Chapter 6: The Morning He Came to Us
I was in the front yard the next morning, pretending to check the mail, when I saw him.
He was standing at the end of the driveway.
The brown dog sat beside him, perfectly still.
He was wearing a clean shirt — not new, but clean, like he'd made an effort — and he'd trimmed his beard.
He looked like a man who had spent a long time preparing for something and was now standing at the edge of it, not sure he could go through.
I didn't move.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he said, "You got taller."
I had not gotten taller.
I was the same height I'd been at twenty.
But it was such a Daniel thing to say — deflecting with a small absurd joke the way he always had when he was nervous — that I started crying before I could say a single word.
"You let us think you were de@d," I said.
He flinched.
"I know."
"Sixteen years, Daniel."
"I know." His voice was rough.
"I'm sorry, Becca.
I'm so sorry."
I crossed the driveway.
I didn't plan to.
My feet just moved.
And then I was standing in front of him and I didn't know whether to hug him or hit him or simply hold on and never let go, so I did all three, in roughly that order, and he stood there and took it, his arms coming up around me, his face pressing into my hair the way it had when we were children and one of us was frightened.
The dog pressed her nose against my knee.
We stood like that for a long time.
"Come inside," I finally said.
"Ethan wants to meet you.
Properly."
He pulled back and looked at me.
His eyes — my grandfather's eyes, I now understood completely — were wet.
"Does he know?"
"He knows you're his uncle.
He knows we thought you were gone." I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
"He's been up since six.
He's been sitting at the kitchen table waiting."
Something moved across Daniel's face that I didn't have a word for.
Not quite hope.
Something rawer than hope.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Okay."
He followed me up the path.
At the door, he stopped.
"Becca." His hand caught my arm.
"Before I go in — I need you to know that I didn't plan the gold bar.
I didn't plan any of it.
I've been in this city for two years and I didn't let myself come near you.
I told myself it was better if you didn't know." His jaw tightened.
"And then your boy sat down next to me and talked to me for twenty minutes and gave me everything he had.
And I thought—" He stopped.
Swallowed.
"I thought, if he can do that, then maybe I owe you the truth.
All of it."
I looked at my brother.
May you like
At the lines in his face, the gray in his hair, the sixteen years written into every part of him.
"Then come inside," I said, "and tell me."
