Ethan lifted his head.
He looked at my brother.
“Her,” he said quietly.
Glenn stared at him.
“Not it,” Ethan said. “Her. My mother. Tammy. She kept me.”
The room was silent.
I looked from my brother to the young man in the borrowed jacket at the end of the table.
Dark hair. Brown, deep-set eyes. A scar through his left eyebrow.
And his chin.
Square. Stubborn. With a little dent in the middle.
My brother’s chin.
My father’s chin.
That was what I’d seen in my mother’s kitchen. That first day in December. When he turned around from the sink.
Something familiar.
“Dad knew,” I said slowly. “Dad knew. Dad went to the hospital.”
Ethan nodded.
He reached back into the box. He took out more envelopes. More photographs.
Dad holding a toddler on the carousel at Dutch Wonderland. 2004.
Dad and a little boy in a Phillies cap at a Lancaster Barnstormers game. 2007.
Dad and a boy of about eight standing next to a tomato plant. In a garden. Not our garden. A tiny patch of dirt behind an apartment building. 2010.
E.J. — first tomatoes!
“He came every month,” Ethan said quietly. “My grandfather. Edwin. When I was little. He’d pick me up on Saturdays. He’d take me to the park. Or the ballgame. Or the library. He brought my mom groceries. He paid our rent when she couldn’t.”
He picked up the tomato photo.
“He taught me to grow tomatoes,” he said. “Behind our building on Rockland Street. In a little patch of dirt by the dumpsters. He brought the plants. Better Boys.”
My throat closed.
Dad grew Better Boys. Every summer. For forty years.
“He told me he was my grandpa,” Ethan said. “When I was six. He said it was a secret. He said there were reasons. He said someday I’d understand.”
He looked at Glenn.
“He never told me who my father was,” Ethan said. “He said that was my father’s job. He said my father would come someday. When he was ready.”
Glenn made a sound.
Something between a sob and a gasp.
He sat down. On the floor. Right where he was standing. Next to the fallen chair. In his gray suit and his Rolex.
He put his face in his hands.
“What happened?” I asked Ethan. Gently. “After Dad died?”
Ethan looked at the photographs.
“I was ten,” he said. “He stopped coming. My mom didn’t know why. She called this house once. Somebody said he passed away. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t go to the funeral. She didn’t think she was allowed.”
He swallowed.
“The money stopped,” he said. “The groceries. The rent help. Mom was working at a Sheetz. Night shift. It wasn’t enough. We got evicted when I was eleven.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“She started drinking,” he said. “Then pills. She tried. She really tried. She went to rehab twice. When I was thirteen I went into foster care. Then back with her. Then foster care again.”
“Where is she now?” I asked.
Ethan looked at me.
“She died when I was seventeen,” he said. “An overdose. In a motel on Lincoln Highway.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
“I dropped out of school,” Ethan said. “I aged out of foster care at eighteen. I’ve been on my own since.”
He reached into the box one more time.
He took out a small envelope. White. Newer than the others.
On the front, in my mother’s handwriting:
Ethan.
He held it for a long time.
His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t open it.
“Do you want me to?” I asked.
He looked at me. He nodded.
He handed it to me.
I opened it.
I read it out loud.
My dear Ethan,
If you’re reading this, I’m gone. And Mr. Feldman has given you Edwin’s box. And you’ve opened it. And Glenn has probably made a scene.
Let him. He’s earned it.
I want to tell you how I found out. Because I don’t want you to think I knew all along. I didn’t. I swear to you I didn’t.
After Edwin died, I found this box on the top shelf of his closet. I opened it. I read every letter. I looked at every photograph. I sat on the floor of his closet for six hours.
I learned that my husband of forty-six years had a grandson I’d never met. That he’d been visiting you every month for ten years. That he’d been paying your mother’s rent out of his pension. That he never told me.
I was so angry, Ethan. At Edwin. For keeping it from me. At Glenn. For what he did. At myself, for not seeing it.
I tried to find you. I went to the apartment on Rockland Street. You’d moved. I called the number on your mother’s letters. Disconnected. I hired a man to look for you. He found nothing.
I put the box back on the shelf. I told Glenn I’d thrown it away. I don’t know why. I think I was ashamed. Of all of us.
Then, fourteen years later, I dropped my groceries in a parking lot.
I had to stop reading.
I couldn’t see the paper.
Ethan was crying. Silently. With his hands over his face.
Tom took the letter from me. Gently.
He kept reading.
You picked up my tea bags one at a time. You wiped my pill bottle on your sweatshirt. You put my milk in your backpack and walked me home in the rain.
I didn’t know who you were. Not then. I just knew you were kind.
It was the steps.
When you fixed the porch steps. In November. You went into the garage to get Edwin’s tools. And you didn’t ask me where anything was.
You walked straight to the pegboard. You took down the circular saw. The tape measure. The square. The level. You knew exactly where every one of them was.
And then you said, “He always kept the level on the left. He said it was the most important tool, so it gets the first hook.”
Ethan, Edwin said that. Every time. To Glenn. To Susan. To anyone who’d listen. “The level gets the first hook.”
You said it like you’d heard it a hundred times.
That night, I went to the closet. I took down the box. I looked at the photographs. At the little boy on the bench in Long’s Park.
He had a scar through his left eyebrow. From falling off the carousel at Dutch Wonderland in 2004. Edwin wrote it on the back of the photo. “E.J. — 2 stitches — brave boy.”
You have a scar through your left eyebrow.
