Page 1 of Splintered
Chapter One
The empty house—darkand wind-whipped and plunged into wavering shadows by clouds slicing the winter’s moonlight to ribbons—didn’t frighten him. Nor did the creaking. The windows shifting in their panes.
A gust through the front yard made the old oak branches whine and the overgrown eucalyptus scratch against the living room’s glass.
The house was old, his parents’, willed to him when they had passed. He’d never have been able to afford a house in the San Francisco Bay Area on a teacher’s salary without their bequeathal.
He loved his house, the memories in the walls, the handprints he had left on the faded wallpaper in the upstairs bedrooms. The creaks on the third and eleventh stairs, the wood warped after years of thundering feet going up and down. She was old, but she had good bones, he’d always said. And history. The house was his time capsule, each room layered with a thousand different memories of after-school snacks and Christmas mornings and summer evenings and autumn leaf fights and Halloween nights and countless bedtime stories.
He wanted to make his own history in the home. A new generation of memories, of happy mornings and after-school homework and family dinners around the table.
Ben lowered his head. He rolled his lower lip between his teeth. He’d been chewing on it for hours, enough to bite a divot into his skin. He tasted copper and licked his lips, trying to smooth away his rough skin touched with blood.
And then took a swig from his wine glass, a deep, long swallow. Wash it down with alcohol. That was healthy. Cleansing. Right? He set his glass down, pushing it into the center of the circle of light that shone on the granite countertop, the only light on in the house. A halo of gold, an island of supposed hope he tried to cling to.
Ben’s gaze traced a crack in the granite, a spidering line stretching across the dark rock. They’d have to replace the counter. It was one of the many projects they had to tackle, remaking his old house into something for the next generation, a home for him and—
Swallowing, he bit down on his lip again, pulling another well of blood from the cut he’d chewed open.
Well, maybe he’d be replacing that granite by himself.
He swiped on his phone, checking for the hundredth time. Still no text messages.
Midnight had come and gone.
Evan’s plane landed hours ago. Their last text lingered on the screen, Evan’s reply to his hopeful message short and curt, the tension coming through even just a few characters on a white screen.
I missed you. You coming home? :)
[ Yeah. ]
Nothing more. Nothing about grabbing his bags, or grabbing a drink, or hitting traffic. Or how Evan had missed Ben, too.
Though, with everything going on, would he honestly admit that?
Did Evan even feel that way anymore? Had he missed Ben? Their home?
Ben downed the last of his wine. He left the glass in the darkness outside the island of light on the kitchen counter. He exhaled, closed his eyes, and his shoulders fell. Time to go to bed. He had a full day tomorrow, a quiz in three class periods and a project going in the rest. His students would be animals, like always.
At least they distracted him.
Ben pushed away from the kitchen counter, from the island of light, the sanctuary he’d clung to. Now he had to face the emptiness of the house. The absence.
Evan’s missing presence was like quicksand, sucking all his thoughts, all his focus, toward the darkness.
He hesitated at the kitchen doorway. If Evan came home, he should leave the light on for him.
If.
He left the light on.
Ben readied for bed, his gaze straying to Evan’s sink, the missing places where his toothbrush and comb and razor usually lived.
He spat his toothpaste. Tried to stare into his own eyes in the mirror. He turned away.
Maybe—
No. They’d been around and around and around this.
