurse?” Brock speaks to the floor. “Lord help me. Lord help me in this time of … of great …” Then he closes his eyes and lifts his face to the ceiling with his uninjured hand pressed to his heart. “Lord, please give me the strength to overcome my anger, to change, to—”
“What are you doing?”
Brock’s lip quivers again, then he pops open his eyes and glares at Kyle. “This is your fault. All of this. It’s because of you I came all the way up here from Phoenix. To confront you. To see if it really was you at all. To see if—”
“You live in Phoenix now?”
“Yes, I live in Phoenix now, where my dad’s company is based, where the hell else would I—” He clenches shut his eyes once again. “Lord, give me strength, give me strength to—”
“I think the Lord is far away from here,” says Kyle.
Brock’s breathing slows. He bows his head, speaks quietly. “I have to do better. I have to be better. For my wife. My son. I shouldn’t have—”
“Son?”
Brock looks up. “Yeah. My …” He lowers his hand to his lap. “My son. Light of my life, my boy, seventeen, in his senior year now. Almost the same age that we were when you—” His face twists, and he looks back at the floor. “When you left.”
Kyle wonders if he was just about to say “when you died”.
“What happened?” asks Brock, the question nearly hissed out. “Can you even tell me? The actual truth? Did that Tristan fuckin’ do something to you? Did he kill your family and cover it up? Never mind,” he says at once, shaking his head. “I’m just askin’ questions I already know the answers to. He killed you, turned you into a … into a whatever-he-is. I warned you, Kyle, didn’t I? I told you to stay away from him, and now look at you, lookin’ like you haven’t aged a damned day, lickin’ blood off of people like a freak. Satan took hold of you … the Devil did.”
Kyle only listens patiently, studying Brock across the room, withholding his own mountain of questions for his old friend-turned-enemy. Maybe he’s still fascinated by Brock’s unplanned return in his life, too curious about him to feel any kind of way, angry, remorseful, curious, sad.
