Chapter 6: What My Brother Said When He Walked Through the Door
He arrived ninety minutes later.
I had sent Maya to her room — not to hide anything from her, but because what was about to happen in my kitchen was not something a twelve-year-old needed to be in the center of.
She went without arguing, which told me she understood.
I heard Garrett's car in the driveway.
I heard his footsteps on the porch.
I heard the knock, even though he had a key and had used it a hundred times before.
I opened the door.
He looked the same as he always did.
Jacket, jeans, the same easy expression he wore like a second skin.
But his eyes went immediately to the green box sitting on the kitchen table behind me, and something in his face shifted.
"Come in," I said.
He came in.
He didn't sit down.
I went to the table and stood on the opposite side of it from him, the green box between us.
"How long?" I said.
Garrett looked at the box.
Then at me.
"How long what?"
"Don't," I said.
"Please don't make me say every word of it."
He was quiet for a moment.
His jaw moved slightly.
"We were together for about two years," he said.
"Before you met her.
It ended before you two started dating.
I want to be clear about that."
"Were you still in contact with her after we got married?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"Garrett."
"Yes," he said.
"Not often.
Not — it wasn't what you're thinking."
"I'm not thinking anything yet," I said.
"I'm asking."
"A few times a year.
Letters, mostly.
She didn't want phone calls.
She said it felt too close." He finally pulled out a chair and sat down, but he didn't lean back.
He sat forward, elbows on his knees.
"I know how this looks."
"Do you?"
"Yes." He looked up at me.
"It looks like I betrayed you.
And I understand if that's how you see it."
"You were at my wedding," I said.
"I know."
"You carried her casket."
Something crossed his face.
"I know."
"And every Sunday for two years you've sat at that table—" I pointed at the island where Maya had sat the night before.
"You've eaten dinner with me and those kids and you've asked how we're all doing, and you never once—"
"What was I supposed to say?" His voice came out harder than I think he intended.
He pulled it back.
"I'm sorry.
That's not — I'm not trying to defend it.
I just." He stopped.
"There was never a right time.
And after she was gone, it felt like saying anything would only hurt you for no reason."
"She kept your letters," I said.
"I know she did.
She told me she was going to get rid of them.
I guess she couldn't."
I picked up the Polaroid from beside the box and set it on the table facing him.
He looked at it for a long time.
"That was before," he said quietly.
"A long time before."
"I know when it was." I sat down across from him.
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth."
He met my eyes.
"Is there anything else?" I said.
"Anything beyond what's in that box.
Anything I haven't found yet."
Garrett's expression didn't change.
May you like
But his hands, resting on the table, pressed flat against the surface.
"Yes," he said.
