Chapter 4
Their mother had known.
Andrew stared at Daniel across the quiet room at St. Matthew’s.
Outside the window, the Hudson had turned silver beneath the evening sky.
Inside, Andrew felt as though someone had opened a door into a room he had spent years refusing to imagine existed.
“What letter?” he asked.
Daniel rubbed his thumb along the arm of his chair.
“I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
“Julian, maybe.”
Andrew stood.
Daniel flinched—not dramatically, but enough for Andrew to notice.
Andrew immediately stopped.
The realization hurt.
After nine years of confusion, Daniel had learned to measure people’s movements.
So Andrew sat again.
“Sorry.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You always stood when you were angry.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember strange things.”
A faint smile appeared.
“You hated pears.”
“I still hate pears.”
“You once fired a landscaper for planting a pear tree.”
“I asked for an apple tree.”
“You said it represented a breakdown in communication.”
“It did.”
Daniel laughed.
It was small.
Rusty from lack of use.
But it was his laugh.
Andrew looked down because for one dangerous second he was no longer forty-two years old in a rehabilitation center.
He was twenty-seven, standing in their grandmother’s yard while Daniel mocked him for wearing dress shoes in the mud.
One minute.
One truth.
Then another.
Rachel entered quietly.
“Julian is talking to Detective Soto.”
Andrew turned.
“Does he have the letter?”
“He says yes.”
Margaret arrived ten minutes later.
May you like
She had spent the drive trying to prepare herself to see her son.
Nothing could have prepared her.
