The Fifth Line: A Novella (Trevor Graves Trilogy Book 1) by Cody Williams

Author:Cody Williams [Williams, Cody]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: True Terror Publications (TTP)
Published: 2024-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

***

On the way to the hospital, Trevor’s mind was elsewhere and Tracy sensed it. “Are you okay?” she asked him, a question he would get sick of hearing just as a writer gets sick of being asked where he gets his ideas.

“I’m getting by,” he said and again thought of the phone which rested in the side pocket of his car door next to him. He wanted to tell her about it, about the call, about the phantom fifth line which, as a concept, was complete lunacy but didn’t for the risk of being thought of as insane. With grief or otherwise. As much as he wanted to tell her, he didn’t want her to worry even more about him than she already did. While there might’ve been some sort of a logical explanation for it and by now the phone was almost certainly deactivated, he couldn’t shake the troubling thought that maybe there was something more to it, something that was utterly unexplainable.

“What time are the services tomorrow. Have you talked to Granny today?”

Trevor swallowed. “No, not since this morning. They were on their way to the funeral home and she asked me to go cancel papaw’s phone line.” The fifth line, he thought grimly. “So, I did that. I talked to my dad a little but he didn’t mention anything about the services. I assume they’ll be tomorrow night. Maybe five o’clock at the earliest, seven at the latest. I just told him I didn’t want to go. To any of it. Not the funeral, not the graveside, nothing. I want to be as divorced from it as I possibly can be.”

“Really? Wow. And how did he react to that?” Tracy petted his head as he drove. He loved it. He loved her so much. She was a security blanket; a comfort he could never learn it live without.

Trevor shrugged, mimicking his dad’s seemingly indifferent response. “I don’t know. He’s hard to read sometimes. He seemed fine with it or, if he wasn’t, he didn’t show it.”

“Did you tell Granny yet?”

Trevor shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t. But I will tonight. When we get home and maybe find something to eat. I don’t want to eat at the hospital cafeteria. That shit’s too hit or miss for me. You have to time it just right, you know. The chicken’s either fresh out of the fryer or it’s been sitting there all goddamn afternoon. I figured we could just pick something up on the way home. And you can take the food downstairs, avoiding all the people there, and I’ll tell her then. In another room. Privately. Nobody else needs to hear it. It’s none of their fucking business, anyhow, you know?”

“People? Who all was there?”

“Oh, I’m sure some people who needed to be and probably just as many, if not more, who didn’t. My dad thinks Granny is getting sick of them all and he’s probably right. I’m sick of them, too, and I don’t really have to deal with them, as well intentioned as they are.

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