Chương 8
That last condition came from Margaret, not Ethan.
When they left the building, Derek was waiting in the lobby.
He looked at his mother.
“What happened?”
Margaret walked past him.
“Mom.”
She kept walking.
Derek looked at Ethan.
“What did you do?”
Ethan put on his coat.
“Ask her.”
“You think you won.”
Ethan looked at him.
“No.”
Derek gave a short laugh.
“You always were dramatic after Claire.”
Ethan stepped closer.
Derek’s amusement disappeared.
Ethan did not touch him.
“Say her name again to insult me,” Ethan said quietly, “and it will be the last conversation we have.”
Derek stared back.
For once, no joke came.
Ethan walked away.
The video remained online.
That was one of the things Ethan had to learn to live with.
Nothing restored the world to the version where no stranger had watched him burn a portrait.
His firm lost two projects and gained one client who admitted during their first meeting that she had hired him partly because she hated Derek’s caption.
Ethan nearly declined the job on principle.
His partner told him principle was not accepted by the bank as mortgage payment.
He took the project.
At school, the questions faded.
Children found newer things to discuss.
Mia began seeing Dr. Patel on Tuesday afternoons.
Ethan sat in the waiting room during the sessions and learned not to ask what they talked about when she came out.
Sometimes Mia volunteered information.
Usually she asked for a snack.
One Tuesday in February, she climbed into the truck after therapy and said, “Grandma thinks being mean makes people strong.”
Ethan started the engine.
“Did Dr. Patel say that?”
“No. I did.”
“What do you think?”
Mia considered it.
“I think it makes mean people feel strong.”
Ethan looked at her.
“That’s pretty good.”
“Can we get fries?”
There were moments when Claire’s absence entered the truck so completely that Ethan could almost hear her.
He bought the fries.
Margaret moved out of the Cole house on a Monday.
Ethan did not go inside while the movers were there.
Nora went.
At eleven thirty she called him.
“She’s gone.”
Ethan sat at his desk.
“Everything okay?”
“Derek yelled at the moving guys for packing his speaker wrong.”
“That sounds right.”
“Mom cried.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
“Okay.”
“She kept walking through the rooms.”
He did not answer.
Nora continued.
“She left something for you.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Still.”
“It’s a box.”
“Throw it away.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“I’m putting it in the hall closet. You can ignore it for the next twenty years.”
He drove to the house after work.
It felt different empty.
Not better.
Empty houses did not understand moral victories. They contained dust, nail holes, forgotten chargers and the outlines left by furniture.
The Christmas tree was gone.
Pine needles remained in the rug.
The fireplace had been cleaned.
Ethan stood in front of it.
For a second he could smell burned cotton again although the room only smelled faintly of ash and furniture polish.
He found a small piece of broken glass near the hearth.
He picked it up and dropped it in the trash.
Upstairs, Margaret’s bedroom was bare except for a wire hanger in the closet.
Derek’s room contained three empty energy-drink cans, a single black sock and an expensive watch box with no watch inside.
Ethan laughed.
He sat on the edge of the empty bed.
The laugh became something else.
Not crying exactly.
His breathing changed.
He pressed his palms against his eyes.
When he was ten, he had been sick with pneumonia in that room because Margaret did not want him near his newborn brother. She had brought soup upstairs and slept on the floor beside him.
When he was fourteen, she found cigarettes in his backpack and grounded him for a month.
When he was twenty-three and his first serious girlfriend left him, Margaret drove ninety minutes to his apartment with lasagna and never mentioned the girlfriend’s name.
People wanted cruel relatives to have been cruel in every memory.
It made separation cleaner.
Margaret had not been.
That was part of the problem.
He loved a woman who had hurt his wife and his daughter.
Both things remained true.
Downstairs, the box Nora mentioned sat in the hall closet.
Ethan stared at it.
Then he took it home.
He did not open it for four days.
When he finally did, he found photographs.
School pictures.
Birthday cards.
A ceramic handprint he had made in kindergarten.
An old baseball glove.
Three letters from his father.
No confession.
No hidden legal document.
No secret that changed everything.
At the bottom was a folded note in Margaret’s handwriting.
Ethan,
I do not know how to be your mother if you have decided everything I do is harm.
I know what I did on Christmas was wrong.
I also know you will make that sentence insufficient because you need it to explain more than one night.
Maybe it does.
I am not ready to agree with you about everything else.
I am trying not to lie and say that I am.
I loved Claire badly. Perhaps that is still love. Perhaps you will say it is not.
I love Mia.
I am angry with you.
I miss you.
Those things are all true at once.
Mom
Ethan read it twice.
Then he put it back in the box.
He did not call.
In March, Derek appeared at Ethan’s office without an appointment.
The receptionist called upstairs.
Ethan nearly told her to send him away.
Instead he said, “Give me five minutes.”
Derek entered wearing a black jacket over a white shirt. No burgundy Christmas sweater. No drink. No visible smile.
He sat without being asked.
Ethan remained behind his desk.
“What?”
Derek looked around the office.
“You always did get the nice furniture.”
“Did you come here to review chairs?”
May you like
Derek rubbed his thumb along the side of his watch.
“I deleted the video.”
