Chapter 8
Daniel’s words stayed in the clinic office after he stopped speaking. Malik’s refrigerator hummed behind the wall, and the fluorescent lights made every face look tired. Catherine stood near the door with both hands wrapped around her purse.
“I knew he was changing things,” she said.
No one moved.
Catherine looked at me, not Daniel. “Not the report. The messages. Richard brought them to me and said you’d asked us to leave you alone.”
My jaw tightened. “You believed him?”
“I wanted to.” She swallowed. “It meant I didn’t have to wonder why you weren’t calling. I could tell myself you’d made the choice.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She lowered her eyes. For once, she didn’t seem to be searching for the answer that would make the room easier to bear.
“I knew some of them were altered,” she said. “I didn’t know how many, or what he’d changed. He’d show me a message and say it came from you. He told me you wanted distance.”
“And you passed those messages on?”
“Once.” Her fingers tightened around the purse strap. “I passed one to your grandfather. Richard said you’d refused to come home. I thought if Raymond heard it from me, he’d stop asking questions and we wouldn’t have another fight.”
A laugh came out of me, sharp and joyless. “So you helped him make sure Grandpa stopped asking.”
“I thought I was keeping things from getting worse.”
“You were keeping things quiet.”
The words landed between us. Catherine flinched, but she didn’t argue.
“I should have called you,” she said. “I should have asked you whether it was true.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid your father would—”
“Please don’t tell me what Dad would have done.” My voice stayed level, which cost me more than raising it would have. “I spent years thinking Grandpa didn’t want me. You watched me believe that.”
“I did.”
“And when you called me, it was always when he wasn’t around. You knew what it felt like to hide the truth from him. You still let him tell Grandpa I was gone.”
Her mouth trembled. She looked down at the purse in her hands as if it held something breakable.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I wanted the apology to change the shape of the years. It didn’t. It only made the years harder to dismiss as a misunderstanding.
Daniel turned away from the desk. His face was pale, his shoulders stiff. Catherine looked at him, then back at me.
“I have my old address book,” she said. “I kept notes by your number. Dates when I called. Some of the times you called me, too.”
I stared at her. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I wrote things down because I didn’t want to forget.” She took a breath. “Maybe because I knew someday I’d need to remember what actually happened.”
She went out to the parking lot. Malik watched her through the narrow window in the office door until she returned with a small, worn book. Its cover had softened at the corners, and a strip of clear tape held the spine together.
Catherine opened it on the desk. Evelyn was written in her own careful hand, my old number beneath it. In the margins were dates and brief notes: called after night shift; she asked about Raymond; talked ten minutes; don’t mention call to Richard.
My throat tightened at the last one.
“You wrote that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Because you were protecting me—or protecting yourself?”
She met my eyes. “Both, probably.”
There were more entries, scattered across years. Some were only dates. Others held small details I had forgotten: the name of a hospital I’d mentioned, a note that I sounded tired, the time I’d asked whether Grandpa was still fishing.
The entries didn’t give me back a single conversation. They didn’t explain the silence that followed. But they made one thing plain: I hadn’t vanished from the family. My mother had kept reaching for me in secret, while helping my father tell Grandpa I had stopped reaching back.
“You called me when you could,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you passed along a lie when you were scared.”
“Yes.”
I closed the book. I didn’t hand it back right away.
Catherine waited, her hands folded in front of her. She looked older than she had at the funeral, though only hours had passed. Maybe I was seeing her without the comfortable distance that had let me call her helpless.
“I can’t tell you this makes us all right,” I said.
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I can forgive.”
“I know that, too.”
That answer did not excuse her. It didn’t ask me to make her feel better. It was the first thing she had said all morning that didn’t seem designed to steer us away from pain.
I slid the address book toward her. “Keep it.”
She drew it back carefully, pressing her thumb against the taped spine.
Malik began gathering the photographs from the desk, placing them in a neat stack. Daniel stayed beside the table, silent. I could see the strain in his face, but my brother’s fear could not become another task I had to manage for him.
Catherine closed her purse, then paused.
“Raymond had that blue tackle box for years,” she said. “I remember seeing it after he moved his fishing things out of the study.”
My hand went to the folded note in my jacket pocket. I kept my voice steady. “Where?”
“The garage. It’s the last place I remember him keeping it.”
She glanced toward the clinic’s dark front windows, then back at me. “I’ll help you look.”
I studied her face, searching for the promise she might want me to make in return. She didn’t ask for one.
May you like
I still couldn’t tell her we were going to be fine. I could tell her where I was going next.
“Then come with me,” I said.
