Walk The Edge

I could do a play-by-play, but talking that much to anyone isn’t my style. Instead, I pull out my phone, bring up the picture of Mom’s car, then slide my cell to Eli. “He gave me a file to look at and said that Mom’s death wasn’t an accident.”

There’s silence. It’s a silence so loud I can hear my pulse beneath my skin, the squeak of Cyrus’s chair as he readjusts, the inhale and exhale of breaths. What I loathe in this silence is how it doesn’t feel like shock or surprise. It’s more like guilt.

Dad balls his hands on the table and turns red—the same pissed-off reaction whenever we discuss Mom.

Eli scratches at the stubble on his jaw. “Did you take any more pictures?”

I remain mute and I don’t know why. The answer’s there with a swipe of his finger, it’s on the tip of my tongue, but then my sight lands on Dad again. He’s not lifted his head yet. He hasn’t said a word.

“What do you think of his claim?” asks Eli as he must take my lack of response as a no.

Honestly, didn’t think much of it until I noticed this reaction. “The detective believes the Terror was involved in her death.”

Eli’s dark eyes snap to mine and there’s a chorus of swears from around the room. It’s hard to rip my eyes away from Eli’s. His are as black as death, but with effort, I do, and I discover Dad’s empty seat. He presses his hands against the wall with his shoulders rolled forward. Even from here I can spot the cords of muscles in his neck as they stretch.

“Do you believe him?” Eli’s voice is pitched low. So low it’s almost hard to hear.

I want to answer immediately. To prove I’m a man and that nothing affects me, but he’s asking about my mother—the one person I loved more than my own life. “He said there weren’t skid marks. That there were no signs she tried to stop.”

“What are you saying?” It’s a grumble from my father.

The detective was correct on some things. Mom and Dad did fight in those last months. The memories of listening to her weep between the thin walls as Dad tore off on his bike still haunt me. And he brought a parade of women home a few short weeks after Mom died and then one stayed the night this week. But the idea my father worshipped me? That’s bullshit.

I suck in air and toss myself over the cliff. “Did she kill herself?”

“Razor,” starts Cyrus, but my father turns toward us and raises his hand in the air.

“Do you think the Terror had anything to do with her death?” Dad asks.

I should keep my mouth shut. I’ve tried to discuss Mom’s death with Dad. Each time, he shut me down, but I’ve never done it before in front of the board. Doing this could be a sign of disrespect, but it could also put pressure on him to grant me answers.

“I didn’t ask about the Terror,” I say. “I asked if she killed herself. I’m asking if she was so miserable with you and—” the words catch in my throat “—with me that she pressed on the gas and not on the brake and drove her car over the bridge.”

“Are those the options?” Dad challenges. “That she either killed herself or that one of us, one of your brothers, one of your family, killed her?”

“Did she hate us so much that death was her only option?”

“It was an accident,” says Eli, and I round on him too quick for it to be respectful.

“We all know that wasn’t an accident!”

“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.