“Is it a speech?”
“A small one.”
“No speeches over pie,” Noah said.
Everyone laughed.
Benjamin smiled, though his hands shook.
“I opened an account,” he said. “For repayments. It will not be much at first. I am working again. Not consulting. Actual work. Rebecca helped me set it up so I cannot pretend I forgot.”
Rebecca raised her glass slightly.
“I know I cannot repay everything,” he continued. “Not just the money. Maybe not even most of it. But I can start.”
He placed the paper beside my plate.
I left it unopened.
“Do you know what I want more than repayment?”
His eyes searched mine.
“What?”
“Receipts.”
He blinked.
“Not bank receipts,” I said. “Life receipts. Show up when Clara has a school play. Call Noah on his birthday. Learn Rachel’s story without making yourself the center of it. Visit your father’s grave without needing an audience. Make your own tea. Wash your own cup. Bring me flowers you paid for yourself, even if they come from a gas station.”
His face folded into a smile.
“I can do that.”
“I know,” I said. “That is why I am asking.”
After dinner, while everyone carried dishes to the kitchen, Noah wandered into Thomas’s study.
I found him staring at the old brass telescope near the window.
“May I?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He lifted it carefully.
“Mom said Thomas liked stars.”
“He did.”
“He ever show you?”
“Many times.”
Noah looked through the telescope toward the garden though no stars had appeared.
“He used to write to me,” he said.
I froze.
“Thomas?”
He nodded.
“Mom kept the letters. He never said he was my grandfather. Just a friend. He sent me star charts.”
He hesitated.
“Do you think he wanted to tell me?”
I studied his gray eyes and the hope he tried to hide.
“Yes,” I said. “I think he was waiting for the safest moment and ran out of time.”
Noah lowered the telescope.
“That is sad.”
“It is.”
“But not only sad,” he said after a moment.
I smiled.
“No. Not only sad.”
He took a folded paper from his pocket.
“Mom said I could give you this.”
One of Thomas’s letters.
His handwriting still hurt to see.
Dear Noah, someday you may meet a woman named Marianne. If you do, be kind to her. She keeps more love in her heart than she knows what to do with, and it sometimes spills into places where people do not deserve it. If you ever get to sit at her table, ask her for barley soup. It means you are home.
