Page 199 of What We Bury

Eli and I stand in the kitchen, separated by three feet of linoleum and about a thousand things neither of us knows how to say.

From down the hall, I hear muffled voices. Then my bedroom door opens and Milo appears, Knox and Micah behind him. Milo reads the room in half a second—me gripping my wine glass like a lifeline, Eli standing rigid across from me—and claps his hands together.

“Right. I think Mommy and Daddy need a min?—”

Amy’s bedroom door slams open hard enough to rattle the frame.

Tyler comes out fast, jaw set, jacket half on, Amy two steps behind him with a hand out like she can physically catch the fight before it leaves the hallway. “Ty—Tyler, wait?—”

He stops dead when he clocks the living room. Me against the counter. Four men between me and the door. His eyes drag from Micah to Milo to Knox and land, finally, on Eli standing closest to me.

Something ugly twists his mouth. “Anotherfucking one?” A short, mean laugh. “Christ. No wonder Brock left town after?—”

“Say one more word,” Eli says, quiet and flat, “and I’ll put my fist so far down your throat you’ll be chewing my knuckles for a week.”

The room goes still. Knox shifts his weight and the math finishes behind Tyler’s eyes. Four of them. One of him. Whatever he sees in Eli’s face, it’s enough.

“Whatever,” he mutters, and yanks the front door open.

Amy catches my eye on her way after him, and hers are wet and wrecked and mortified. “Fuck. I’m so sorry, Sage. I’ll—” She doesn’t finish. The door bangs shut.

For half a second, she stands there like she might stay. Like she might choose the room full of dangerous men over the one waiting on the other side.

Then she opens the door and chases after him. Both Tyler’s and Amy’s voices trail down the stairwell and fade.

A beat of silence.

Milo exhales. “Anyway.” He claps his hands again, gentler this time, and starts steering the others toward the door. “As I was saying, Mommy and Daddy need a minute. Boys.”

Knox is already moving. Micah catches my eye on the way out, and I nod to the question I see there—I’m okay. He nods back.

Milo pauses in the doorway and points at Eli. “Be nice to her.” Then at me. “Be nice to him. Bowling starts tomorrow at two. We need him on the team.” Then he’s gone, pulling the door shut behind him with exaggerated care.

Silence descends.

Eli hasn’t moved. His arms are crossed, jaw tight, and he’s looking at a point somewhere past my left shoulder like making direct eye contact might detonate something he’s been holding together with wire and prayer.

I set my glass down. “A kindergarten teacher? Seriously?”

“Don’t.” His voice is quiet. Strained.

“Don’t what? Ask you questions? You’re obviously hiding things from me. My roommate seems to know more about you than I do.”

He flinches. Barely.

“And Brock,” I say, the other question finally clawing its way out. “How the fuck did Brock leave his parents a voicemail?”

I watch his face and get nothing—that flat, careful nothing he does when he’s deciding how much to give me.

“Brock’s dead. I put a knife in him. So whose voice was on that message, Eli?”

A long beat.

“Ours.” No flinch. No apology. “Milo cloned his phone the night of the beach. The texts, the trail—the voice was the last piece. Enough for his parents to stop pushing. Enough to keep the whole thing off Holden’s desk before it became a real case.”

“You made his voice.” The words come out thin. “You made himcall his mother.”

“We closed a missing-persons case and kept you out of an interview room.” He finally looks at me, and there’s not an ounce of give in it. “It was the right call.”