Dear Edward(25)

“Oh dear,” Lacey says.

There is a cover letter. It says that if they identify any effects belonging to the Adler family, they will send the items to them. Lacey flips the binder open to the middle, to a photograph of a gold charm bracelet with a description typed beneath it. There is a charm in the shape of the Eiffel Tower and another of a teddy bear.

“I don’t understand,” Edward says. “These things survived the crash? That many things?”

Lacey nods.

“They didn’t melt? Or explode?”

She taps the binder with her finger. “Do you want to look through it?”

Edward’s ears click, a staccato drumroll. “No, thank you. Not now.”

Later, he hears his aunt and uncle arguing in the kitchen. John is angry that Lacey opened the book in front of him.

“Jesus,” John says. “Our job is to protect him. Do you see how depressed he is? Dr. Mike says we need to be very, very careful.”

Lacey’s voice sharpens. “I don’t want to lie to him. I think he should be able to see the information, so he can make sense of it himself.”

Edward’s parents used to argue regularly, but this sounds different, sadder and more desperate, like John and Lacey are on the side of a mountain and underprepared in terms of both fitness and supplies. They sound keenly aware that one or both of them might lose their grip and fall at any second.

His uncle says, “Edward’s not ready to make sense of anything. It’s too soon.”

“Of course he’s not ready. Nobody’s ever ready for anything this hard.”

John’s voice drops, as if in an effort to change the nature of the exchange. “Lace, calm down.” A pause, and then, “You never call me Bear anymore.”

But Lacey seems unable, or unwilling, to shift gears. If anything, she sounds angrier. “I don’t need it thrown in my face that I’m doing a bad job. I don’t know anything about children, and I think he can sense that. He doesn’t even want to sleep here.”

“You just need to be careful around him. For God’s sake, that’s why we turned off the phone.”

This strikes Edward, as he realizes for the first time that he hasn’t heard a phone ring in this house since his arrival. He wonders whose calls they’re avoiding.

Lacey says, “That horrible man emailed again to say that they need DNA samples to identify the bodies. I’m supposed to call Jane’s dentist and ask for samples.”

Jane, Edward thinks. And it is only then that he realizes his aunt lost her sibling, just like he lost his. Jane, Jordan. Jane, Jordan.

“Forward me the email. I’ll write him back.”

“It’s my responsibility. She was my sister.”

Their voices stop. Either they leave the room or Edward’s ears make an executive decision to block them out.

The summer pulses on, bleary and filled with too much sunlight for Edward’s taste. He sees the throat-clearing doctor for his leg and weight, Dr. Mike for his emotions, and a physical therapist to make sure his gait returns to normal.

It occurs to Edward that no one alive knows or remembers his pre-crash walk. He doesn’t either. He remembers Jordan’s, though. His brother’s stride had always been distinctive: long and leaping. Gravity seemed to have less hold on him than on other people; Edward could remember talking to Jordan while walking down the sidewalk, and mid-sentence his brother would be in the air. He bounds, his mother had once said.

Edward bends his knees and bounces.

“Whoa there, tiger,” the physical therapist says. “What was that? I’d like you to focus on forward motion, please. Not elevation.”

In the afternoons, his physical-therapy homework is to walk to the end of their block and back again. The first few days, Lacey walked with him, but now she waits on the front steps, because the therapist said Edward needs to relearn balance by himself. A small crowd stands on the far side of the street. A few teenagers, a nun, and some older men and women. They look like they’re waiting for a parade.

Edward knows he’s the parade. If they say something, he doesn’t hear it. If they wave, he doesn’t see it. He never looks in their direction; he concentrates on hitching a single crutch forward, one step and then another. His ear clicks, a metronome counts, and he can hear the clocks shuttling forward in every house he passes.

Worst parade ever, he thinks.

Edward sits on John’s tablet by accident one evening. It’s on the couch, covered by a blanket. Edward pulls it free and sees his reflection in the black screen. His uncle is at a meeting, and his aunt is in bed. His face looks older, and more true, as if this dark mirror sees the grayness within him. The face looking back at Edward wouldn’t be out of place as a villain in a movie: serious to the point of malevolent.

His parents wouldn’t allow him or Jordan to have a cellphone—the boys had texting pagers so that Bruce and Jane could reach them in case of an emergency. His parents both had tablets, though, which they let the boys use for educational games.

Edward presses the ON button.

A four-digit passcode screen appears.

Am I going to do this? he thinks, with genuine curiosity. Yes.

He tries to approach the task the way his father would. His father talked about numeracy with such affection—as if the numbers were a collection of odd characters in the local bar—that when Edward fills his brain with numbers, he finds it to be a warm space. As he puzzles through the possible digits, he feels like he’s using the DNA he shares with his father.