I wanted to text Julian and tell him what I had found, but I knew that reaching out to him via a very trackable message chat was a bad idea. So instead, I tried to think of all the possible reasons that the letter, with my father’s name signed to it, would have been in that trash can. The most plausible thing that I could come up with was that since the maintenance office was old, and since the workers were likely always renovating old parts of the campus buildings that hadn’t been renovated in years, the letter was probably just found somewhere while they were cleaning out and it got thrown in the trash as they soon as they got back to the office.
I tried to convince myself that that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but it still didn’t sit well in my gut.
That night we ate dinner in the dining hall instead of in the apartment because both Adam and I needed a break from Michael. But much to our dismay, Michael showed up in the dining hall to join us there anyway. He didn’t just come for dinner, though.
He came to start something.
I had just stuck a corner of bread in my mouth when Michael walked up to the opposite side of the table and smacked a piece of paper down in front of us. I could see through the spread of his fingers that it was Lineage letterhead.
“Care to explain yourself?” he said, glowering at me.
“What is it now, Michael?” Adam asked.
It was clear that Michael’s attitude as of late was wearing on Adam increasingly too.
“Your girlfriend is playing you for a fool,” he snarled. “She’s going to end up causing bigger problems than you will be able to handle.”
“What are you talking about?” Adam asked. “What’s with the paper?”
“Why don’t you ask Lisette,” Michael said as he turned his eyes to me. “Find anything interesting in the trash lately?”
Damn it.
I could see the crumbled edges beneath his hand now: it was the same letter from the maintenance office. That explained why it was gone when I went out to look for it again. Michael was tracking me, and now I had proof of it. It didn’t matter, though. The letter had nothing to do with me, and no one could prove that I’d ever seen it.
I didn't know how Michael got the letter—at least, that’s what I wanted to convince myself of—but he had no reason to think I would admit to having picked it up.
“Let me see it,” Adam said as he held his hand out.
Michael put the letter in his hand and gloated. I wanted to look over Adam’s shoulder and see what the letter said. I never had gotten a chance to read it earlier in the office.
“So, what seems to be the problem?” Adam asked once he finished reading it and tossed it back across the table to Michael. “This letter has nothing to do with Lisette.”
I was surprised by how calm and collected Adam seemed to be in the face of what was bound to result in Michael’s fury.
“It’s signed by her father, you dumb piece of shit!” Michael hollered at him.
“I know who her father is,” Adam said as he took a bite of food without even bothering to look up at Michael, who was now leaning over the table onto his hands.
He snarled. “Then perhaps what you don’t know is how close she is to—”
“Go on,” Adam said as he matched eyes with Michael. “Say it. Finish the rest of that sentence. How close is she to what?”
Michael swept his arm across the table, knocking all the food and dishes in front of us onto the floor. He made a lunge that looked as if he was going to jump across the table and grab me as he threatened to drag me up to Marta’s office on the grounds of expulsion.
But Adam stood up and flipped the table over right in front of him, knocking Michael backward by sheer surprise alone. The look of shock on his face made me think that Adam had never stood up to him like that before. Michael looked a little hurt even, as though he had thought of them as brothers and had been harshly reminded that they weren’t.
The two men stared at each other with tight jaws.
“Come on,” Adam said as he wrapped his arm in mine.
I got up and walked with him out of the dining hall. But, his footsteps were furious and I had to softly jog in order to keep up with him.
“Thanks for standing up for me,” I said as we walked along the campus sidewalk in the cold evening air.
He panted for breath. “Eh, it’s what boyfriends do, right?”
I laughed as I slowed my movements, causing him to slow in return. “You know, for being my boyfriend, I don’t really know all that much about you. Who were you before you came here?”
“You mean, besides the homeless guy that wandered into your mother’s halfway house?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Besides that.”
“To be honest, I don’t really know,” he said.
He stopped just as suddenly as he had flipped that table tilted his head back as if he were breathing in the night sky, and when he exhaled, I could see his breath in a puff of cloud against the winter cold. “I was going to leave Charleston. I’ve never really felt like I’ve fit in here. But then, that night happened, and so I stayed.”
“There was more about that night that kept you here besides just me,” I said. “You can tell me any romantic version of the story that you want to, but I know there was more to it than that.”
“You’re right,” Adam conceded, and I was surprised to hear him admit it. “But that doesn’t mean the romantic part wasn’t true,” he smiled.
We walked further along, not heading back toward the apartment or in any particular direction at all, but just walking and enjoying the feeling of our clasped hands under the breezy stars.
“Lisette,” Adam said as he stopped walking and turned to face me, taking both of my hands in his. “I need to be honest with you.”
This is it. He’s going to tell me who killed my mother.
“Yeah?” I asked softly as I gazed up into his eyes.
