Ten days after I left, Travis finally opened the door to my old bedroom and saw that it was empty. He called me that night.
“Dude, where the heck are you?”
“I moved out.”
There was a long silence.
“You moved out? When?”
“Ten days ago, Travis. The day after you left me at the airport.”
“That’s what this is about? The airport thing? Bro, I said my bad.”
“It’s not about the airport.”
“Then what’s it about?”
I didn’t know how to explain twenty months of spreadsheets, dead tomato plants, and a tackle box in the trash in a single phone call. So I didn’t try.
“I needed my own space,” I said.
Another pause. Then the question I knew was coming.
“Okay, but are you still paying your half of the bills?”
I almost laughed again.
“No, Travis. I’m not paying bills for a house I don’t live in.”
“You can’t just leave! What about the electric? The trash? The water bill came, and it’s like a hundred and forty bucks. And the grass is getting long, and the gutters are…”
“Figure it out,” I said. “You’re thirty-three years old.”
“This is messed up, Ryan. You’re just abandoning me.”
“I’m not abandoning you. I’m moving out of a house where I paid eighty percent of everything and got treated like the help.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Twenty months, Travis. I kept a spreadsheet. I paid $19,840. You paid $4,310. You want to talk about fair?”
He was quiet.
“I’ll send you the spreadsheet,” I said. “Goodnight.”
My mother called two days later.
“Ryan, honey, Travis told me what happened. I think you should talk this through with him. He never meant anything by the airport. You know how he is.”
“I do know how he is, Mom. That’s the problem.”
“He’s your brother. Your father would want you two to stick together.”
That one hurt. Because I knew exactly what Dad would have wanted. He would have wanted Travis to show up at the airport.
“Mom, Dad kept every promise he ever made. Travis can’t keep a promise to water a tomato plant. I’m done carrying him.”
“You’re being very hard on him.”
“Somebody has to be.”
She sighed the way she always did when I disappointed her.
For the next few months, life got quiet and good. I worked. I went to the gym. I cooked dinner in my tiny kitchen and ate it at a little table by the window that looked out on a maple tree. Connor and I started playing pickup basketball on Sunday mornings. I started sleeping through the night.
I didn’t hear much from Travis. A text here and there. Did you take the extra garage door opener? (I hadn’t.) Where’s the Wi-Fi password? (It was on a sticker on the router, where it had always been.)
I set Dad’s tackle box on the shelf above my desk, where I could see it while I worked.
Then, four months after I moved out, on a gray Tuesday in February, my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Ryan? It’s Marcus. Marcus Webb. I play softball with Travis.”
I vaguely remembered him, a big, friendly guy who sold insurance.
“Hey, Marcus. What’s up?”
“Look, man, I don’t want to get in the middle of anything. But I was over at the house Saturday watching the game, and there’s a stack of mail on the kitchen counter about this high.” I could almost hear him holding his hand a foot off the table. “I saw an envelope from the Franklin County Treasurer. It said FINAL NOTICE in red letters. I asked Travis about it, and he just said, ‘It’s junk, don’t worry about it.'”
My stomach went cold.
“Marcus, did you see what it was for?”
“Property taxes, I think. Delinquent. I didn’t want to snoop, man. But I figured you’re on the deed too, right? You’d want to know.”
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