Chương 15
Lorraine leaned forward.
Noah held up the page.
His eyes rested on the photograph.
Ethan watched his face.
There was no shock now.
No mystery.
Just recognition.
“That picture is weird.”
“What’s weird about it?” Ethan asked.
“You look young.”
“I was young.”
“You were thirty-one.”
“That is young.”
Lorraine said, “Thank you.”
Noah pointed at Ethan.
“You dress almost the same.”
Ethan looked down at his navy overshirt.
Mara started laughing.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You wore that color at the café.”
“Not this shirt.”
“Close enough.”
Noah grinned.
“Dad has a uniform.”
“I do not.”
“Gray shirt. Blue shirt over it.”
“That’s efficient.”
“That’s old.”
“I’m forty-three.”
“Exactly.”
Ethan took the page from him.
Forty-three.
Four years since the folder hit the table.
Four years since Noah had been a stranger with his eyebrow.
Ethan looked at the blank paternal branches.
They had never been filled in.
“Do you want to finish it?” he asked.
Noah shrugged.
“For the project?”
“No. Just because.”
Noah sat up.
“Do we know everybody?”
“Probably not.”
Lorraine said, “I know quite a few.”
Mara brought pens.
They spread the page on the coffee table.
The original worksheet was designed for a younger child, so there was not enough room.
They wrote in margins.
Added arrows.
Crossed something out when Lorraine corrected a middle name.
Mara called her father to verify a date, and Frank talked for twelve minutes about an unrelated fishing trip.
Noah drew a tiny cactus beside his name.
Ethan’s father went onto the paternal branch.
Daniel Cole.
Noah asked what he had been like.
Ethan said, “Complicated.”
Lorraine said, “Funny.”
Mara said, “I never met him.”
Ethan added, “He would have liked you.”
Noah looked up.
“How do you know?”
Ethan almost gave the kind of answer adults gave when they wanted dead people to become comforting.
Instead he said, “I don’t.”
Noah nodded.
“Okay.”
Lorraine watched Ethan.
Something soft passed between them.
No performance.
No forgiveness ceremony.
Just understanding.
Noah filled another name.
Then he stopped.
“What do I put for you and Mom?”
Ethan looked at Mara.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not married.”
“No.”
“You’re dating.”
“Yes.”
“Family tree lines are for married people.”
Mara said, “Family-tree worksheets are badly designed.”
“That doesn’t help.”
Noah looked at Ethan.
“What line?”
Ethan studied the page.
“Draw whatever line makes sense.”
Noah thought.
Then he drew one.
It was crooked.
Not quite connecting Ethan and Mara.
Not quite separating them either.
Mara looked at it.
“What is that?”
“A line.”
“It looks like a river.”
“It works.”
Ethan smiled.
“It works.”
Noah wrote Dad under Ethan’s photograph.
Then he stopped.
The old question mark remained beside Ethan’s name.
He tapped the eraser of his pencil against it.
“Should I erase this?”
Ethan looked at the small mark.
For years he had imagined the missing time as a hole.
Something that needed filling.
Then as a debt.
Something somebody owed him.
Later as a wound.
Something he was supposed to heal.
But the question mark was none of those things.
It was evidence of the morning Noah had needed an answer badly enough to slam a folder onto a stranger’s table.
Removing it would not change what happened.
Leaving it would not make the uncertainty current again.
Ethan looked at Noah.
“What do you want to do?”
Noah shrugged.
“I asked you.”
“I know.”
“That’s annoying.”
“I learned from your mom.”
Mara said, “Excuse me.”
Lorraine smiled.
Noah looked at the page again.
Then he put the pencil down.
“I’m leaving it.”
“Why?” Ethan asked.
Noah considered.
“Because that’s what it said then.”
Ethan nodded.
“Okay.”
Noah closed the folder.
The old photograph disappeared inside.
For a few seconds nobody spoke.
Then Lorraine said she had to go before traffic got worse.
Mara asked whether she wanted leftovers.
Noah complained that he had homework.
Ethan remembered he needed to call Caleb about a Monday meeting.
Life resumed with insulting speed.
At the door, Lorraine hugged Noah.
Then Mara.
Her relationship with Mara had repaired more slowly than anything else.
There were still places it might never return.
But Mara hugged her back.
Briefly.
Honestly.
Lorraine looked at Ethan.
“Call me tomorrow?”
“I will.”
She left.
Noah carried the folder upstairs.
Mara began collecting glasses from the coffee table.
Ethan took two from her.
“You don’t live here,” she said.
“I know.”
“You keep cleaning like you do.”
“You keep inviting me to dinner.”
“That’s not residency.”
“Legally, no.”
She looked at him.
“Do not start.”
He smiled.
Noah shouted from upstairs.
“Dad!”
Ethan looked toward the ceiling.
“What?”
“Can you help me with the interview questions?”
“Give me five minutes.”
“You always say five minutes!”
“Because time exists!”
Mara laughed.
Ethan set the glasses in the sink.
For a moment he stood there with his hands against the counter.
Sunlight from the tall windows reached across the floor.
The apartment was noisy now.
Noah moving around upstairs.
Water running.
Mara opening the refrigerator and criticizing something expired.
Four years earlier, Ethan had returned to this same space carrying a cream folder and two letters, thinking his life had been divided cleanly into before and after.
It had not been clean.
Nothing afterward had been.
He had hurt people while trying to repair what had been taken from him.
Mara had admitted choices she wished she had made differently.
Lorraine had learned that remorse did not create entitlement.
Noah had learned that adults could love him and still fail him.
There had been legal forms, missed concerts, awkward birthdays, arguments in kitchens, late-night phone calls, wet sheets, holidays divided between houses, and one dog they still had not adopted because Mara remained irritatingly sensible about mammals.
The missing eight years remained missing.
No one solved that.
No one could.
“Ethan,” Mara called.
“What?”
“This milk expired yesterday.”
“It’s fine.”
“No.”
“It’s one day.”
“That is how civilizations collapse.”
He walked toward the kitchen.
“You are deeply dramatic about dairy.”
“And you’re careless.”
“Still dating me.”
“Temporary lapse in judgment.”
He kissed her forehead as he passed.
She pushed him away with one hand.
“You’re annoying.”
“I’ve heard.”
Upstairs Noah shouted again.
“Dad!”
“I’m coming.”
Ethan started toward the stairs.
Then he noticed the cream folder on the bottom step.
Noah must have dropped it there.
Ethan picked it up.
The old page slipped partly free.
He saw the photograph.
DAD.
ETHAN COLE?
The question mark remained.
Ethan slid the page gently back inside.
He did not straighten the bent corner.
He did not replace the faded folder.
He did not try to make the old thing look new.
He carried it upstairs exactly as it was.
Noah was waiting at his desk with a pencil in his hand.
“What took you so long?”
Ethan put the folder beside him.
“Nothing.”
He pulled over the bad chair.
Noah looked at him.
“You hate that chair.”
“I do.”
“You can sit on the bed.”
“I’m fine.”
Noah handed him the interview sheet.
The first question read:
What event changed your family the most?
Ethan read it.
Then looked at Noah.
Noah raised one eyebrow higher than the other.
May you like
Ethan smiled.
“Well,” he said, “this one might take a while.”
