Chapter 17 - Finding Thomas Hale
I opened the first envelope.
The paper inside was thin and yellowed.
Margaret,
I found work in Dayton. It’s not much, but it’s steady.
I know you’re angry.
You should be.
I told Nathan I would be home by his birthday and I wasn’t.
I don’t have a good excuse.
I sent fifty dollars last week. I hope Evelyn got it to you.
Tell him I haven’t forgotten his birthday.
He wanted that red bicycle in Harper’s window.
If you can, use the money for that.
I stopped reading.
The bicycle.
I remembered it.
Bright red.
Chrome handlebars.
I had wanted it so badly that I walked past the shop window every afternoon for weeks.
On my twelfth birthday, it appeared beside our kitchen table.
My mother told me she had saved for months.
I stared at the page.
“She lied.”
Sarah didn’t answer.
“She said she bought it.”
“Maybe she did.”
“With his money.”
“Maybe with both.”
“That’s not what she told me.”
Sarah sat back against the sofa.
“Nathan, your mother was raising an angry twelve-year-old by herself. People make imperfect choices.”
“She erased him.”
“Or she protected you from hoping.”
I almost snapped back.
Then I remembered the window.
The waiting.
The promise he had broken.
I opened the second letter.
Then the third.
My father’s life unfolded in pieces.
Jobs taken and lost.
Rooms rented.
Money sent through Evelyn.
Repeated requests to know how I was doing.
He asked if I still played baseball.
He asked whether I had learned to fix the old radio.
He asked about school.
By the fifth letter, his tone changed.
Margaret,
Evelyn says you don’t want me coming back without warning.
I understand.
But please tell Nathan I’m not gone because of him.
A year later:
Margaret,
I don’t know if you’re reading these.
I’ll keep writing anyway.
And later:
I saw a boy today carrying a stack of schoolbooks and thought of Nathan.
He would be sixteen now.
Does he still bite the inside of his cheek when he’s thinking?
I stopped.
My tongue moved automatically against my cheek.
Sarah noticed.
“He got that right.”
I looked away.
The final letter had been written when I was nineteen.
I was in college then.
Working nights.
Taking too many courses.
Certain I had built my future alone.
Nathan is old enough now.
If he wants nothing to do with me, I’ll accept it.
But I would like the chance to tell him I was wrong to leave.
Not wrong to find work.
Wrong to believe I could leave first and repair the damage later.
Some things don’t wait for you.
Please give him my address.
That was the last letter.
I turned it over.
No additional note.
No forwarding information.
Nothing.
“Did she ever give you the address?” Sarah asked.
“No.”
“Could your mother have tried later?”
“I don’t know.”
I leaned my head back against the wall.
I was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
The story I knew had not disappeared.
My father had still left.
He had still broken promises.
My mother had still carried most of the burden.
But now there were other truths beside those.
He had sent money.
He had written.
He had tried, however imperfectly, to remain connected.
And my mother, for reasons I did not fully understand, had chosen silence.
May you like
Not forever, perhaps.
But long enough for silence to harden into history.
