Chapter 4: What Roberta Knew
Aunt Roberta lived forty minutes north of us in a narrow white house at the end of a gravel road.
I'd been there twice as a child.
Both times, my father had waited in the car.
She opened the door before we knocked.
She was in her mid-seventies, smaller than I remembered, with my father's same dark eyes — but where his were always pressing forward, hers were still.
"I wondered when this day would come," she said.
She made tea.
Ethan sat on the floor of her living room with a set of wooden blocks she'd pulled from a closet — old ones, worn smooth, that had clearly belonged to a child long ago.
He stacked them carefully, quietly, the way he always did when he sensed the adults around him needed space.
Roberta set the mugs on the table and sat down across from us.
"How much do you know about your grandfather?" she asked me.
"Your father's father."
"Almost nothing," I said.
"Dad never talked about him."
"No.
He wouldn't." She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"His name was Walter.
He was a hard man.
I don't use that as an excuse — I want to be clear about that.
Plenty of people had hard fathers and didn't become what Gerald became.
But you asked what you need to know, so I'm starting at the beginning."
"What did he become?" Claire asked.
Roberta looked at her steadily.
"A man who believes that love is weakness.
That softness in a child is a failure in the parent.
That if you can make someone stop crying, you've made them stronger." She paused.
"Walter used to destroy things too.
Gerald's things.
When Gerald was small."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"He told himself it was toughening Gerald up," Roberta said.
"Gerald told himself the same thing, eventually.
That's how it travels.
Not because people are evil.
Because they can't tell the difference between what was done to them and what is true."
"He gave Ethan a list," I said.
"Written instructions.
Don't cry.
Don't tell your father.
Keep secrets."
Roberta closed her eyes for a moment.
"Yes," she said.
"He did that to you too."
I set my mug down.
"I don't remember that."
"You were three.
Maybe four." She opened her eyes.
"I found one.
I confronted him about it.
That's why we stopped speaking."
Claire's hand found mine under the table.
"There's more," Roberta said.
"And I need you to hear it before you decide what to do next.
Because what I'm about to tell you — it isn't just about Ethan.
It's about you.
And it's about something your father has been doing for the past two years that you don't know about."
Ethan looked up from his blocks.
He'd built a small tower, four blocks high.
He looked at it for a moment, then placed a fifth block on top, very carefully, and held his breath to see if it would hold.
It did.
He looked at me and smiled.
I smiled back.
Then I turned to Roberta.
"Tell me," I said.
She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and set a photograph on the table between us.
It was a picture of my father.
Recent — he was wearing the jacket he'd had on at Christmas.
He was standing outside a building I didn't recognize, shaking hands with a man I'd never seen before.
"Do you know what that building is?" Roberta asked.
I looked more closely.
There was a partial sign visible above the entrance.
Three letters: F-A-M.
"No," I said.
"It's a family court services office," Roberta said.
"And the man your father is shaking hands with is a family attorney."
The room tilted slightly.
"He's been consulting a lawyer," Roberta said.
May you like
"About grandparental rights.
About Ethan."
