Chapter 10: The Call
Ethan called me immediately after.
I could hear it in his voice before he said a word — not panic, not anger, but the particular tightness of someone who has just been handed something they don't know how to hold.
"He called me," Ethan said.
"My father called me."
I sat down on the edge of my bed.
"What did he say?"
"He said he'd heard from his attorney that we'd filed.
He said he wanted to talk before this went any further." Ethan's voice was careful, measured.
"He said he wasn't calling to threaten me.
He said he wanted to explain."
"Explain."
"That's what he said."
I pressed my hand flat against my knee to keep it still.
"Did you talk to him?"
"I told him I'd call him back tomorrow.
I didn't want to say anything without thinking first." A pause.
"Mom, he sounded — I don't know how to describe it.
He sounded tired.
Not like someone who's scared of losing money.
Like someone who's been carrying something heavy for a long time."
I didn't say anything.
"I know that might be exactly what he wants me to think," Ethan said.
"It might be."
"But I want to talk to him.
I think I need to." He was quiet for a moment.
"Is that — is that okay with you?"
It was such a careful question.
Such an Ethan question.
Fifty-one years old and still asking if it was okay with me, because he knew this wasn't only his story.
"It's okay," I said.
"Talk to him.
But tell Patricia first."
"I will."
"And Ethan — whatever he says about why he left, or why he didn't come back, or what he told himself to make it easier — you don't owe him understanding.
You can listen without owing him anything."
"I know, Mom."
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
He called Daniel the next afternoon from his car, parked outside his office building.
He told me afterward that he'd chosen the car deliberately — somewhere he could leave if he needed to.
Daniel spoke for a long time.
Ethan listened.
The version Daniel told was not the version I would have told.
He said he had been young and frightened and unprepared.
He said he had convinced himself that Ethan would be better off without a father who wasn't ready to be one.
He said he had told himself that lie for so many years that it had started to feel like the truth.
He said Rebecca had told him about Ethan — about Sophie bringing home a man named Ethan whose mother was named Linda and who had grown up without a father — and that he had sat with that information for three weeks before the dinner happened.
He had asked Rebecca not to say anything.
He had told her he would handle it himself.
"She didn't listen," Ethan told me.
"He said he didn't know she was going to treat you the way she did.
He said when Sophie told him afterward what happened at the dinner, he was — his word — ashamed."
"Ashamed," I repeated.
"He said the 2006 declaration was his attorney's idea.
He said he knew it was wrong when he signed it.
He said Rebecca encouraged him to do it." Ethan paused.
"He said he's been in contact with his attorney about correcting the record."
"Before or after we filed?"
"He says before.
Patricia is checking."
I looked at the wall across from me.
At the small framed photo of Ethan at his college graduation — twenty-two years old, grinning, holding his diploma with both hands.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"Do you believe him?"
Ethan took a long time to answer.
"I think he's telling the truth about being ashamed," he said finally.
"I think the rest of it — the reasons, the explanations — I think he's been rehearsing those for thirty years and I'm not sure he knows anymore which parts are real." He paused.
"He asked if he could meet me.
In person.
Just to talk."
"What did you say?"
"I said I'd think about it." Another pause.
"He asked about you.
He asked if you were all right."
I didn't answer that right away.
"He asked if he could apologize to you," Ethan said quietly.
"I told him that wasn't my decision to make."
Outside my window, the evening was coming in slowly.
The sky had gone the color of old pewter.
"He can apologize," I said finally.
"Whether I accept it is a different question."
"That's fair," Ethan said.
"What about the settlement?
The offer Rebecca made?"
"I told him we're not taking it.
I told him if he wants to resolve this honestly, it goes through Patricia and it gets done properly — not a private payment that makes us disappear." A beat.
"He said he understood."
I exhaled slowly.
"One more thing," Ethan said.
"He told me Rebecca acted on her own at that dinner.
That the humiliation, the comments, the offer she made — he says he didn't authorize any of it."
"Do you believe that part?"
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
May you like
"I believe he didn't tell her to do it," he said.
"I don't believe he tried very hard to stop her."
