Page 20 of The Spider & the Storm

I sat up abruptly. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Oh my God, Paul! Ho-hold on!” Mom was yelling, her voice panicked and penetrating through my eardrum.

“D-dad! What’s happening?!” I was shouting into the phone now, waking Luke up.

He sat up abruptly, his eyes immediately bewildered and alarmed. “Charlie?”

“Sue! Don’t—”

Tires squealed, and glass shattered, and the faint tinny sound of the radio continued to play some stupid Michael Boltonsong. But despite my cries and my pleas for my parents to answer me, I knew I’d never hear their voices again.

CHAPTER SIX

CONNECTICUT, AGE FIFTEEN

Mom and Dad had died instantly in a head-on collision with a pickup truck driving too fast on the wrong side of the road, and on a cold and stormy day in the first week of October, they were buried.

I had heard them speak their last words, heard them take their last breaths, with the phone pressed to my ear, my knuckles turning white around the receiver. Luke had to pry the damn thing out of my hand, unwrapping my fingers as the tears poured from my eyes in a never-ending deluge of inconsolable despair.

“Charlie! Let. Go!” he had growled through gritted teeth, more from sheer panic than anger, before pressing the phone to his own ear with a trembling hand.

He called for Dad, he called for Mom, but of course, neither answered.

So, he’d hung up with only a hint of reluctance and dialed 911.

Despite being an idiot a good deal of the time, Luke always seemed to know what to do.

Even as we had planned the funeral—something that felt so, so,sosurreal and strange and wrong and unnatural—Luke had handled it all with the help of our last living relative, Dad’s mom, Nana. And the whole time, I just sat there, barely nodding or shaking my head whenever someone dared to address me by name.

I had been too afraid to speak, too afraid to look at anything but my own hands. Too scared I’d cry instead, especially when in the presence of my big brother, who hadn’t shed a single tear yet. Not that I was aware of anyway.

Now, after the morning Mass and the burial at the cemetery, I sat in the house where my parents used to live. Nana had said it made the most sense to hold the funeral reception here because it was closer to all of my parents’ friends than her house, which was two hours away. Luke thought she’d made a good point while I just shrugged and kept my head down.

To be honest, I didn’t think it was a good idea at all. Why would I want to tie the memory of my parents’ funeral to the place I’d last seen them alive?

But Luke had gone along with Nana’s plan, and I’d followed because what else was I supposed to do? I was the younger one, theweakerone, and as far as I knew, my opinion didn’t matter much.

After all, Mom and Dad had left in the first place, even when I’d begged them not to.

I had known something was going to happen. I hadknown, and they didn’t care. Nobody had cared, nobody had listened, and it took every last bit of my waning strength to hold it together as I sat on the couch in the living room—the last place I’d seen them both alive, so happy and full of excitement—and stared ahead at the funeral guests.

They hugged, kissed, cried, and offered their condolences to each other. Occasionally, someone would stop, pat my shoulder, and tell me how sorry they were. I’d offer a faint smile and nod, like I was simply playing a part in a movie I’d been forced to be an extra in.

But mostly, they just whispered.

“That’s one of Sue’s sons.”

“Poor thing. Life has been difficult enough for him with, you know …”

“I can’t imagine how hard he’s going to take this.”

“He’s always been so fragile.”

Nobody whispered about Luke though. Luke was strong, they said. He’d get by. He’d be just fine. And I thought I could be fine, too, if I could stay with him.

God, what if Ican’tstay with him?

The thought struck my chest, and my lips parted in a choked gasp. There hadn’t been any talk of what would happen to us. We’d been too busy with the funeral to even think about anything else, but that part was almost over. Soon, all these people would leave to go back to their lives, as if Paul and Sue Corbin had never existed within their lives at all, and we’d have to go back to ours. But what kind of life was there without Mom and Dad?

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