Chương 7
Ethan almost smiled.
That sounded right.
“I offered to help for a few weeks.”
“And then?”
“And then you wouldn't sleep unless somebody walked around the kitchen holding you.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
“I know.”
Laura smiled sadly.
“I kept walking.”
Ethan pulled another blade of grass.
“Did you love me?”
“Immediately? No.”
He looked up.
Laura's face was calm.
“I was terrified of you.”
“A baby?”
“You were eight pounds of screaming responsibility and you belonged to a man I wasn't sure I wanted to stay married to.”
Ethan blinked.
Nobody had ever described his infancy that way.
“I thought moms were supposed to say they loved you the second they saw you.”
“Some do.”
“You didn't.”
“No.”
“When did you?”
Laura looked past him, thinking.
“You had a fever. Four months old. Nothing dramatic. You were fine by morning. But I sat beside your crib all night checking your breathing every nine seconds like a lunatic.”
She shrugged.
“Sometime around three in the morning I understood I was in trouble.”
Ethan looked away.
The story did not feel beautiful.
That made it more believable.
Henry returned.
He had changed trousers.
He handed Laura a folded piece of paper.
Ethan stood.
“Her number?”
Henry nodded.
Laura did not open it.
She held it out.
Ethan took it.
Rebecca answered his email before she answered his call.
That was partly because Ethan lost his nerve twice.
The first time he typed her number and stared at the green button until the screen dimmed.
The second time he pressed call, heard one ring, and hung up.
Then he spent fifteen minutes imagining Rebecca staring at a missed call from an unknown number and somehow knowing it was him.
Finally, he wrote an email.
Subject: The Box
My name is Ethan Cole.
I found the box at the terminal.
That's all he wrote.
He sent it at 11:08.
At 11:19, a reply arrived.
Ethan,
I am sitting in my kitchen trying to decide whether to answer this quickly or carefully, and I don't think I can do both.
Before anything else: does Laura know you contacted me?
Rebecca
Ethan read it in the back seat of Laura's car.
They were parked outside a grocery store because Laura had realized halfway home from Henry's that they had no milk, no bread, and almost no dog food.
The normality of errands offended Ethan on principle.
He showed Laura the email.
She read it.
Her face changed in a way Ethan could not name.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That's obviously something.”
Laura handed the phone back.
“She asked about me.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn't expect that.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven't earned much consideration from her.”
Ethan typed:
She's sitting next to me.
Laura said, “I am in the front seat.”
Ethan changed it.
She's in the car.
He sent it.
Rebecca replied six minutes later.
Okay.
If you want to talk, I can talk.
I need to say one thing first. Whatever you were told about me, I am not going to ask you to pick sides. If I start doing that, you can hang up.
Ethan looked at Laura.
“She wants to talk.”
Laura's fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“Okay.”
“Now?”
Laura looked at the grocery store.
People pushed carts through the automatic doors.
A toddler in a yellow raincoat lay facedown on the sidewalk while a tired man stood over him holding a box of cereal.
Laura started laughing.
Ethan followed her gaze.
“What?”
“I was about to say this is not the right place for a life-changing phone call.”
“So?”
“So apparently neither is aisle four.”
The toddler's father picked him up under one arm.
Laura's laughter vanished.
“Let's go home.”
Rebecca's voice sounded nothing like Ethan expected.
He did not know what he expected.
Something dramatic, maybe. A voice that would immediately explain his face.
Instead she sounded like a normal woman with a slight rasp and the habit of inhaling before difficult sentences.
“Hi.”
Ethan sat at the dining table.
Laura was in the living room where he could see her but she could not hear the phone clearly.
“Hi.”
Silence.
Rebecca exhaled.
“This is strange.”
“Yeah.”
“I had a better opening sentence prepared for approximately twelve years.”
“What was it?”
“I forgot.”
Ethan smiled before he could stop himself.
Rebecca gave a small nervous laugh.
“That wasn't it.”
“Okay.”
Another silence.
Ethan looked at the photograph beside him.
“Are you Rebecca Shaw?”
“I am.”
“Did you give birth to me?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want me?”
The question came out so quickly that Ethan wished he could pull it back.
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
His stomach tightened.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then why did you leave?”
She breathed in.
“Because wanting you and being able to raise you were not the same thing.”
“That sounds like something adults say.”
“It probably is.”
“So what does it mean?”
Rebecca was quiet.
“When you were born, I had forty-three dollars in checking, a room I rented from a woman who had already told me a baby couldn't live there, and a job with no paid leave. My parents were dead. Your father wanted custody. Laura was helping him. And I was scared enough that every decision felt like choosing which bad thing I could survive.”
Ethan said nothing.
“That is not me saying poor me,” Rebecca continued. “I made choices. Some I still think were right. Some weren't.”
“Did Dad make you sign papers?”
“No.”
“Did Laura?”
“No.”
“Did anybody threaten you?”
“No.”
Ethan felt almost disappointed.
The disappointment made him ashamed.
“So you just left.”
Rebecca's voice tightened.
“Yes.”
Laura looked over from the living room.
Ethan turned away from her.
Rebecca continued.
“I visited at first.”
“I know.”
“You know about the park?”
“Yeah.”
“I shouldn't have gone.”
“Why?”
“Because I'd agreed not to show up without calling.”
“Dad stopped your letters after.”
“For a while.”
“That seems worse than you going to a park.”
“It was.”
May you like
Ethan waited.
Rebecca added, “I also knew he would probably react that way.”
