“What the hell is wrong with you?” Auggie said, putting an arm around Orlando. He could feel Orlando shaking. “He’s still healing.”
“What a fucking crybaby. This is why you’re going to take a year off? Because your tummy hurts?”
“He got stabbed, you dumb fuck,” Auggie said.
“You know why we call him Peepee? I bet he didn’t tell you that story.”
“Wayne, come on,” Orlando said, but he was still trembling, and he was still holding his stomach.
“Sit down,” Auggie said.
Orlando just shook his head.
“He was, I don’t know, three or four. Mom and Dad were having a dinner party. The Joneses were there, remember?”
Orlando stared blankly.
“And he comes out of his room in his pullups, you know, what kids wear so they don’t piss the bed, only he’s got them around his knees, and he’s saying, ‘Look at my peepee, look at my peepee.’”
Orlando swallowed. His eyes were shining, and he blinked rapidly. “You’re such an asshole.”
Wayne burst out laughing, but the laughter ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. Then all the energy seemed to drain out of him, and he lay back in the recliner, his eyes half closed. His breathing evened out.
“So you can’t tell us anything?” Auggie said. “You didn’t talk to Cal all weekend? You didn’t text? Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Wayne said. “I saw him Friday night. I left. When I came back Sunday night, he wasn’t here. Monday morning, he still wasn’t here. That’s when I started texting. We looked all the usual places.”
“Where?”
“Flaherty’s, Saint Taffy’s, Meramec Maniacs. There’s a girl he hooks up with sometimes. Jessie something. Then I noticed stuff was missing.”
“What stuff?”
“Collector’s items. Autographed bats, limited-edition jerseys, a puck from Game 3 of the 2008 Stanley Cup. Probably more, I just haven’t noticed it’s missing yet.”
“Somebody broke in and stole your stuff? And you didn’t report that to the police?”
Wayne grunted. “Nobody broke in. Cal took it. He sells it, and then he scores, and then he’s on a bender. Notice he didn’t touch any of his own shit.” He gestured at the framed baseball card.
Theo came back, and when Auggie shot him a look, he gave a discreet shake of his head.
“Is that all?” Wayne said. “Because I want another fucking beer.”
Orlando turned toward the kitchen, but Auggie caught his arm and steered Orlando to the door.
“Get it yourself,” Auggie said as they left.
8
Theo followed Auggie and Orlando down to the parking lot. The August day was boiling hot, the air shimmering over the asphalt, and sweat broke out on Theo’s face and back. The smell of hot tar came in on each breath. Theo felt dizzy from it.
Auggie kept his hand on Orlando’s arm, and when they got to the car, he gestured to his stomach and said, “Are you ok?”
“Yeah. It just hurt.”
“You don’t think you need to see a doctor?”
“He didn’t hit me that hard. He’s an asshole, but he’s not a monster. Come on, I want you to meet the rest of my family.”
“Maybe we should drop you off at Sigma Sigma,” Theo said.
Auggie glanced over, his expression impossible to read.
“No,” Orlando said. “I want to be there.”
Auggie was still looking at Theo.
“Orlando,” Auggie said slowly, “it might be easier to ask them some questions if you’re not there.”
“No,” Orlando said. “I’m going with you. Can we please go? It’s hot, and it smells like ass out here.”
So they got in the car, and Auggie followed Orlando’s directions out of town.
“Could you turn up the A/C?” Theo asked.
“It’s all the way up,” Auggie said.
“Of course it is.”
Theo had meant it as a joke, but Auggie glared at him in the rearview mirror.
They were driving past block after block of tiny frame houses, most of the houses with chain-link fencing, all of them with steel mailboxes that had wonky numbers running along the side. In one yard, some sort of terrier mix was chained up. The dog had run to the end of its chain, and now it stood on its hind legs, yapping at cars. In another yard, ancient patio furniture cooked slowly in the sun. A woman with the skinniest legs Theo had ever seen was sitting under an umbrella, drinking what looked like lemonade.
“That’s not how Wayne usually is.”
“Ok,” Auggie said.
“I mean, he’s always kind of a bully. But he’s just mad today.”
“I get it,” Theo said. “Jacob, my brother, he’s a complete prick. Of course, he’s a prick with the Bible in one hand, so it’s kind of a different tone.”
“Fer likes to give me shit,” Auggie said. “It’s just a brother thing.”
“Yeah,” Orlando said, resting his head on the window.
Auggie reached over and squeezed his leg. Then Auggie’s eyes went to the rearview mirror, and Theo realized that he’d been caught watching Auggie, watching him touch Orlando. Busted, Auggie’s eyes said. More sweat broke out across Theo’s back, across his chest, under his arms. He looked out the window. When he looked back, Auggie was still watching him.
Orlando took them out of the city, and they followed a narrow blacktop road behind a Baptist church, across a one-lane bridge, and over a wooded hill. On the other side, the ground sloped down into a field of chest-high Indiangrass. A storybook house stood in the middle of the field: frame with gray siding and blue shutters, a wraparound porch, dormer windows. Flowerbeds full of echinacea, catmint, and the billowing flames of bougainvillea gave way to a perfect lawn. A diamond cutting pattern was visible in the grass. Three cars were parked in the circular drive—two Audi sedans and a Mercedes coupe.
“You grew up here?” Auggie said.
“Yeah,” Orlando said, his head still resting on the glass.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Orlando said.
They parked in silence.
Instead of approaching the front door, Orlando led them around to the garage. He keyed in a code, and after the door had rattled up, they snaked past a huge gray Silverado and a Lexus crossover. The third bay of the garage held two four-wheelers. Orlando walked into the house, wiped his feet, and shouted, “We’re here.”
Theo had been in nice houses before. He’d been in nice country houses before. But the Reeses’ home wasn’t like any house he’d been in before. Some of the stuff was what he’d expected: high ceilings, wood floors, an open floorplan, granite and stainless steel in the kitchen, thick rugs and swimmable leather sofas in the living room.
What made the home different from everywhere else were the pictures. He recognized Wayne in several of them. Others featured another man. One, a newspaper clipping, had his name in the caption: Calvin Reese. He had a slimmer build than Wayne, but otherwise they could have been twins. Three girls with softened versions of the same family features filled the other frames. All of them were dressed in uniforms or sporting apparel. All of them had at least one picture that showcased them as part of a university team—Cal, for example, was featured with a Mizzou tennis uniform. Not a single picture of Orlando.