"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means we'd like to know Jonah," Preston said. "Genuinely. Not out of guilt, though I'll admit some of that's still mixed in there somewhere. Our father spent the last four years of his life being looked after by a fourteen-year-old who didn't have to do it and never once asked for anything back. That's not nothing. We'd like to be part of whatever happens to that kid next, if he'll let us."
PART 6
Jonah started college that fall, on the coast, three hours from Hollowbrook Lane, the trust covering every part of it that used to keep me awake doing math at midnight, trying to figure out how two of us were going to manage tuition on a single income.
He calls most Sundays. Some weeks it's fifteen minutes about nothing in particular. Some weeks it's an hour, and I can tell, even over the phone, when something's actually weighing on him.
Preston and Diane have both come to visit twice since that afternoon in our kitchen, once for Jonah's high school graduation that spring, once just because Diane said she happened to be in the area, which none of us quite believed but were glad of anyway.
Last month, Preston mentioned, almost in passing, that he'd started stopping by his own son's baseball practices more often, not because anything forced him to, just because a version of the same math had finally worked itself out in his head, the one his father's letter had been trying to hand him for a while before any of us understood what it was actually saying.
I still live across the street from Arthur's old house. New owners moved in a few months back, a young couple with a toddler and a dog that barks at everything that moves. They keep the lawn up themselves, mostly, though I noticed last Saturday that the grass had gotten a little tall, the porch chair — a different one now, blue instead of faded green — sitting empty in the afternoon light.
I almost mentioned it to Jonah on our call that evening. Then I decided against it.
