Chapter 9: Scrambled Eggs
Ethan ate at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around a glass of orange juice, his feet — clean now, the redness faded — swinging above the floor.
He had woken that morning in Richard's spare room, in a bed with too many pillows, and had not cried.
He had sat up, looked around, and said, "Grandpa?" in a voice that was very small but not frightened.
Richard had been in the doorway before the second syllable.
Now Ethan watched the eggs in the pan with the focused attention of a child who has learned that meals are not guaranteed.
Richard noticed.
He didn't say anything about it.
"Do you want toast as well?" he asked.
"Yes please."
"Brown or white?"
Ethan considered this seriously.
"Brown."
Richard put the bread in.
He slid the eggs onto a plate and set it on the table.
Ethan looked at it for a moment, then picked up his fork.
Mark arrived at half past eight.
Richard heard the key — he had given Mark a spare the night before — and then heard him pause in the hallway, the way people pause when they're not sure what they'll find on the other side of a door.
He came into the kitchen.
He saw Ethan.
Ethan looked up.
"Dad."
"Hey, buddy." Mark crouched beside the chair.
He put one hand on Ethan's back.
"How'd you sleep?"
"Good." Ethan held up a forkful of egg.
"Grandpa made eggs."
"I can see that."
"They taste different here."
Mark looked up at Richard over the top of Ethan's head.
His eyes were red at the edges.
He hadn't slept.
"Sit down," Richard said.
"I'll make more."
They ate together at the kitchen table.
The three of them.
The morning light came through the window above the sink at a low angle, the kind of winter light that is thin but honest.
Ethan finished his eggs and asked if he could watch something on the television in the sitting room.
Richard said yes.
They listened to him pad down the hallway, heard the television find a cartoon, heard the sound of a child settling into a sofa cushion.
Mark wrapped both hands around his coffee mug.
"Gerald called this morning," he said.
"Claudia's lawyer contacted him.
They want to negotiate a settlement.
No more filings.
She wants to resolve it privately."
"What changed?"
"The recording.
And the child welfare referral.
She doesn't want a formal investigation." Mark looked at his coffee.
"She's also been served notice on the property.
She has thirty days to remove her belongings."
"What does she want in the settlement?"
"Money.
Not the house anymore.
She knows that's gone." He paused.
"Gerald thinks we can resolve it for significantly less than she originally wanted.
The recording changed her position considerably."
Richard nodded.
"And the business matter she found," Mark said.
"The property deal.
She's dropped it.
Gerald thinks she realized it wasn't strong enough to use without the other leverage, and the other leverage is gone."
"Good."
Mark was quiet for a moment.
Then: "I want to sell the house."
Richard looked at him.
"Not because of her.
Or not only because of her." Mark set the mug down.
"Ethan has never been happy there.
Even before it got bad, he was never — he was always a little too quiet in that house.
A little too careful." He looked toward the hallway, toward the sound of the cartoon.
"I want to find somewhere that feels different to him."
"Where?"
"I don't know yet.
Somewhere with a garden, maybe.
Somewhere he can be loud." A pause.
"Somewhere near you, if that's — if that's something you'd want."
Richard looked at his son.
The boy he had not known how to reach for the better part of a decade.
The man sitting across from him now with red eyes and a coffee mug and a three-year-old down the hall who liked brown toast and thought eggs tasted different here.
"It's something I'd want," Richard said.
Mark nodded.
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
From the sitting room came the sound of Ethan laughing at something on the screen.
A sudden, unguarded laugh.
The kind children produce when they forget to be careful.
Both men turned toward the sound.
Neither of them spoke.
There are moments that don't require words.
May you like
That are, in fact, made smaller by them.
This was one.
