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Finding out about Daniel was both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing, because it explained exactly why he was so much younger than Maddie. Why he was intentionally excluded from as many family events as possible, especially when Maddie escaped to college and became tangled up in Doug’s manipulative web of abuse. Why he was clearly an outsider in his own bloodline.
But it was also a curse because it explained why his parents detested him. Why, in the only phone call he had with them once he fled Pennsylvania, he was told he was to never darken their doorstep again and that he deserved whatever the universe threw at him. Why he felt so disconnected from everyone.
Daniel was the key to everything. His existence explained Evan’s birth, and his death shaped Evan’s life. Without Daniel, Evan Buckley wouldn’t exist. Wasn’t that the existential crisis that he needed before he turned thirty.
In the days following the emotional bloodletting that was his parents’ visit with Maddie in Los Angeles, Buck found himself spending as much time at Eddie and Christopher’s house. He surrounded himself in his friendship with the Diazes, and in turn the father and son duo welcomed him in with open arms.
Whenever his thoughts started to turn dark, Christopher would swoop in with a research topic that was off the wall, distracting him. If it wasn’t a school night, Buck was sat down and shown whatever Disney movie they found first on Disney+ that they hadn’t seen yet, in an effort to take his mind off of everything.
After Christopher went to bed, Buck and Eddie would camp out either in the living room or outside on Eddie’s small patio and lament their poor childhoods, telling each other the stories that they had never told anyone before, beer loosening lips more than ever before.
It didn’t completely chase away the repetition of “you deserve everything you got” bouncing in his head at three in the morning, but it helped drown out the noise. He was reminded every day that there were people that really did want him around.
And if in six month’s time, after a gunshot and week of stress, he moved in permanently, well, no one needed to pass that on. He found a home that he was truly loved in. And a part of him knew Daniel would be happy for him.