Chapter 7: Twenty-Two Years of Missing
Owen came back downstairs at nine-thirty to find the four of them still at the kitchen table.
He stood in the doorway, took in the coffee cups, the open envelope, his father's reddened eyes, and made the particular assessment of an older sibling who had learned long ago to read a room before entering it.
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
"Is this the part where I apologize?" he asked.
"For the six years?" Mara said.
"For the six years."
"How about you start talking and we'll decide at the end."
Owen wrapped both hands around a coffee cup.
"Dad told me when I was thirty-four.
I'd been asking him for years why he never talked about his first marriage, and one night he just — told me.
Or most of it." He glanced at Robert.
"He didn't tell me about the call to Graham's mother.
I thought Graham had simply never been in contact."
"Did you try to find him yourself?" Graham asked.
Owen was quiet for a moment.
"I looked online once," he said.
"Found a Graham Ellison in Columbus who was about the right age.
But the name didn't match what Dad told me you'd changed it to, and I couldn't confirm it was you.
And then I told myself that if you'd wanted to be found, you would have made it easier." He paused.
"That was convenient reasoning.
I knew it at the time."
"Yes," Graham said.
It wasn't an accusation.
It was simply an agreement.
"I should have tried harder," Owen said.
"People keep saying that tonight."
"Is it helping?"
Graham considered the question seriously.
"A little.
Yes."
Robert had been quiet for several minutes.
He was looking at a point on the table between his coffee cup and Graham's, not at either of them.
"I have spent twenty-two years," he said slowly, "telling myself that what I did was practical.
That I protected you from a crjme record that would have followed you for decades.
That starting over gave you a clean slate." He stopped.
"Tonight is the first time I've sat across from you and said any of this out loud, and I can hear how it sounds."
"How does it sound?" Graham asked.
"Like a man justifying a decision that was more about himself than about his son."
The word son landed in the room.
Graham looked at his father.
"I'm not going to tell you it didn't do damage," Graham said.
"It did.
I spent years being angry at you in the way you're angry when you think no one was ever coming to look for you." He turned the coffee cup slowly.
"Finding out tonight that you did look — that changes the shape of it.
Not the fact of it.
But the shape."
"What's the difference?" Mara asked.
Graham thought about it.
"The fact is that I was eighteen and I left this house and didn't come back for twenty-two years.
That's still true." He paused.
"The shape is whether I was abandoned or whether two people who both loved me handled it badly at the same time and neither of them knew how to fix it."
Elaine wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
"That's a more generous reading than I deserve," Robert said.
"Maybe," Graham said.
"I haven't decided yet."
A small sound — not quite a laugh — came from Owen.
Mara looked at her brother.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing.
I was just thinking." Owen set down his cup.
"The two of you have been talking for approximately four hours.
I've watched you disagree, argue, let it go, come back to it, disagree again—" He gestured between Mara and Graham.
"You two are exactly alike and neither of you is going to enjoy me pointing that out."
Mara opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at Graham.
Graham looked at her.
"I'm going to need time before I can respond to that fairly," he said.
"Same," she said.
Owen looked satisfied in the maddening way of older siblings who have correctly identified something.
"Graham," Robert said.
He waited until Graham looked at him.
"I'd like to ask you something, and you don't have to answer tonight, or at all.
You can think about it."
"All right."
"Is there anything that would make this — not right.
I'm not asking for that.
But better.
Something that would be worth trying to build toward."
Graham was quiet for a long time.
The kitchen clock ticked.
The candle on the sill had burned down to a stub.
"I don't need anything from you," Graham said finally.
"Financially or practically.
I've built a life.
It's a good life.
What I spent twenty-two years missing wasn't — resources." He seemed to weigh the next words carefully.
"It was ordinary things.
Knowing what my nephew looks like in dinosaur pajamas.
Being the person someone calls when something good happens." He looked at Mara.
"Being the person who knows about the ladder."
Mara didn't trust her voice for a moment.
"The ladder is genuinely terrible," she managed.
"I gathered."
Robert nodded slowly.
He reached across the table and set his hand on Graham's arm.
Not a grip.
Just a placement.
An asking.
May you like
Graham looked down at it.
He didn't move away.
