bottle against the stone bench. Devon took a long pull from the bottle like Eric’s answer didn’t matter to her. The beer tasted sour and the bubbles were thick in her throat. Just try not to hurl in front of him.
Eric broke the silence with a short laugh. “Listen. You could get suspended for being out here, doing what you’re doing. You should walk back up that hill and check yourself into your dorm like a good Keaton kiddie.” He stood, arms crossed, towering over Devon. Okay, maybe staying sitting down wasn’t the best idea. “Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”
“Probably not. Want to explain it to me?”
“It’s not in your notes, I can tell you that.” Eric reached down and grabbed a beer and used a lighter to snap the cap off. He took a sip and looked out over the distant ocean. “Besides, I don’t need your notes to know what happened. Hutch committed suicide. We had some family stuff go down and he was upset.”
“Upset that he was set to inherit everything? Or, was it you that was upset?”
Eric glanced at Devon and then turned his gaze back to the horizon. “You spoke to Reed? He tell you how he was going to betray my dad and me? How I only found out about it by accident?” Devon didn’t answer. She let him fill the silences, as she was trained. “Yeah, he wasn’t even going to tell us. His lawyer’s secretary screwed up this summer and gave me the wrong envelope with Reed’s revised will in it. Reed wanted to give all the land to Hutch to make sure it becomes a nature preserve or some shit like that. He has no idea how much money we could make if we just let the Dovers drill. He’s sitting on a goldmine and what does he want to do with it? Keep away the one person that is willing to pay him for this stupid land.”
“You’re smart,” Devon said.
Eric turned to her. “What?”
She lifted her shoulders. “It’s a smart move if you want to get in with the Dover family. I mean, you’re looking at a potential statutory situation with getting Maya pregnant, but bringing something the Dovers want to the table could help your cause.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t going to matter. Reed wouldn’t budge. And that same week Maya found out … we found out she was pregnant. I lost it when she said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it. You know it’s my life that would get screwed too. I’m the one that’s supposed to become this great doctor. And then, to find out Hutch was helping her get the pregnancy test? How much more could he turn against his own family? Against me? That’s not how brothers are supposed to act. I was raised knowing this land would one day be mine. And in one week Hutch takes the land and tries to turn my girl against me?” Eric tossed his bottle over the hillside. “He probably killed himself because he couldn’t live with the betrayal.”
Still clinging to the lie. “Reed is dying. That’s why he changed his will. He’s going to be gone in a matter of months.” Devon looked at him, calm and assured.
“How do you know that?” He tucked his hair behind his ears again. “That’s true? Shit.” He shook his hands out and flexed his fingers like he was warming up for a fight.
“That’s why he had those pills in his house. The ones you found and slipped to Hutch in a beer like the one you just finished. Did you regret it all? Because, you still sent that text to everyone in his phone book, so you were probably around to watch your own brother die at your feet. What do they call that? Fratricide? It’s a good SAT word.”
Eric said nothing. The hairs on the back of Devon’s neck rose as he stood still looking at the view below. How could he not react? How could he not fill this silence?
Finally Eric spoke. “My knee was killing me. I was at Reed’s. We were arguing, and the pain was making it all worse. I found the Oxy in his bathroom. I put it in my pocket to take with me back to the city. I was going to go back to the city that night, but I called Hutch to try to talk it out again. He wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t going