Chapter 4: What Three Old Men Wanted Me to Know
The handwriting at the top was Tommy's — I knew it the way you know a song you haven't heard in fifty years.
Unsteady now, slower than I remembered, but still his.
*Harold.*
*We kept the promise.
Just not the way we thought we would.
We're sorry it looks like this.
We're not sorry we tried.*
Below that, in a different hand — neat, European, the letters slightly compressed — Ray's name, written by someone else but unmistakably authorized.
*You were always the one who remembered things right.
We counted on that.
We're counting on it now.*
And at the bottom, Nick's signature.
Shaky, but his.
I read it twice.
Then I folded it along its original lines and held it in both hands.
"They talked about you a lot," Claire said quietly.
"In the last year especially.
Tommy said you were the one who suggested the promise in the first place."
"I don't remember that," I said.
"He said you wouldn't." She almost smiled.
"He said you always gave other people credit for your own ideas."
I looked at her.
She had Tommy's eyes — not the color, but the expression.
A kind of careful attention, like she was listening even when she wasn't speaking.
"Did he tell you much about those summers?" I asked.
"Everything," she said.
"The bench.
The lake.
The summer Ray's bicycle broke and you all took turns riding yours so he wouldn't have to walk.
The time Nick got stung by a wasp and Tommy convinced him he was allergic and needed to lie still for an hour." She laughed, short and genuine.
"He said Nick didn't move for forty-five minutes before he figured it out."
I laughed too.
It came out rougher than I expected.
"That sounds right," I said.
We sat quietly for a moment.
The water moved slightly.
Somewhere behind us, a car passed on the road above the path.
"Should I open the others?" I asked.
"That's yours to decide," Claire said.
"I can leave, if you'd rather be alone."
"No," I said, and I meant it more than I expected to.
"Please stay."
She nodded and settled back slightly on the bench.
I reached for Ray's box.
The cassette tape was old, the plastic slightly yellowed, a handwritten label on the side that just said *Harold — play me.* Taped beside it was a small folded note from Ray's daughter.
*Dad recorded this in October.
He asked me to listen first to make sure it was clear enough.
I did.
I didn't tell him I cried through the whole thing.
He would have worried.
— Anneke*
I didn't have anything to play it on.
I told Claire that.
"I brought something," she said.
She reached into her bag and produced a small portable cassette player, the kind you can still find in certain shops that specialize in old things.
"Tommy thought of that."
Of course he did.
She set it on the bench between us.
I fed the tape in, pressed play, and Ray's voice came out of the small speaker — older, slightly slurred on one side from the stroke, but unmistakably Ray.
*"Harold.
It's Ray.
I know this is a strange way to have a conversation.
But I've been told I'm not allowed to fly, and I was not going to miss this entirely."*
A pause.
The sound of him breathing.
*"I've been thinking about what to say for three months and I still don't have it right, so I'm just going to say what's true.
I missed you.
I missed all of you.
I told myself for a long time that it was just life, that people drift, that it didn't mean anything.
That was easier than admitting I was the one who stopped writing first."*
Another pause.
Longer.
*"I stopped because I was ashamed.
I'd made choices I didn't want to explain.
It was easier to disappear than to say that out loud to someone who actually knew me."*
The lake was completely still now.
*"I don't know if you ever felt that way.
Tommy said you probably did, at some point, because everyone does.
I hope he was right.
It would mean I wasn't the only coward."*
Ray's voice caught slightly on the last word.
*"Anyway.
I kept the promise.
I'm keeping it now.
That's what I wanted you to know."*
The tape ended.
The player clicked softly into silence.
I didn't say anything for a long time.
Neither did Claire.
Then she said, very quietly: "Do you want to open Nick's journal today?
Or take it home?"
I looked at the third box.
The heaviest one.
"Tell me something first," I said.
"Did Nick know, when he wrote it, that he might not have much time left?"
"Yes," she said.
May you like
"Then I'll read it here," I said.
"I'm not going to make him wait any longer."
