Chương 4
Finally Caleb said, “I took the shoes without asking.”
“Yes.”
“They were new.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to punish me?”
Adrian studied the gold braid at his cuff. “Why did you give them to Leo?”
Caleb picked at his sock. “His shoes broke at recess.”
“How?”
“The bottom came off.”
“Did he ask you for a pair?”
“No.”
“Did his teacher?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Caleb looked embarrassed. “He tied the bottom on with a rubber band. Everybody saw. Owen laughed, and Leo acted like he didn’t care. Then he sat out at gym because the nurse said it wasn’t safe.”
“So you took shoes from your closet.”
“I have four pairs.”
Adrian almost corrected him. Caleb had six.
“Leo said no twice,” Caleb continued. “I told him they were too small for me.”
“They weren’t.”
“I know.”
Adrian rubbed a hand over his face.
“Did I make it worse?” Caleb asked.
“No.”
“His mom got mad.”
“She was scared.”
“Of shoes?”
“Of what comes with them.”
Caleb frowned. “They just come with laces.”
Despite everything, a short breath escaped Adrian that might once have become a laugh.
Caleb leaned against his shoulder.
“Is Leo your kid?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Do you want him to be?”
Adrian looked across the room at a framed photograph of Caleb standing between his parents before the divorce. Julia had one hand on their son’s shoulder and enough distance between herself and Adrian to tell the truth without explaining it.
Want was a dangerous word. It could turn a child into an answer for a wound the child had not made.
“I want to know the truth,” Adrian said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” Adrian rested his head against the wall. “I think I do. But that doesn’t mean Leo has to want me.”
Caleb considered this. “He might after he knows you.”
Adrian stared at his medals reflected in the dark window.
“You know me,” he said. “You’re still deciding.”
The following morning, the sneakers were still in Rachel’s hallway.
She had moved them twice without meaning to. First beside the coat rack, then under the narrow bench where Leo kept his backpack. Their white leather looked almost blue in the gray light.
Leo came downstairs wearing socks.
“Your old shoes are in the trash,” Rachel said.
“I can tape them.”
“The sole was split.”
“I walked home without shoes.”
“Yes, and that was a bad decision by both of us.”
“You told me to return them.”
“I expected you to call me.”
“My phone was dead.”
“You could have used Caleb’s.”
“He lives in a mansion.”
“That doesn’t stop phones from working.”
Leo opened the refrigerator and stared inside. “We’re out of milk.”
“There’s oatmeal.”
“That wasn’t a complaint.”
Rachel pressed her fingers against the counter.
She had slept less than an hour. Every time she closed her eyes, Adrian stood on the porch again, the authority leaving his face when she said his mother had paid her. She had spent years imagining him receiving that truth with coldness, denial, or the mild inconvenience of a rich man forced to remember an old mistake.
She had not imagined him looking destroyed.
“Wear the sneakers,” she said.
Leo turned from the refrigerator.
“They’re yours if Caleb gave them to you.”
“You said they were charity.”
“I was wrong.”
“You don’t say that much.”
“I try to save it for special occasions.”
He looked down the hall. “Are you scared he’ll come back?”
“Yes.”
“Because he’s bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he’s lying?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Leo stood quietly, absorbing the number of things his mother did not know. It unsettled him more than any answer might have.
Rachel retrieved the shoes and untied the laces. “Sit.”
He lowered himself onto the bench.
She slid one sneaker onto his right foot. It fit with a little room at the toe. Caleb had guessed well.
“He said they told him you were dead,” Leo said.
Rachel tightened the lace too much, noticed, and loosened it.
“Yes.”
“Who’s they?”
“His mother.”
“The grandma from last night?”
“I assume so.”
“Have I met her?”
“No.”
“Does she know me?”
Rachel looked at the second shoe in her lap.
“She knows about you.”
Leo’s foot stopped moving. “Since when?”
“Before you were born.”
He withdrew his socked foot before Rachel could put on the shoe.
“And she didn’t tell him.”
Rachel held the sneaker by its heel. “That’s what he said.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because she thought she knew what everyone else’s life should look like.”
“That’s stupid.”
“It’s also common.”
He took the shoe from her and put it on himself.
At school, Leo walked carefully for the first hour because he was unused to soles that flexed without separating. Caleb saw the white sneakers in the hallway and grinned before remembering there were larger things happening.
Neither boy mentioned those things until lunch.
They sat at the end of a table while other children traded chips and argued about a video game. Caleb peeled the crust from his sandwich. Leo ate everything he had brought in the order his mother packed it.
“My dad asked his mom,” Caleb said.
“I know.”
“How?”
“My mom told me.”
“What did she say?”
“That adults are cowards in more than one direction.”
Caleb nodded as if this confirmed something. “My dad says adults mess up because they think being older makes them right.”
“When did he say that?”
“When he backed into the garage.”
Leo took a bite of apple. “Is he going to come to my house again?”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“Because you might be his son.”
Leo chewed without looking at him.
Caleb lowered his voice. “Would that be bad?”
“I already have a mom.”
“You can have both.”
May you like
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Caleb’s face changed. His mother lived in Maryland and saw him twice a month when flights and work schedules aligned. He had both parents, technically. The arrangement did not always feel like abundance.
