Dear Edward(60)

“It was snowing. We got married so quickly after that.” Lacey smiles. “Your mother told me I was crazy, but we were both ready to be married.”

Shay narrows her eyes at Edward, and he can hear her thoughts: It was snowing. Lacey’s smiling. I think they still like each other. But this isn’t convincing enough for Edward. He remembers how his parents would sometimes start fighting in the middle of what seemed like a normal conversation. The vein on the side of his dad’s forehead would pulse, and his mom’s voice climbed a few octaves higher. Edward and his brother would look at each other in surprise, as if to ask, Did you see that coming? If he couldn’t understand the patterns of his own parents’ marriage, what hope does he have of doing so with his aunt and uncle? Besides, he’s Jordan’s age now, and his brother wouldn’t keep quiet.

He says to John, “Why are you sleeping in the nursery?”

The question makes everyone freeze. Lacey has her napkin pressed to her mouth; Shay and John are mid-bite. Edward notes the pause with a flicker of satisfaction.

John’s cheeks darken. “I sleep there when my snoring bothers Lacey.”

Lacey’s napkin is gripped in her fist. “Why do you ask?” Her voice lifts at the end of the question, as if trying to force a lighter tone.

Edward says, “I guess I wondered if everything was okay.”

This comment removes the air from the room again, and Edward knows, in the silence, that everything is not okay. Lacey and John exchange a look.

Shay clears her throat and says, “There are nose bands I read about that apparently stop snoring. I think you can get them in the pharmacy.”

John says, “Thank you, Shay. I’ll look into that.”

“Where people sleep doesn’t matter.” Lacey points a look at Edward, which makes him half-remember saying something similar in the first few months of his stay, when she was unhappy about him sleeping at Shay’s house.

“Now cake,” John says, as if it’s a command.

They sing “Happy Birthday” while his uncle carries the multilayer cake over and gently places it in front of Edward.

“Make a wish,” John says.

Wishes are dangerous, pointless, and part of why Edward hates his birthday. He wishes he could ask his uncle if what he’s gathering in the garage is helping him, but Edward feels like he needs to find that answer for himself. He thinks, Are you doing this to protect me? Is it working?

When Shay compliments the cake, Lacey says, “It was my grandmother’s recipe, which Edward’s loved since he was tiny.”

“Yes,” Edward says, but the truth is that she has him confused with Jordan. It was Jordan’s favorite cake, and their mom had made it for Jordan on his birthdays. Edward’s favorite dessert—what he’d had for his birthdays while his parents were alive—was an ice cream sundae. But Lacey had been so pleased that she remembered his special dessert that he could never tell her the truth. He forks bites of his brother’s favorite cake into his mouth. He ate it on his thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays too. He will, he assumes, eat it on his sixteenth.

John yawns and stands up.

“What are you doing?” Lacey says, with disapproval in her voice.

John looks around him, surprised. “I’m sorry,” he says, and sits back down. “That was rude. I didn’t mean to rush you.”

“You’re tired,” Edward says.

His uncle frowns, and something about his expression makes Edward understand that insomnia and nighttime disruption don’t belong only to him. In the dark, flat middle of the night, Edward had assumed that he was the only one awake, the only one who wasn’t allowed rest. But now teenagers are crossing lawns and John is choosing between beds, and Edward is another year older, another year distant from his family.

Edward and Shay return to the garage at midnight, when all the grown-ups have been in bed for over an hour, so they deem it to be safe.

Shay taps one of the duffel bags with her sneaker. “I estimate each one weighs about ten pounds. Maybe fifteen? They’re not as heavy as they look. And whatever’s in them is packed with some kind of paper. They crinkle.”

“It might just be his summer clothes, or stuff for Goodwill.”

“Then they wouldn’t bother to lock the bags. Nobody does that. Something important must be in them.”

They take their seats: Edward on the footstool, Shay on the chair. Their plan is to finish going through the folders tonight—Shay wants to take notes on the contents—and turn their attention to opening the bags tomorrow. One folder contains pages of information on the Airbus A321 aircraft. There are diagrams of the plane, measurements of the wingspan, the engines, and the fuel capacity. The history of that kind of plane, and its frequency of use by different airlines. There are photographs of the underbelly of an Airbus A321, photographs of it from above, and one of it in the air. At the bottom of the folder are photographs of the crash scene. Edward can’t make his eyes focus on them. He hands them to Shay, and she puts them back in the folder.

The other folder contains printouts of social-media mentions of either Edward or the flight. The top half is from a Facebook account called Miracle Boy. The avatar is the only photograph taken of Edward in the hospital. He has a bandage around his head and is looking to the side. Edward can barely recognize himself in the image. Most of the posts are URL links for news articles about the flight, but there are also posts with writing, which were cross-posted to the Twitter account with the same name. I am scared. I’m lonely. I miss my mom. I don’t know why I’m here. Maybe God did save me, but I’m just a kid.