Chapter 5: Sixteen Years of Silence
I didn't sleep that night.
My husband sat with me at the kitchen table until past two in the morning, the gold bar between us, the two notes laid flat beside it.
Ethan had finally gone to bed around midnight, though I'd heard him moving around his room for a long time after.
"Tell me what you remember about the accident," my husband said.
He'd heard the broad version years ago, before we were married.
Now he needed the details.
I wrapped both hands around my coffee mug.
"Daniel was twenty-three.
I was twenty.
He was driving back from a job interview — he'd been trying to get work in Portland, save enough money to go back to school.
It was January.
The roads were icy." I stopped.
"His car went off Route 9, near the reservoir.
They found the car in the water.
They found his wallet on the bank, his jacket.
They searched for three days."
"But not him."
"Not him.
The current was bad that week.
They said the body could have traveled a long way." I looked at the gold bar.
"My parents chose to believe he was gone.
It was easier than not knowing.
We had a service.
We put up a headstone."
"And you?"
I was quiet for a moment.
"I never fully believed it.
I used to see men on the street sometimes — the right height, the right way of walking — and my heart would just—" I pressed my hand to my chest.
"But I always told myself I was holding on to something that wasn't there."
"Rebecca." My husband's voice was careful.
"If it is him — if that man is Daniel — why has he been living on the street for two years?
Why hasn't he come to you?
Why the gold bar, the cake, the notes?
Why not just knock on the door?"
It was the question I'd been circling all night.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I think he's ashamed."
My husband looked at me.
"He's been gone sixteen years.
He let us grieve him.
He let our parents go to their graves thinking he was de@d." My voice was steadier than I felt.
"Whatever happened after that accident — whatever kept him away — I think he's spent a long time believing he doesn't deserve to come back."
"And Ethan changed something."
"Ethan sat down with him.
Talked to him like he mattered.
Gave him everything he had without being asked." I looked toward the hallway, toward my son's closed bedroom door.
"Maybe that was the first time in a long time that someone treated him like a person worth knowing."
My husband reached across the table and covered my hand with his.
"We go back tomorrow," he said.
"He said he's not ready."
"I know what he said." My husband squeezed my hand once.
May you like
"But you've been waiting sixteen years.
You can wait outside."
