Re: carriage house - michael and atticus
Michael tipped the bottle up again, more thirsty than interested in being drunk. "Oh man. You must be the king of Craigslist," he said. He was already making plans to seek out bad garage sales in the area and buy up as many 8-tracks as his car could hold. "You and your anachronistic media. You still have that walkman lying around?"
"I would've liked that," he said, looking at the bottle, propped in his lap. He would have liked to see the place in New York. It would have been nice to see Atticus any time in the last decade, to not completely lose touch. Those decisions were a decade in the past, now, and it had been too difficult for any of them to meet each other's eyes back then. Ten years in academia and research followed, and he made a strong career and reputation in his isolation. Something had to give, though. It was surprising that he hadn't done something stupidly romantic before he met Clem. Ten years was a long time to wait for someone to wander into your life, and, as it turned out, it wasn't the best strategy even when it worked.
"I will," he promised, in the same tone he would have given his mother. "I get a month's paid leave after this mess, but I'm not actually staying away that long. It's going to be a nightmare, pulling the project back together, replacing everyone who's..." He paused. "Almost all the funerals are out of country or out of state. Tethys hired from all over. But they're supposed to have some kind of memorial." He touched the cold beer to his temple, rolling dark eyes to the ceiling. "So, hey. That's kind of nice."
"Was it hard to read?" he asked. Before he sat in this room, he hadn't thought much about Atticus' parents, what it must be like for him to live in the place where they died. "I don't know if I could, if I'm honest."
Clem. Michael met Atticus' look. "Yeah. I guess she was." And now he would probably never know why.
He flipped the journal open with his fingers, propping it in his lap and taking a swig from the bottle. He was careful not to drip condensation on the pages. The book was new enough that the spine cracked a little. He read. The loud argument wasn't news. He could still hear Clem's voice in his ear, telling him he'd failed her without explaining why. Then the crash.
On the trellis.
He looked at that passage for a while, kept reading, but wasn't really absorbing the words anymore. On the trellis, that was what he kept thinking about. She would have landed hard, if she hit it on or under the rib cage. Massive internal trauma. If the heart was damaged, maybe she even died right away. Or maybe she lay there for a little while.