Chapter 5: The First Meeting
Antoine suggested a diner.
Not a restaurant — a diner.
Vinyl booths, laminate tables, coffee that came in a thick ceramic mug without anyone asking if you wanted it.
Ethan arrived first and chose a booth near the back, away from the window.
He ordered coffee he didn't need and watched the door.
Antoine came in seven minutes later.
Still in the plain white t-shirt and light jeans from the parking lot.
He scanned the room, found Ethan, and walked over without hesitation.
He slid into the opposite seat and picked up the laminated menu without saying anything.
The waitress came.
Antoine ordered eggs and toast.
Ethan said he was fine.
When she left, Antoine set the menu down and looked across the table.
"You should eat something.
You look like you haven't."
"I'm not hungry."
"Okay." Antoine wrapped both hands around his coffee mug.
"Ask me whatever you want to ask."
Ethan looked at him.
Same jaw.
Different eyes — Antoine's were darker, steadier, the kind of eyes that had grown up with answers instead of questions.
"How long have you known about me?"
"Three years," Antoine said.
"Dad sat me down the week after his diagnosis.
He had a folder.
Your school records, some photographs, a summary of what he'd been — he called it contributing.
I called it something else at the time." He paused.
"I was furious.
Not at you.
At him.
For having a whole other person out there and never saying anything."
"What changed?"
"I looked at the photographs." Antoine said it simply, without drama.
"You were a kid.
You didn't choose any of it either." He took a sip of coffee.
"I asked him why he never told you.
He said your mother had asked him not to make contact.
He said he thought respecting her decision was the right thing to do." Antoine set the mug down.
"I told him respecting her decision and leaving you without a father were two different things, and he should have found a way to do one without doing the other."
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
"What did he say to that?"
"He said I was right." Antoine looked at him steadily.
"He says that a lot lately.
I think dying makes it easier to admit things."
The waitress came back with Antoine's food.
He picked up a fork and didn't eat immediately, just held it.
"He wants to meet you.
I think you know that from the letter."
"I know."
"I'm not going to push you," Antoine said.
"That's not why I'm here.
I'm here because I thought it would be easier if you'd talked to me first.
So it wasn't a total stranger asking you to walk into a room with a sick old man you've never met."
"Diane said that too," Ethan said.
"That he thought it would be easier."
"He thinks about things like that.
The logistics of other people's feelings." Antoine finally took a bite of toast.
"He's good at planning around emotions.
Less good at actually talking about them.
You'll see that if you meet him."
"You're assuming I will."
"I'm not assuming anything." Antoine looked at him directly.
"But I'll tell you this — I spent twenty-three years as an only child.
I was fine.
I didn't need a brother.
I wasn't looking for one." He paused.
"And then I found out I had one, and I spent three years watching from a distance, and I kept thinking — this guy has no idea.
He's out there building a version of himself with half the information.
And that seemed — unfair."
Ethan looked down at the table.
"I made a fool of myself today."
"You performed for people who weren't worth performing for," Antoine said.
"That's different."
"You could have told me who you were.
Before the bet."
"Yes," Antoine said.
"I could have." He didn't apologize for it.
He just acknowledged it, straight and clean.
"I froze.
I'd imagined that moment a hundred times and then it was actually happening and you were — you were doing the thing, and I didn't know how to interrupt it without making it worse.
So I did what felt natural." He shrugged slightly.
"I took my car back."
"And the bet?"
"You offered ten grand.
I wasn't going to say no to ten grand." The corner of his mouth moved.
"I don't actually expect you to pay it."
Ethan looked at him for a long moment.
"What's he like?
Gerald."
Antoine considered the question seriously, the way someone does when they've thought about how to answer it for a long time.
"Quiet.
Precise.
He built his company from nothing — logistics, freight, nothing glamorous.
He's not the kind of man who talks about money.
He just has it and uses it carefully." He paused.
"He reads a lot.
He asks good questions.
He remembers everything you tell him." Another pause.
"He cried when I showed him a photo of you from last year.
He didn't know I saw, but I did."
Ethan's jaw tightened slightly.
"He's not a villain," Antoine said.
"He's a man who made a terrible choice when he was young and has been living inside the consequences of it ever since.
That doesn't make it okay.
But it's what he is."
Ethan was quiet for a long moment.
Outside, a bus went past the window, slow and heavy.
"If I agreed to meet him," Ethan said finally.
"Where is he?"
Antoine reached into his pocket and slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
An address.
A date.
Two days from now.
"He's at the house," Antoine said.
"He doesn't go out much anymore.
Diane will be there.
I'll be there if you want me to be, or I'll stay away if you'd rather it was just the two of you." He picked up his coffee again.
"Either way, he'll be there.
He's been waiting a long time."
Ethan picked up the piece of paper.
He didn't unfold it.
He just held it.
"I'll think about it," he said.
Antoine nodded.
"That's all I'm asking."
They sat in the diner for another twenty minutes.
Antoine finished his eggs.
Ethan eventually ordered toast he mostly didn't eat.
They talked about small things — the neighborhood, the traffic on Keller Street, a road construction project that had been going on for eight months with no visible progress.
It was the most ordinary conversation Ethan had had all day.
When they stood to leave, Antoine dropped enough cash on the table for both of them without making a thing of it.
At the door, he paused.
"For what it's worth," Antoine said, "the parking lot thing — nobody who matters was there.
And the people who were there — they weren't your real crowd anyway." He pushed the door open.
"You'll figure out who your real crowd is."
He walked out into the afternoon.
Ethan stood at the door for a moment, the folded address in his jacket pocket, the coffee sitting unfinished behind him.
Then he walked out too.
That night, he unfolded the piece of paper and looked at the address for a long time before he set it on his nightstand and turned off the light.
May you like
He didn't sleep well.
But somewhere around three in the morning, he made his decision.
