Finding Levrick Hill by Troy Stoops

Author:Troy Stoops [Stoops, Troy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

Hill unlocked the door to the apartment, hoping that there was someone inside. Levrick shot the deadbolt home, stood facing the living room, the kitchen and nook, the sliding glass door that opened on the playground. The apartment was silent. Dark, save for a flickering light back in one of the bedrooms.

He started down the hallway. Eric’s room was on his left, the door cracked. The bed was empty. Lizzie had sworn he and Eric had been ships passing in the night this last week, but Levrick had wondered. Had either of them seen him other than the night after Brian had died? When he’d sat sullenly at the nook table and said little to nothing, other than how he’d never trusted that sand nigger Brian had always hung around, that all this had been that turbaned son of a bitch’s fault. That evening had ended in Lizzie screaming at their remaining son until Eric had stormed out, slamming the front door so hard it had cracked the doorframe.

The flickering light was coming from his room, but something caught his eye just inside Brian’s room. The door was halfway open, revealing part of Brian’s bed. On the other side of the room were bookshelves stuffed with comic books and detective novels. Above them, Batman and Spiderman and X-Men posters were tacked haphazardly to the cracked walls Levrick had been planning to paint going on forever. Forever was shorter than he’d imagined.

There was a shoe hanging off the side of the bed.

Hill placed the tips of his fingers on the door and pushed. The moon hung just outside the window. Eric lay across Brian’s bed, one shoe on the floor, the other on his right foot. Still clothed, his Atlanta Braves baseball cap still on. He was face-up, snoring softly. The room reeked of pot and whiskey. But Eric was here. And in his brother’s bed. If it took him tying one on . . . Levrick felt the tears coming. His son was home. And if Eric gave him a chance, he would do his best to make certain that he felt welcome. That he felt wanted.

He stepped out, pulled the door to, headed toward his own room. Lizzie was in their bed. She’d been back, for the most part. Perhaps that meant something, perhaps nothing. But he could not recall the last time they’d all spent the night under the same roof.

Hill stood in the doorway, watching the colors of their muted television flicker over his wife’s blank face . . . red . . . then black and gray . . . a flash of magenta . . . green, then orange. The colors washed over her, giving him the impression that her dreams were living outside of her, playing over her face. Did he think she was still beautiful? Once, she’d had long auburn hair that she’d often worn half-up in a kind of bun, leaving the rest of it to cascade over her shoulders and down her back.

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