Page 36 of Mine

“No,” he told me, “they didn’t.”

“What do you mean they didn’t?”

“They threw him out because of the drugs, because of the stealing and the lies. They threw him out because he was diagnosed as having a severe bipolar disorder, where he’s manic one day and severely depressed the next. He takes medicine, doesn’t he?”

And that fast my whole world flipped upside down, because somebody was lying.

“Trevan?”

I leaned back in my seat and just stared at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your folks hate Landry because he’s gay.”

“No. They’ve known he was gay since he was, like, sixteen, maybe fifteen, why would they care if he was gay?”

Shit.

“Wait.” He was processing. “Is that why he—I mean, the other day when he said that my mother hated him I thought he just meant ’cause they’ve had no contact for the last eight years, but he doesn’t actually think that… he hasn’t actually convinced himself that they threw him out because he was gay, has he? That’s not what he really believes, is it?”

“That’s exactly what he believes.”

He exhaled fast, looking like I’d hit him. “No no no….” He put up a hand. “That… Trevan, he was supposed to go into this really good program and this private clinic in New York, and my mother rented this apartment in town so she could be close to him and… ohmygod….” He closed his eyes, face in his hands, just reeling. “Jesus Christ, he’s completely delusional.”

My eyes narrowed as I looked at him.

“Trevan,” he gasped, swallowing hard, his fingers raking through his hair. “You gotta believe me. My folks didn’t give a shit about Landry being gay. I mean, they found him in the stables with their best friend’s son, you know, and he, Will, got sent to some conversion therapy, reparative therapy, reorientation whatever place, and his parents made him go, but my folks, they never even considered that for Landry because who were they to tell him how to live his life. His orientation had nothing to do with them, but his illness… that was the problem, nothing else.”

There was nothing that led me to believe that he was lying to me. He seemed completely and utterly stunned.

“Ohmygod, I thought he was… I thought how he was acting, how angry he seems at me… I thought that was because I didn’t have the balls to look for him. I mean….” His eyes lifted to mine. “I’ve missed him…. I… my mother’s expecting him to be mad, but she’s not thinking that he didn’t get help. She figured he—”

“Not much of a detective your parents hired if they never knew that he never got help.”

“No. All they heard was where he was, that he was alive and well.”

Remembering two years ago, when he and I had just begun, I wondered what the private detective’s idea of “well” was. “So your folks just let Landry walk out of their lives even though he was sick?”

He cleared his throat. “You don’t know how it was. Just to have him gone for a while, it was such a relief. He stole from them—money, my mother’s jewelry, my father’s old coins. Did he tell you about his cocaine habit? Do you know about that?”

But how could that be? When I met him, there had been vices, addictions, but they had all been abandoned so quickly, so completely, so thoroughly, and never seen again. The man only drank socially, sometimes had wine or beer at home with me, but that was it. He never hid anything from me. I saw him every day, knew where he went and who he saw. There was more reason to doubt me.

“My folks think… I mean, I told them how good he looks, how amazing his business is, and all about you. They’re dying to meet you.”

I had not anticipated that.

“How is he?” he asked, and his breath was shaky. “I mean, how does he function?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, he used to go into these rages and just… he came at me with a knife once. We were in the kitchen and I said something, and our maid was cooking, and he grabbed the chef’s knife, and if my father hadn’t been there… I mean, he came at me, do you understand?”

I understood what he was saying, but Landry’s intent was lost to me since I hadn’t been there.

“I went into his room one time and he was slicing up his arm, and I remember screaming for my mother, and everyone came running and they took away the knife and held him down and just…. Trevan, if he’s never gotten any help, then you’re living on borrowed time.” He said it earnestly, willing me to believe him. “I swear to God he could hurt you… more than hurt you.”

The concern was there, real, on his face.