Chương 2
That made him angrier than any answer could have.
“Who is she?”
Laura looked at him.
“She gave birth to you.”
The waiting hall seemed to shift beneath Ethan's knee.
He did not understand the sentence at first.
He understood every word individually. He understood gave. He understood birth. He understood you.
Together they refused to become real.
“No.”
Laura swallowed.
“Ethan—”
“No.”
He looked back at the photograph because it was easier than looking at her.
The woman holding the baby had a tired, private smile. There was no resemblance Ethan could see at first. Then he noticed the shape of her eyebrows.
He touched his own without meaning to.
His hand dropped.
“No.”
Henry pushed himself to his feet.
Ethan spun toward him.
“Sit down.”
Henry stopped.
It was the first time Ethan had ever ordered his grandfather to do anything.
Henry sat.
Laura crouched near Ethan, but not close enough to touch him.
“You are my son.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“I know.”
“Are you my mom?”
“Yes.”
The answer came too quickly.
Ethan's face tightened.
Laura saw it.
She tried again.
“I am your mother. I'm not your biological mother.”
Something hot climbed Ethan's neck.
“Does Dad know?”
The silence that followed was worse than everything before it.
Ethan stood so quickly he nearly kicked the strongbox.
“Does Dad know?”
“Of course he knew,” Laura said.
The words came out sharper than she intended.
Ethan stared at her.
Laura shut her eyes briefly.
“I'm sorry. That wasn't—”
“So Dad knew.”
“Yes.”
“And Grandpa knew.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
“Yes.”
The terminal clock above the dormant fireplace had stopped at 2:17 sometime before Ethan was born. Its hands remained there while rain crawled down the glass and the three people beneath it stood in a room where time had suddenly become something everyone had been lying about.
Ethan picked up the photograph.
“I want to go home.”
Laura stood.
“All right.”
“With the box.”
“Ethan, maybe we should—”
“With the box.”
Henry nodded.
“It belongs to him.”
Laura turned on him.
“No, Henry. You don't get to decide what belongs to whom tonight.”
“Danny put his name on the hatch.”
“And you left the key in the lock.”
Henry did not answer.
Laura stared at him.
Ethan looked between them.
“You left it open?”
Henry's eyes shifted toward the folded carpet.
“I left the corner of the rug turned back.”
Laura let out a breath that sounded almost like a curse.
“You set this up.”
“I made it possible.”
“You brought a thirteen-year-old into an abandoned station during a thunderstorm and made it possible for him to blow up his entire life.”
Henry flinched.
Ethan's hands curled around the photograph.
“My life was already blown up. I just didn't know.”
Laura turned toward him.
“Please don't say that.”
“Why?”
“Because everything you had yesterday is still—”
“What, real?”
She stopped.
Ethan waited.
Laura's face changed.
Not dramatically. She just seemed to lose whatever prepared answer she had been reaching for.
“No,” she said. “Not everything.”
That honesty hurt worse.
Ethan snapped the strongbox shut.
He tried to pick it up.
It was too heavy.
Henry took one step forward.
Ethan glared at him.
Henry stopped again.
After a moment, Laura bent and lifted one side.
Ethan took the other.
They carried the box together.
Neither looked at the other while they did it.
Outside the private hall, the main terminal was darker than the room they had left. Emergency lights glowed over old ticket counters and brass railings. Their footsteps echoed across a concourse built for crowds that had disappeared decades ago.
Ethan and Laura carried the strongbox between them.
Henry followed.
Halfway to the side entrance, Ethan noticed that one of the old travel posters had peeled loose from the wall. A smiling family stood beside an illustrated train beneath the words GO SOMEWHERE TOGETHER.
He almost laughed.
The sound began in his chest but never came out.
At the door, Henry struggled with the lock because his hand shook.
Laura took the key ring from him.
“I can do it.”
“I've had that key forty-two years.”
“And right now you can't get it in the hole.”
Henry released the keys.
It was an ordinary, irritated exchange.
For some reason, it nearly broke Ethan.
He turned away before either of them could see his face.
The parking lot was a lake of shallow water. Laura's station wagon stood beneath a dead streetlamp. Henry's old Buick was parked beside it.
They loaded the strongbox into Laura's cargo area.
Ethan walked toward Henry's car.
“Ethan.”
He kept going.
Laura caught up.
“You're riding with me.”
“No.”
“It is after midnight. The roads are flooded. I am your mother and you are riding with me.”
He looked at her then.
The word mother hung between them like something she had taken out of a locked drawer and expected him not to notice was damaged.
“You don't get to use that right now.”
Laura's face tightened.
For a moment she looked angry.
That almost relieved him.
Then the anger vanished beneath something worse.
“You can be furious with me,” she said. “You can hate me tonight if that's what you need. You're still getting into my car.”
Henry stopped several feet away.
Ethan glanced at him.
“You knew too.”
“I did.”
“You don't get to be the good guy because you left a rug crooked.”
Henry nodded.
“No.”
Ethan stood in the rain until water ran through his hair and down the back of his denim jacket.
Then he got into Laura's car.
She did not tell him to put on his seat belt.
He did anyway.
For the first ten minutes, neither of them spoke.
The wipers pushed water aside faster than Ethan thought windshield wipers should have to work. Each time lightning opened the sky, bare trees appeared along the road and vanished again.
May you like
The strongbox shifted in the back whenever Laura braked.
Ethan watched its reflection in the side window.
