Chapter 6: The Thing He Had Been Hiding
Three days passed.
Damon stayed in Birch Falls.
He took a room at the only inn, a converted farmhouse on the edge of town run by a retired couple named the Hendersons, and he did not come to my door or call my phone.
He waited.
I noticed, because in a town this size you notice everything.
He ate breakfast at the inn.
He walked along the river path in the mornings.
He did not send Carter to watch my house.
He did not make inquiries at the daycare.
He simply waited.
On the third evening, Eli asked me why the man at the end of the diner counter had been looking at him.
I set down the dish I was drying.
"When were you at the diner?"
"When Mrs.
Patty gave me a cookie after church.
She said I could sit at the counter." He looked up at me.
"The man didn't say anything.
He just looked.
Then he looked away really fast, like he didn't want me to see."
I kept my voice even.
"Was he scary?"
Eli considered this seriously.
"No.
He looked sad."
I finished drying the dish and put it away.
"Mama, do I have a dad?"
The question landed exactly the way those questions always do — without warning, in the middle of an ordinary moment, with the full weight of everything behind it.
I crouched down.
"Everyone has a dad, baby.
Why are you asking tonight?"
"Marcus at daycare said his dad takes him fishing." He picked at a thread on his sleeve.
"I just wondered."
"Do you want to go fishing?"
He shrugged.
"I want to know if I have one."
I pulled him close and held him for a moment.
He let me, the way he always did — patiently, without squirming.
"You do," I said.
"And I'm going to tell you more about that soon.
I promise."
He pulled back and looked at my face.
"Okay," he said.
And went to brush his teeth.
I called Damon that night.
He answered on the first ring.
"Tomorrow morning," I said.
"The river path.
Eight o'clock.
Come alone."
"I'll be there."
"Damon." I paused.
"He doesn't know who you are yet.
So don't — don't make it into something big.
Just be a person."
"I can do that."
I almost ended the call.
Then: "He said you looked sad."
Silence on the other end.
"I was," Damon said.
I hung up.
The next morning I brought Eli to the river path with a bag of bread crusts for the ducks.
He ran ahead the way he always did, narrating everything he saw to no one in particular — a red leaf, a dog across the water, the way the light hit the surface.
Damon was already there, standing at the wooden railing, hands in his pockets.
Eli stopped when he saw him.
Looked at him.
Then looked back at me.
"That's the sad man," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"His name is Damon.
Can you say hello?"
Eli studied him for another moment with those dark, steady eyes.
Then he walked over, held out a bread crust, and said, "Do you want to feed the ducks?
They like the crusts more than the soft part."
Damon crouched down to Eli's level.
His hands were not steady.
"I didn't know that," he said.
"Will you show me how?"
Eli took this responsibility very seriously.
He positioned Damon at the correct spot along the railing, demonstrated the proper throwing technique, and corrected him twice when his aim was off.
I stood back and watched.
At one point Damon looked over at me.
Just for a second.
His face was open in a way I had never seen it — not controlled, not managed, not performing calm.
Just undone.
I looked away first.
Afterward, when Eli ran ahead to investigate something near the reeds, Damon straightened and came to stand beside me.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"Don't thank me yet."
"I know." He watched Eli crouch over whatever he'd found.
"There's something I need to tell you.
Something I should have told you four years ago, before that night."
I turned to look at him.
"The reason I said what I said—" He stopped.
Started again.
"There was a woman.
Before you.
Her name was Diane.
We were together for two years and I believed I loved her.
When it ended, I found out she had been with me because of what I could provide.
Not who I was." He paused.
"I decided, after that, that what I felt for people wasn't to be trusted.
That I was better at business than at people.
That the feeling I had for you was probably just—"
"A pattern," I said.
"Yes." He looked at me.
"I was wrong.
I know that doesn't help."
"It helps me understand," I said.
"That's not the same thing as it being okay."
"No," he agreed.
"It's not."
Eli came running back with a smooth gray stone in his fist.
"Look, Mama.
It's perfectly round."
"It's beautiful, baby."
He looked at Damon.
"You can hold it if you want."
Damon held out his hand.
Eli placed the stone in it with great ceremony.
"You can keep it," Eli said.
"I find good rocks all the time."
Damon closed his fingers around it.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
But on the walk back, when Eli reached up and took Damon's hand without asking — simply because there was a hand available and he was tired — I saw Damon's throat move.
And I understood that whatever came next, the hardest part was no longer behind us.
It was still ahead.
That evening, Carter called me directly.
Not Damon.
"I need you to know something," he said.
"Before it reaches you another way.
There's a woman in Chicago — a journalist.
She's been following Damon's search for you.
She knows he found you.
And she knows about the boy."
My stomach dropped.
"How?"
May you like
"Someone at the inn talked." A pause.
"It's going to run on Friday."
