Tom stopped.
He looked at Ethan.
Ethan reached up and touched his eyebrow. The little white line through it.
“Two stitches,” he whispered. “He held my hand the whole time.”
Tom kept reading.
I didn’t say anything. For weeks. I watched you. I listened to you. I wanted to be sure.
Then, in September, I asked you to marry me.
I know. I know. Susan probably told you I’d lost my mind.
I hadn’t. I was testing you. I wanted to see if you’d say yes. If you’d take the house and the pension and the Social Security. If you were the kind of person who’d marry an eighty-year-old woman for a roof.
You weren’t.
You said, “I wouldn’t marry you for a roof over my head. Not you. Not anybody.”
And then you said, “Especially not you.”
And I looked at you. And I knew that you knew.
I asked you. Right there. At my kitchen table. “Ethan. Who are you?”
And you told me.
You told me about Edwin. About the park and the ballgames and the tomatoes behind the apartment building. About your mother. About the motel on Lincoln Highway.
You told me you’d found my address in an old letter of your mother’s. That you’d walked past my house a hundred times. That you’d sat on the bench across the street and watched me sweep the porch. That you were too ashamed to knock.
You said, “I didn’t want you to think I wanted something. I didn’t want anything. I just wanted to know what my grandpa’s house looked like. I just wanted to see his wife.”
You said you were standing outside the CVS that day because you’d seen me go in. You’d followed me. You said you were trying to work up the courage to say hello.
And then my bag broke.
And you finally had a reason.
Tom couldn’t keep going.
He set the letter down on the table. He took off his glasses. He wiped his eyes.
The room was silent except for my brother.
Glenn was still on the floor. By the fallen chair. Sobbing into his hands.
Patricia was standing over him. Not touching him. Just looking down at him.
I picked up the letter.
There was one more page.
I read it.
I made you promise not to tell Susan or Glenn. That was wrong of me. I was protecting Glenn. Again. Like I’ve always done. Like Edwin did.
We protected him from consequences his whole life. And look what it cost you.
So here is what I want.
The house is yours. Edwin’s house. Edwin’s tools. The pegboard with the level on the first hook. The garden where he grew Better Boys for forty years. It’s yours, Ethan. Not because you need it. Because you’re his. And because you’re mine.
You’re my grandson.
I’m sorry I only got to be your grandmother for fourteen months.
And Glenn.
If you’re reading this over Ethan’s shoulder, and I know you are:
You have a son. He’s twenty-four years old. He has your chin and your father’s hands and the kindest heart I’ve ever known. He spent his last twelve dollars on yellow roses for a woman he’d known for five months because his grandfather used to buy them for her.
He slept behind a bookstore while you built houses in Lititz.
I don’t know if you can ever make that right. I don’t know if he’ll let you try.
But I know your father would want you to. He kept this box for ten years waiting for you to be ready.
Be ready, Glenn.
It’s long past time.
— Mom
P.S. Ethan, sweetheart. Plant the tomatoes this spring. Better Boys. Edwin would want them in the garden again.
I folded the letter.
I put it back in the envelope.
I set it on the table in front of Ethan.
He didn’t pick it up.
He just looked at it.
Then Glenn stood up.
Slowly. Holding onto the table. Like an old man.
He looked at Ethan.
Ethan looked back.
They stood there across the conference table. My brother in his gray suit and his Rolex. And his son in a dead man’s borrowed jacket. With a green backpack at his feet.
The same chin.
“I didn’t know,” Glenn said. His voice was destroyed. “I swear to God. I didn’t know she kept you. I gave her the money. I told her to take care of it. And I never asked. I never called. I never—”
He stopped.
“I got married in June,” he said. “Patricia and I. We had the boys. I built the company. I never once thought about—”
He couldn’t finish.
“Dad knew?” he whispered. “The whole time?”
Ethan nodded.
“He never told me,” Glenn said. “Never. He never said a word.”
“He said it was your job,” Ethan said quietly. “He said you’d come when you were ready.”
Glenn put his hand over his mouth.
“And then he died,” Ethan said. “And you never came.”
Glenn looked at the box. At the photographs spread across the conference table. Dad on the park bench. Dad at the ballgame. Dad by the tomato plant behind the dumpsters.
Dad with his grandson.
“I knew about the box,” Glenn said. “I found it. After the funeral. I was cleaning out his closet. I opened it.”
I stared at my brother.
“You knew?” I said.
“I read the first letter,” Glenn said. “I saw the picture. On the bench. I knew right away.”
“And you did nothing?”
“I was terrified,” Glenn said. “Patricia. The boys. The company. Everybody in Lititz. I closed it. I put it back on the shelf. I told Mom to throw it out. I told her it was just Dad’s old tax papers.”
He looked at Ethan.
“You were ten,” he said. “You were ten years old. And your grandfather had just died. And I knew where you were. Rockland Street. It was right there on the envelope.”
He started crying again.
“I could’ve driven there,” he said. “In fifteen minutes. And I didn’t.”
Patricia turned and walked out of the conference room.
She didn’t say anything.
She just left.
We heard the elevator ding down the hall.
Glenn didn’t go after her.
He stood there looking at his son.
“I’m sorry,” Glenn said. “I know that’s nothing. I know it doesn’t mean anything. Twenty-four years. Your mother. The motel. The bookstore. I know sorry is nothing.”
Ethan didn’t say anything.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Glenn said. “I don’t deserve it. I just…” He swallowed. “I just wanted you to know that I know. Now. What I did. What I didn’t do.”
Ethan looked at him for a long time.
Then he bent down.
He unzipped his green backpack.
He reached inside.
He took out something small. Wrapped in a paper towel.
He unwrapped it.
It was a yellow rose. Dried. Faded. Brittle.
The last one. From Mom’s birthday. The one he’d put in her hands the day she died.
He’d taken it back. Before the funeral home came. He’d kept it in his backpack.
He held it out.
Not to Glenn.
To me.
“She’d want you to have this,” he said quietly. “You’re her daughter.”
