Chương 5
Some called Ethan a deadbeat who had abandoned a child until public humiliation forced him to care. Others called Madeline a monster. A third group accused Noah of being an actor hired to sabotage the wedding. Someone slowed the video and circled Margaret’s face in the doorway.
Daniel took Ethan’s phone and turned it off.
They rented a two-bedroom hotel suite under Daniel’s name. Margaret agreed to let Noah stay for one night if she could take the adjoining room. No one trusted anyone enough to leave.
Noah stood in the smaller bedroom and examined the bed.
“Do you snore?” he asked Ethan.
“I don’t think so.”
“Grandma says people who snore never think they do.”
“That sounds right.”
Noah touched the white duvet with two fingers. “Can I sleep on the couch?”
“You can sleep wherever you feel comfortable.”
“Could you sleep on the other couch?”
Ethan looked toward the sitting room. There was one couch and an upholstered chair.
“I can sleep in the chair.”
“It looks bad for your neck.”
“I’ve slept in worse.”
“Like where?”
“Construction trailers. Airports. Once in the back seat of a truck in January.”
“Why?”
“I was twenty-three and stupid.”
Noah considered this. “Were you stupid when I was born?”
The question arrived without accusation, which made it harder.
“Yes,” Ethan said. “Not about loving you. About a lot of other things.”
Noah looked at him for a long moment.
“Grandma says you picked buildings.”
“I picked work when I should have picked better things.”
“Me?”
“You were one of the better things.”
“But you stopped looking.”
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed. “I stopped knowing how.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
Noah waited.
Ethan understood that the boy wanted him to defend himself. He also understood that any defense large enough to protect his pride would crush the small honesty between them.
“I should have kept trying,” he said.
Noah nodded once, as though confirming an answer on a test.
Then he opened his suitcase.
Inside were two shirts, underwear, a toothbrush, a library book about shipwrecks, and a stuffed brown dog with one missing ear.
Ethan recognized it.
He had bought the dog at the hospital gift shop the night Lily died.
Noah saw his expression and hugged it against his chest.
“His name is Bernard.”
“I remember.”
“You gave him to me?”
“Yes.”
“Grandma said Mom did.”
Ethan looked toward the adjoining door, though it was closed.
“I bought him. Your mother named him.”
“Why Bernard?”
“She said he looked judgmental.”
Noah turned the toy around. Its remaining ear leaned forward and its stitched mouth curved slightly downward.
“He does.”
A small laugh escaped Ethan before he could stop it.
Noah did not laugh, but his shoulders loosened.
Daniel brought food from a diner because room service had been warned not to approach the suite. Noah ate half a grilled-cheese sandwich and arranged the fries from longest to shortest. Ethan remembered Lily doing the same with pencils.
Margaret ate nothing.
She sat at the dining table with both hands around a cup of tea until it went cold.
After Noah fell asleep on the couch, Ethan stepped into the hallway with her.
“Tomorrow I’m filing for custody.”
Margaret nodded.
“I’m also asking for every document. Every payment. Every message between you and Madeline.”
Her mouth tightened. “I expected that.”
“You should get a lawyer.”
“I can’t afford one.”
“You took fifty thousand dollars.”
“It’s gone.”
“Then ask Madeline for more.”
Margaret flinched.
Ethan immediately regretted the cruelty, but not enough to apologize.
“She paid the hospital balance and the rent,” Margaret said. “The rest kept us afloat. I have records.”
“I’m not interested in how responsibly you spent the price of my son.”
“You think I don’t know what I did?”
“I don’t know what you know.”
“She told me you had moved on. She showed me photographs of the house, the company events, vacations. You looked happy.”
“So you punished me for surviving.”
“I was afraid you would take him.”
“He was mine too.”
“He was all I had left of Lily.”
“And that gave you the right to erase me?”
“No.”
The answer was so quiet that Ethan almost missed it.
Margaret leaned against the wall.
“My hip was bad. I was missing work. Noah needed braces. The landlord had given us ten days. Madeline sat at my kitchen table in that red coat and told me she could make the past stop chasing all of us. I wanted to believe her.”
“You wanted the money.”
“Yes.”
There was no defense in the word.
Ethan looked through the narrow window at the end of the hallway. Chicago glittered below, thousands of rooms holding private disasters no one online would ever see.
“Why bring him now?”
Margaret stared at the carpet.
“Because he found the letters.”
“When?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“And you told him I was alive?”
“Not at first.”
Ethan turned.
“He saw your name. He found the photograph. He asked why a dead man kept writing after Lily died. I told him the letters were old. Then he searched you on the school computer.”
A bitter pride flashed through Ethan before he could stop it. “Of course he did.”
“He found the wedding website.”
“Madeline told him I died after that?”
Margaret nodded. “She came to Indiana the next day.”
“How did she know?”
“I called her.”
The anger returned with enough force to make Ethan’s hands numb.
“You called her.”
“I panicked.”
“You called the woman who paid you to hide him.”
“I thought she could explain what we had agreed.”
“To an eight-year-old.”
“She said she would handle it.”
“And you let her.”
Margaret’s eyes filled, but she did not look away. “Yes.”
Ethan wanted to shout. Instead he stepped back from her because Noah was sleeping on the other side of the wall and he had already heard enough adults losing control.
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“What changed?”
“After she left, he stopped eating breakfast. He started sleeping with his shoes beside the bed. I asked why.”
