Chương 5
Those facts existed together.
If you ever want to contact me, Henry has my number.
If you do not, I will not come looking for you.
You do not owe me a reunion because I wrote letters.
Rebecca
Ethan stopped reading.
Laura was crying silently now.
Not dramatically.
Tears simply kept appearing and she kept wiping them away as if irritated by them.
“Why are you crying?”
She laughed once through her nose.
“Because I'm exhausted.”
“That's not why.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Laura looked at the letter.
“Because I hated her for writing that.”
“Why?”
“Because it was decent.”
Ethan frowned.
Laura wiped under one eye.
“I wanted her to make this easier for me.”
“How?”
“By being awful.”
Ethan looked down.
“That would be easier.”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence.
At 3:42, the refrigerator motor turned on.
Buster, their elderly beagle, came into the kitchen, looked from Laura to Ethan, and apparently decided nobody had food. He walked away.
Ethan stared after him.
“Dad would've said he was emotionally unavailable.”
Laura's mouth twitched.
“He said that about everybody.”
“He said it about the mailman.”
“The mailman never waved.”
“He was driving.”
“That didn't matter to your father.”
Ethan laughed.
The sound escaped before he could stop it.
It lasted less than a second.
Then guilt arrived.
His father had been dead six weeks.
His father had lied to him his entire life.
His father was still funny.
Ethan put his palms over his eyes.
“I hate this.”
Laura's chair scraped.
She started to stand and then stopped herself.
Instead she said, “I know.”
Ethan lowered his hands.
“Don't say you know.”
“All right.”
“You don't.”
“No.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
Laura looked tired enough to sleep standing.
“Okay.”
“That was agreeing.”
“I can't win this conversation.”
“Good.”
There it was.
A mean little satisfaction.
Ethan saw it in himself and did not care.
Laura stood.
“I am going to bed.”
“You're just leaving?”
“It is almost four in the morning. If I stay, I am going to say something defensive and stupid because I'm tired and scared. You are going to say something cruel because you're thirteen and furious. Then both of us will remember it forever.”
Ethan stared at her.
“That sounds like something a therapist says.”
“It sounds like something a woman who has been married to your father for sixteen years learned after approximately nine thousand bad arguments.”
She pushed her chair in.
“You may keep reading. You may not contact Rebecca tonight.”
Ethan's anger returned immediately.
“You can't stop me.”
“I can take your phone.”
“You said the box belongs to me.”
“I didn't.”
“Grandpa did.”
“Grandpa is currently below me on the parenting authority chart.”
Despite himself, Ethan almost smiled.
Laura pointed toward the clock.
“We talk in the morning.”
“It is morning.”
“After sunrise.”
She left the kitchen.
Ethan waited until he heard her bedroom door close.
Then he found Henry's number in his phone.
He stared at it.
He did not call.
That made him angrier too.
At eight seventeen, Ethan woke with his cheek stuck to an envelope.
The strongbox was still open.
Someone had draped a blanket over him.
He knew who.
He threw it onto the floor.
Then he picked it up and folded it because leaving it there felt childish.
Then he unfolded it and dropped it over the chair because folding it felt like forgiving someone.
Buster watched from the doorway.
“Don't.”
The dog yawned.
Ethan found Henry in the backyard forty minutes later.
He had biked three miles without telling Laura, which he knew was a bad move and had chosen for precisely that reason.
Henry lived in a small brick ranch house with gutters he refused to replace. He was kneeling beside a lawn sprinkler with a pair of pliers.
“You came to fix a sprinkler today?”
Henry looked over his shoulder.
“It leaked yesterday too.”
Ethan let his bicycle fall onto the grass.
Henry winced.
“Kickstand exists for a reason.”
“You don't get to care about my bike.”
“I can care about two things.”
“Apparently not.”
Henry set down the pliers.
He used the cane to stand.
“You read the letters.”
“All of them.”
Henry nodded.
Ethan hated how he could make a nod seem like confession.
“You had her number.”
“I do.”
“Give it to me.”
Henry looked toward the house.
“No.”
Ethan blinked.
“You wanted me to find the box.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me to know.”
“Yes.”
“Now you're not giving me her number?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother asked us to wait until she wakes up.”
“My mother lied to me.”
“Your mother raised you.”
“That doesn't cancel it.”
“I didn't say it did.”
“Then stop acting like she's right.”
Henry rested both hands on the cane.
“I don't know if she's right. I know she spent the night you had pneumonia sleeping upright in a hospital chair because you wouldn't let go of her sleeve.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say one old-person sentence like it solves something.”
Henry looked offended.
“I say plenty of useless sentences.”
Ethan almost laughed.
He refused.
“Did Dad tell you to destroy the box?”
Henry's face changed.
That was enough.
“He did.”
“When?”
“Last winter.”
“Before my birthday?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you?”
Henry looked down at the sprinkler.
Water seeped slowly from a cracked plastic fitting and darkened the dirt.
“Because I told him no.”
Ethan waited.
“That's it?”
“No.”
Henry walked to the porch.
He sat on the top step.
Ethan remained standing.
“Your father came here in January,” Henry said. “He knew the terminal was being sold. He wanted the box out before the contractors started inspections.”
“So he remembered.”
“Yes.”
“He remembered the promise.”
“Yes.”
“And he wanted it gone.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Henry rubbed his thumb against the cane handle.
May you like
“Danny could turn fear into principle faster than anybody I ever knew.”
“What does that mean?”
