Chương 4
His thirteenth birthday had been four months ago.
His father had been alive.
They had gone bowling.
Daniel had complained about the price of rented shoes and lost on purpose during the final frame, badly enough that Ethan noticed and told him so.
Two weeks later he died when a delivery truck crossed the median in freezing rain.
Ethan had replayed his last conversation with his father until the sentences felt worn.
Take the trash out before your mom gets home.
Did you feed Buster?
Don't leave your bike in the driveway.
Nothing about Rebecca.
Nothing about promises.
Nothing beneath the floor.
“He had four months.”
Laura turned.
“I know.”
“He had four months after I turned thirteen.”
“I know.”
“He knew he promised.”
“Yes.”
“He knew she was waiting.”
“Yes.”
“And he just—what? Forgot?”
“No.”
Ethan waited.
Laura wrapped both hands around the edge of the counter.
“He changed his mind.”
Ethan stared at her.
“Why?”
Laura looked toward Daniel's jacket.
“He loved you badly in one particular way.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means he loved being your father so much that he became afraid of anything that might make that smaller.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It didn't have to.”
“Did you agree with him?”
Laura's silence answered.
Ethan folded the letter.
Not neatly.
He shoved it back into the envelope and picked up another.
Laura carried her untouched coffee to the table.
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“You don't have to read all of them tonight.”
“Apparently I've had thirteen years.”
He opened the second birthday letter.
Then the third.
At three in the morning, Laura fell asleep in the chair with one hand around a cold mug.
Ethan kept reading.
Rebecca's life accumulated in pieces.
She left the print shop. She worked for a small insurance office. She quit because her manager kept touching the back of her chair while talking. She learned to make bread and became briefly obnoxious about it. She dated somebody named Marcus for eleven months. She stopped dating Marcus and did not say why. She adopted an old gray dog named Walter who disliked men wearing hats.
She never wrote, I am your real mother.
She never wrote, They stole you.
She wrote, I hope you are safe.
She wrote, I hope Laura is still singing badly in the car.
Ethan stared at that sentence for almost a minute.
Laura sang badly in the car.
She sang especially badly when she was nervous, which Ethan had always assumed was because she did not know she was bad.
Rebecca knew.
The letters changed when Ethan was four.
The fifth envelope contained only one page.
Daniel,
I know you will read this first.
I understand why you were angry.
I should not have come to the park.
I thought seeing him from across the field would be enough. It wasn't. That is my mistake, not Laura's and not Ethan's.
I will not do it again.
Please don't end the letters because I broke one rule.
If you want them through Henry, fine.
If you want them once a year, fine.
Do not make him disappear because I was weak for ten minutes.
Rebecca
Ethan read it twice.
Then he looked at Laura.
She was awake.
She had been watching him.
“What park?”
Laura rubbed sleep from one eye.
“You were four.”
“I figured that part out.”
“It was a Saturday. We took you to play soccer. You hated soccer.”
“I still hate soccer.”
“I know.”
“Was she there?”
Laura nodded.
“Did I see her?”
“Yes.”
Ethan felt something shift.
“What happened?”
“She sat on a bench outside the fence.”
“Did I talk to her?”
“You asked if you could pet her dog.”
“Walter?”
Laura gave a tired, startled smile.
“Yes.”
Ethan looked down at the letter.
He had no memory of it.
That felt insulting.
His own brain had been present for an event everyone else had carried for nine years, and it had thrown the event away.
“Did she tell me?”
“No.”
“What did she say?”
“She said the dog's name was Walter. You told her that was a person name.”
“That sounds like me.”
“It does.”
“What did Dad do?”
“He saw her.”
“And?”
“He took you to the car.”
“Did he yell?”
“Not in front of you.”
“Later?”
“Yes.”
“At her?”
“At everybody.”
Ethan folded the letter more carefully than the first.
“What did you do?”
Laura looked into her coffee.
“I told him Rebecca had broken the agreement.”
“Had she?”
“Yes.”
“So Dad was right?”
Laura leaned back.
“That isn't the same question.”
“Why not?”
“Because people can be right about a rule and wrong about what they do next.”
Ethan hated that answer because it sounded reasonable.
He wanted somebody to be simple.
He wanted Daniel to be a liar, Laura to be a liar, Henry to be a coward, Rebecca to be the victim.
Instead every page made the shape less clean.
He opened the last envelope.
It was dated three months before his thirteenth birthday.
Dear Ethan,
This one is harder because I have spent twelve years imagining you as whatever age I last saw in a picture, and now I have no picture.
Henry says you are tall. Henry thinks everyone under forty is tall.
You are supposed to learn about me this year.
I don't know whether that will happen.
I hope it does.
I also need you to know something in case the adults around you have turned this into a story with heroes and villains.
I signed the papers.
I knew what they meant.
I believed your father and Laura could give you a stable home that I could not give you then. I also believed we would remain connected. Some of those beliefs were right. One was wrong.
I was not forced to leave you.
I was not tricked.
May you like
I was frightened, broke, angry, and more interested in surviving one week at a time than I knew how to admit.
I loved you.
