“So you’re calling us liars?” Dad roars.
“Yes!” I jump to my feet because there’s too much adrenaline coursing through my body. They stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. Maybe I never had sanity to begin with. “I want the truth!”
“Say it, Razor!” Dad points at me. “Look me in the face and tell me you think one of us, one of your brothers, killed your mother.”
There’s pounding. The wooden gavel hitting the table. It shuts Dad up and that’s when I notice it—Dad and I are angled toward each other, primed and ready to attack, chests pumping hard in hurried breaths. The solid table the barrier that’s preventing us from going to blows.
“Sit down!” Cyrus demands.
Dad does, but I remain on my feet. “I want the truth!”
“We told you it was an accident!” Dad yells.
“And you’re full of shit!”
Cyrus beats the gavel against the table again and one by one the men of the board give me the same damn look of sympathy everyone in town does and it’s like someone has stoned me with sharp-edged rocks. Even now no one will tell me the full story.
“The cop said you and Mom fought,” I continue, not giving a fuck I’m in violation of a direct order.
“Razor,” warns Cyrus, but I ignore him.
“He said she was going to leave you. He said you notified the police of a problem with her way before you should have known there was one.”
“Thomas,” Cyrus tries again in a stronger voice, but even the use of my given name doesn’t stop the flood.
“He said you were the first to find her. If what you’ve given me is the truth, then why the hell didn’t I know any of that? All of it sounds like lies to me!”
“That’s enough!” Cyrus shouts.
But it’s not enough. It will never be enough until I get the truth. I’m dying and I’m begging. I’m mentally on my hands and knees willing anyone to tell me what I already know—that my mother committed suicide.
Because if someone tells the truth, maybe I can find a way to not be so screwed up.
But I don’t get an answer. Dad edges back his chair, stalks across the room and then throws open the door with so much force that it bangs off the wall. My insides hollow out as I realize no matter what I do, no matter what I say, I’m doomed to live in this gray, haunted realm of the unknown for the rest of my life.
Before the door closes, Oz’s dad is up and then the rest of the board abandon their seats and follow my father. It’s a show of support, a show of solidarity, and it’s not a show meant to praise me. I disrespected a brother, so therefore I disrespected them.
There’s a chain of command in the club. A way of how things are done. A respect that must be given to the pecking order that’s been created. I’ve had a hard time with it for the same reason I never cared to become the leader of my group of friends. I find it challenging to follow as much as I find it challenging to lead. That’s why, as the board told me over and over again, I had the longest prospect period of anyone else in the club. I’m too unpredictable.
The door shuts and there’s two of us left in the room—me and Eli.
Eli’s eyes flicker from me to my seat. This time, I listen to his nonverbal request and sit. If only because the weight of what just happened is crashing down around me. “I want an answer.”
I need an answer.
Eli threads his fingers together and rests them on the table as he leans forward. “Four months ago, you agreed to join this club. Yeah, we had to vote you in, but you had to accept. You chose to be a part of this brotherhood. You chose to believe in this family. Are you saying those vows you made to us mean nothing?”
He’s questioning my loyalty, and maybe he should. “This is my family.”
“I know, and, Razor, you’re mine. This entire building is full of men who would die for you, but this back-and-forth—this rogue bullshit you pull when the wind blows east instead of west, it’s got to stop. You’re either with us or not. You either believe us or don’t. If you can’t trust us, we can’t trust you. There is nothing more this board wants than to trust you, but to be honest, we don’t. We voted you in because we know you love us, but we watch you with wary eyes. We don’t know what shit you’re going to pull next.”
When I was ten years old, it was Eli who came to me at Cyrus and Olivia’s before the sun had risen. Oz, Chevy and Violet had crammed themselves into the tiny twin bed I used whenever I stayed the night and each of them had curled up around me, providing a human shield from the emotional storm that had been brewing.
The three of them fell asleep, but I never slept a wink. When Eli walked into the room, he saw the four of us and lowered his head. Eli looked like the living dead himself, and when he met my eyes, he knelt and said the words that changed every thought, every emotion, every moment of my life. “I’m sorry.”
So was I. He didn’t have to tell me why Mom never arrived to take me home. I heard it in his tone. Noticed it in his eyes. My mother was dead.
“That detective,” Eli continues now, “showed to fuck with your mind. You’re smarter than him. Better than him. Don’t let him wedge a wall between us and you. Don’t let him destroy you and your dad.”
We all have choices to make; what lies we accept to believe. Since I was ten, I loved this family so much that I never questioned believing the lie that had been told to me—that Mom’s death was an accident.
But in this moment, the biggest lie I’ve chosen to believe is the one I tell myself: that I trust the Terror. I’ve always believed there was more, and the detective was correct—if I’m going to find any peace, I have to learn the truth.
“Who are you going to believe?” Eli asks. “Us or him?”
“The brotherhood,” I respond with so much ease it should scare the hell out of me, but it doesn’t. The doubt’s always been present. I’ve just now decided to no longer live in purgatory. I’m going to discover what happened. Not sure how, but I’ll die trying.
I hold my hand out and, after a second of staring at the image of Mom’s car, Eli returns my cell to me. With a flick of my finger, the photo disappears.
“It’s my mom,” I say as if that can explain away everything that went down. As if that can absolve me from any sin I’ll commit here on out with the club. It’s a low thing to say to Eli. His mother, Olivia, recently died.
A shadow passes over Eli’s face and it’s an expression that’s all understanding. “I know, and I also heard what you came home to the other night. It’s been a rough few days for you.”
He allows me time to digest his statement and I wonder how many people are aware of the promise Dad made to me...or how many are aware he broke it.
“You and your dad—you two need to find some peace when it comes to your mom and you need to find some peace with each other, otherwise the entire club is going to suffer. That shit that went down with the detective—it wasn’t right. He disrespected you and your father, which means he disrespected this club. Trust me when I say we’ll take care of it.”
I should feel justified the board is pursuing some course of action with the detective, but the truth is I might need the cop. He might be the lone person willing to inform me what happened, and in the end I’m not sure I do trust the club to follow through.
The picture of Violet on Bragger did come down, not of my doing, but by the club’s. Regardless, it’s on the web forever. Even with my computer skills, I still can’t prevent copies from popping up. But what I’m really pissed at is that the club hasn’t figured out who’s responsible