Chapter 6: The Phone Number at the Bottom of the Page
I didn't call that night.
I wanted to.
I sat by the phone twice — once at nine, once just past eleven — and both times I put it down again.
Not because I didn't want to reach her.
Because I had no idea what to say.
Because I was terrified that the moment I spoke, something fragile would either hold or shatter, and I wasn't ready to find out which.
Theo stayed the night in the spare room.
The same spare room he'd slept in a hundred times before.
I made up the bed the same way I always had — extra blanket at the foot, glass of water on the side table — and when he came out of the bathroom in Jack's old borrowed clothes and saw it, he stopped in the doorway for a moment.
"Thank you," he said.
"Get some sleep," I told him.
I didn't sleep.
My husband lay beside me in the dark and I could tell from his breathing that he wasn't sleeping either.
We didn't talk for a long time.
That was fine.
We've always known how to be quiet together.
Then he said, "What if she doesn't want to hear from us?"
"The letter said she doesn't want anything from us."
"That's not the same as not wanting to hear from us."
I stared at the ceiling.
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
Another silence.
"He was afraid we'd be ashamed," my husband said.
"That's what he wrote.
He was afraid we'd be ashamed of him."
"I know."
"We never gave him a reason to think that."
"I know that too." I turned my head toward him in the dark.
"But it wasn't about reason.
It was about fear.
And fear doesn't always listen to what it's been shown."
He was quiet again.
Then: "I wish he'd told us."
"Me too."
"I would have gone to Edinburgh.
I would have sat down with that girl and — " He stopped.
"I would have done something."
"He knew that," I said.
"That's why he was afraid.
He didn't want to hand it to us and watch us carry it.
He wanted to carry it himself."
"He shouldn't have had to."
"No.
He shouldn't have."
The room was grey with early morning by the time either of us moved again.
I picked up my phone at half past six.
I dialed the number from the letter slowly, each digit deliberate, the way you dial a number you've memorized but never used.
It rang four times.
Then a voice.
Young.
A little guarded.
"Hello?"
"Is this Rachel?"
A pause.
"Who's calling?"
"My name is Carol," I said.
"I'm Jack's mother."
The silence on the other end lasted long enough that I thought she might hang up.
Then: "He told me you might call.
He said — he said he thought you would."
Something moved through me.
Even now, even gone, he had known me.
"How is she?" I asked.
"How is Lily?"
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
"She's — " Rachel's voice shifted slightly.
"She's here, actually.
She's having breakfast."
"Could you tell me one thing about her?
Just — one thing.
Whatever comes to mind first."
A beat.
Then, quietly: "She laughs like him."
My hand found my husband's arm in the grey morning light.
I held on.
"I'd very much like to meet her," I said.
"Only if you're willing.
Only on your terms, at your pace, whenever — if ever — you feel ready.
There's no pressure.
There's no expectation." I stopped.
"I just want her to know she's not alone in the world."
Rachel didn't answer immediately.
When she did, her voice had changed.
Gone softer.
Gone somewhere I recognized.
"She asks about him," Rachel said.
"She knows he's gone.
I told her — I told her as much as a four-year-old can understand.
But she asks about his family.
She asks if she has grandparents."
May you like
I closed my eyes.
"She does," I said.
