“Meryl.”
“Don’t.” I pulled away from him. My palm landed on the shoe box, knocking the lid to the carpet. “You do not say my name like that and then expect me to understand what you mean.”
He lowered himself onto one knee in front of me. At sixty-nine, Wade complained every time he climbed into a fishing boat or stood up from a low chair, but he went down without making a sound. His face looked older from this close, the lines beside his mouth pulled deep enough to hold shadow.
I pressed the letter flat against my thigh. “Tell me he isn’t dead.”
Wade shut his eyes.
That was how he told me.
Something tore out of me. I do not remember deciding to make the sound. It rose from somewhere beneath the place where doctors had cut and poisoned and burned me back toward life, a raw animal noise that filled the hallway and frightened even me.
