“Yes.”
“Then what do you owe Mr. Mercer?”
Hank pulled out a chair and sat.
Eli came toward him.
He capped the marker carefully.
Click.
Then held it with both hands.
“I’m sorry I drew on your bike.”
Hank studied him.
Daniel used to apologize without looking at anybody.
This boy looked straight at him.
“Thank you.”
Eli waited.
Hank pointed toward the counter.
“Now go rescue your grilled cheese before Ruth burns it.”
“I heard that,” Ruth called.
“You were supposed to.”
Eli returned to the counter.
Emma did not sit.
Hank did.
He waited.
Emma looked toward her son.
Then she said it.
“Daniel died six weeks ago.”
Hank’s hand remained around the back of the empty chair beside him.
He did not release it.
The refrigerator behind the counter hummed.
Ray came through the door.
Luis Ortega followed him.
Somebody in the kitchen placed a glass into a sink.
A truck passed outside carrying loose equipment that rattled loudly in its bed.
Normal sounds.
Impossible sounds.
The world should not have been able to continue making ordinary noise after that sentence.
Hank shook his head.
“No.”
Emma did not argue.
“It happened on Route Nine.”
“No.”
“He was driving home from work.”
Hank looked at the toolbox.
The white stripe.
Daniel had dropped a can of primer at seventeen while helping Hank paint cabinets.
He tried to scrub the box clean before Hank came home.
The paint never came off.
“There was an accident.”
“Stop.”
Emma stopped.
Hank looked down.
His hands had begun trembling.
He pressed them against his knees.
“Nobody told me.”
The bitterness in his own voice embarrassed him immediately.
Emma let him hear it.
Then she answered.
“I didn’t know if you would want to come.”
That was worse.
Hank sat heavily.
Ray stood near the end of the table.
“Danny?”
Hank nodded.
Ray removed his cap.
Luis quietly crossed the room and switched off the television.
At the counter, Eli was asking Ruth whether grilled cheese technically counted as one sandwich or two pieces of toast.
Ruth answered him like nothing else existed.
Hank was grateful.
Emma finally sat.
“I found your name after the funeral.”
“In what?”
She touched the toolbox.
“His things.”
Hank stared at it.
Emma opened the bent latch.
Then the other.
Inside were brushes.
Pencils.
A pocketknife wrapped in a red cloth.
Several erasers.
A ruler.
A small metal sharpener.
Three photographs bound with an old rubber band.
And an envelope.
She removed it.
HANK was written across the front.
Hank recognized the handwriting before the envelope reached the table.
His son still made the H too large.
Exactly as he had at fifteen.
Hank did not take it.
“When?”
“I found it last week.”
“You came here for that?”
“We live forty minutes away.”
Hank looked up sharply.
“Forty?”
“Yes.”
He had spent eight years imagining distance.
California.
Oregon.
Florida.
Somewhere anonymous and enormous.
A place far enough away that the miles could take part of the blame.
Forty minutes.
His son had lived forty minutes from him.
Hank rubbed one hand over his beard.
“How long?”
“Almost five years.”
Ray looked away.