Chapter 7: What Avery Said When I Told Her
I waited two days before I told her.
I needed to be sure I could get through it without falling apart, and it took two days of practice — saying it in the car, saying it in the shower, saying it to the kitchen wall — before I trusted myself.
I told her on a Tuesday afternoon.
She was sitting up in bed with Sir Bun and a book she wasn't really reading.
She had been tired that week, the kind of tired that settled into her eyes and stayed.
"Avery," I said.
"I found out who sent the letter."
She put the book down immediately.
"Who?"
I sat on the edge of her bed and told her everything.
Walter and Ruth.
Claire.
The fourteen years.
The four parents.
The eleven families before us.
The house on the coast.
Avery listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her.
She sat very still, Sir Bun in her lap, watching my face.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
"Their little girl d*ed," she said.
"Yes."
"And they still did all that for us."
"Yes."
She looked down at Sir Bun.
Turned him over in her hands.
Found the embroidered letters on his foot — *AVR* — and pressed her thumb against them.
"Claire had one like him," I said.
Avery looked up.
"Ruth told you that?"
"She did."
Something moved across her face that I didn't have a word for.
Not sadness exactly.
Something older than sadness.
"I want to write them a letter," she said.
"A real one.
Not an email."
"We can do that."
"And I want to go to the ocean." She said it simply, without drama, the way she said most things that mattered to her.
"I want to see where the water goes all the way to the end."
My throat closed.
"You saw that comment," I said.
"I forgot I wrote it." She almost smiled.
"I meant it though."
"I know you did."
She was quiet again.
Then: "Mom, do you think Claire would have liked me?"
I looked at my daughter — her thin face, her steady eyes, the rabbit in her hands.
"I think she would have thought you were the best person she ever met," I said.
Avery considered this seriously.
"I think I would have liked her too." She paused.
"I think maybe that's why Walter and Ruth picked us.
Because we're the kind of family Claire would have liked."
I didn't trust my voice.
I nodded.
"Okay," Avery said, and picked her book back up with the air of someone who had settled something important.
"Can we have pancakes for dinner?"
"We can have pancakes for dinner."
"Good." She opened the book.
Then, without looking up: "Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Tell Walter and Ruth that Sir Bun says thank you."
I stood up and walked to the doorway before she could see my face.
May you like
"I will," I said.
"I'll tell them exactly that."
