Chương 15
Ethan laughed.
Rebecca looked at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That's something.”
He stared at her.
She smiled.
“Sorry.”
“You all do the same annoying things.”
“Genetics and exposure. You're doomed.”
Ethan slipped the plate into his jacket pocket.
They stayed until the site manager came to remind Henry that the building would lock in twenty minutes.
No one made a grand speech.
Henry replaced the original maintenance plate over the hatch.
Laura helped him roll the carpet back into place.
Rebecca stood at one end and Ethan at the other.
When the rug settled, the hatch disappeared.
Ethan expected that to bother him.
It did not.
The truth was no longer under it.
Over the next month, Ethan learned that knowing the truth did not end the consequences of learning it.
Laura became tense whenever Rebecca's name appeared on his phone.
Sometimes she hid it well.
Sometimes she did not.
Once, Ethan came downstairs wearing a brown knit hat Rebecca had given him because the weather had turned cold.
Laura stared at it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He pulled it off.
“You hate it.”
“I don't hate it.”
“You're doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The face where you look like you're swallowing a lemon.”
Laura sighed.
“I don't hate the hat.”
“You hate that she gave it to me.”
“Yes.”
Ethan threw the hat onto the table.
Laura's expression changed.
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Punish her because I'm jealous.”
He stared at her.
“You're telling me to wear it?”
“I am telling you that my bad feeling is mine.”
Ethan picked up the hat.
“I don't even like it that much.”
Laura laughed.
“Thank God.”
He wore it anyway.
Rebecca made mistakes too.
She asked too many questions about school.
She sent three texts in a row one afternoon when Ethan did not answer.
He replied:
I was in class.
Rebecca wrote:
Right. School. I forgot teenagers have jobs.
Another time she suggested they spend Christmas afternoon together.
Ethan said yes before asking Laura.
Laura was furious.
Not because he wanted to see Rebecca.
Because Christmas afternoon had belonged to Henry's house every year since Ethan could remember.
“You can't act like our existing life disappears because you found another part of it.”
“You said I could have a relationship with her.”
“Yes.”
“So what?”
“So relationships have calendars.”
“That is the most mom sentence ever.”
“I know.”
They compromised.
Rebecca joined them at Henry's for dessert.
The first hour was terrible.
Henry drank too much coffee.
Laura cleaned things that were already clean.
Rebecca brought a pecan pie nobody had asked for.
Ethan escaped to the basement for ten minutes and played a video game alone.
When he returned, Laura and Rebecca were arguing quietly about whether Daniel had once owned a red Ford.
“It was maroon,” Laura said.
“It was red.”
“It was maroon.”
“Danny called it red.”
“Danny thought teal was blue.”
Henry said, “The Ford was burgundy.”
Both women turned.
“Stay out of this.”
Henry raised his hands.
Ethan laughed so hard he had to sit down.
It was the first time all four of them laughed together.
Later that night, after Rebecca drove home, Laura sat beside Ethan on Henry's porch.
Snow had started falling.
Small flakes collected on the dead grass.
“Was today weird?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.”
“Bad weird?”
“Medium weird.”
He nodded.
“Do you still hate her?”
Laura looked toward the driveway.
“I never hated her exactly.”
“You said you did.”
“I said I wanted her to be awful.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Ethan waited.
Laura tucked her hands into her coat pockets.
“I resented her.”
“Still?”
“Sometimes.”
“Because she gave birth to me?”
“Because she can tell you things about yourself I can't.”
“Like what?”
“Your eyebrows.”
He groaned.
Laura smiled.
“Your terrible math ability.”
“Okay.”
“The way you touch your chin when you're nervous.”
Ethan dropped his hand immediately.
Laura laughed.
“That.”
They watched snow gather on Henry's mailbox.
Ethan said, “You know more things.”
“I know.”
“Like what?”
“You hate bananas unless they're cut into cereal.”
“That is private.”
“You always leave one sock beside the couch.”
“I don't.”
“You do.”
“Buster moves it.”
“Of course.”
“You know I can't sleep if the closet door is open.”
Laura nodded.
“You pretend you don't cry at dog movies.”
“I don't.”
“You cried at one where the dog lived.”
“It had been through a lot.”
Laura smiled.
Ethan leaned against her shoulder.
He had avoided doing that for weeks.
He felt her body go still.
Then relax.
“I was mad you weren't my biological mom,” he said.
Laura swallowed.
“I know.”
“I think I was mad because everybody else knew what that meant except me.”
“That makes sense.”
“I still don't like it.”
“You don't have to.”
He looked at the snow.
“Rebecca says you're my mom.”
Laura's eyes filled.
She looked away.
Ethan pretended not to notice.
At the end of January, the redevelopment company removed the red carpet from the presidential hall.
Henry heard from a former coworker and complained for three days.
“They are replacing wool with synthetic garbage.”
Laura said, “You do not work there.”
“That does not make them correct.”
The carpet ended up at an architectural salvage warehouse.
Ethan asked if they could buy it.
Laura stared at him.
“You want a seventy-pound carpet that hid a family secret for thirteen years?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I was checking.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
She smiled.
“Good answer.”
The brass nameplate stayed in Ethan's desk drawer.
For a while he took it out almost every night.
Then less often.
Rebecca never asked about it.
Henry did.
“Keeping it polished?”
“No.”
“Brass oxidizes.”
“It's a piece of metal, Grandpa.”
Henry looked personally offended.
On Ethan's fourteenth birthday, Rebecca mailed a letter.
Not a text.
Not an email.
A real envelope.
He opened it at the kitchen table with Laura beside him.
Dear Ethan,
You are fourteen today.
Last year I wrote to a person who did not know I existed.
This year I am writing to somebody who has beaten me twice at mini golf and who still owes me nine dollars because you claimed the arcade machine was “basically an investment.”
You are worse at math than I feared.
I am glad I know that.
Happy birthday.
Rebecca
P.S. I am not forgiving the nine dollars.
Ethan laughed.
Laura said, “What?”
He handed her the letter.
She read it.
“She is correct about the nine dollars.”
“You weren't there.”
“You told me.”
“That information was confidential.”
Laura folded the letter.
She did not hand it back immediately.
Ethan looked at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He waited.
Laura smiled.
“This one is easier.”
“What is?”
“Reading it.”
Ethan took the letter.
“Why?”
“Because I know what happens after.”
He understood.
For thirteen years, Rebecca's letters had been threats because Laura could imagine every possible future inside them.
Now the future had arrived and turned out to contain mini golf, awkward dinners, arguments about Christmas, bad hats, and nine borrowed dollars.
It was not easy.
It was ordinary enough to survive.
That evening Henry came over with a small wrapped package.
Ethan opened it.
Inside was a wooden frame.
Empty.
He looked at Henry.
“What is this?”
“For the photograph.”
Ethan frowned.
“I don't know if I want it on my wall.”
“You don't have to.”
“Then why buy the frame?”
Henry shrugged.
“It was on sale.”
Laura looked at the price sticker.
“This was not on sale.”
Henry glared at her.
“Traitor.”
Ethan carried the frame upstairs.
He opened his desk drawer.
The brass plate lay beside Daniel's letter and Rebecca's birthday cards.
He took out the photograph.
For a long time, he looked at the three people inside it.
Rebecca holding him.
Henry beside her.
Somebody absent behind the camera.
Laura.
Daniel absent from the frame entirely.
A photograph could tell the truth and still leave half the truth outside its edges.
Ethan put it into the frame.
He did not hang it.
He set it on his desk beside a photograph from the previous Christmas.
That picture contained Ethan, Laura, Henry, and Rebecca.
Henry stood too far from everyone.
Laura had one eye half closed.
Rebecca was laughing at something outside the frame.
Ethan wore the brown hat he claimed not to like.
Neither photograph explained the other.
He was beginning to think that was all right.
Downstairs, Laura called that dinner was ready.
Ethan opened the drawer once more.
He touched the engraved letters with his thumb.
ETHAN COLE.
For years, adults had hidden his name beneath a floor and argued about when he was old enough to carry what came with it.
Now the plate was only brass.
May you like
His name was still his.
He closed the drawer and went downstairs.
