Chapter 5: The Brother I Was Taught to Forget
His voice was nothing like I expected.
I don't know what I had imagined — something childlike, maybe, frozen at whatever age I last remembered him.
But the man on the phone had a low, steady voice, and he spoke carefully, like someone who had rehearsed this moment and was now throwing the script away.
"I didn't think you'd actually call," he said.
"I almost didn't."
"I know.
Frank told me you looked shaken."
"Frank told you already?"
"He called me the moment you went back inside." A short pause.
"He's been checking in on me for years.
He felt responsible.
He said he should have found you sooner."
I pressed my back against the kitchen counter.
Ellie was at school.
The house was completely quiet.
"How long have you known about me?" I asked.
"Always," Daniel said.
"Dad told me everything.
He told me you were alive, that you were with Mom, that she'd told you I d*ed.
He told me not to contact you until you were old enough to handle it yourself."
"And then he d*ed before he could tell me."
"Yes."
I closed my eyes.
"How old were you?" I asked.
"When they separated us."
"Five," he said.
"You were seven.
I don't remember much.
I remember you had a red jacket.
And you used to let me have the last bite of things."
Something moved through me that I didn't have a name for.
"I remember a red jacket," I said quietly.
"I know.
Frank told me you'd remember things if someone gave you the right door."
"What does that mean?"
"It means Mom didn't erase you," Daniel said.
"She just locked the room.
Dad always believed the memories were still there."
I pulled out a chair and sat down.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Ohio.
About four hours from you, actually.
I looked up your address when Frank confirmed the neighborhood." He paused.
"I hope that doesn't frighten you."
"It should," I said.
"It doesn't."
"I've driven past the street twice," he said.
"I never stopped.
I didn't want to push."
"You drove four hours and didn't stop?"
"I drove four hours and sat in my car at the end of your block for about forty minutes," he said.
"Then I drove home."
I laughed.
It surprised me.
It surprised him too — I heard it.
"That's either very considerate or very strange," I said.
"Probably both," he said.
"I'm a little of both."
We talked for two hours that first call.
He was fifty-one.
He'd been married once, divorced amicably, had a daughter named Rose who was thirteen.
He worked as a contractor — built things, he said, because it felt good to make something that stayed standing.
He'd spent a long time being angry at our mother.
He said he wasn't anymore.
He said he'd gotten tired of carrying it.
I told him about Ellie.
About the neighborhood.
About the strawberry shortcake bars.
He went quiet when I said that.
"Dad used to buy those," he said.
"Every summer.
He said they were your favorite.
He never stopped buying them."
I pressed my hand flat against the table.
"He remembered," I said.
"He never forgot anything about you," Daniel said.
"Not once."
I didn't trust my voice for a moment.
"I want to meet you," I said, when I could speak again.
"I want that too."
"But I need a little time," I said.
"I need to talk to Ellie.
I need to—" I stopped.
"I need to figure out how to hold all of this."
"Take whatever time you need," Daniel said.
"I've waited thirty years.
I can wait a little longer."
"Don't wait too long," I said.
A beat of silence.
"I won't," he said.
After I hung up, I sat at the table for a long time.
Then I went to the cabinet above the refrigerator where I kept things I didn't look at often — old photos, Ellie's first drawings, a few letters I'd never thrown away.
At the back, behind everything else, there was a photograph I hadn't touched in years.
Two children in a backyard.
A girl in a red jacket.
A small boy beside her, squinting into the sun.
May you like
I had always told myself I didn't know who the boy was.
I had always been lying to myself.
