Dear Edward(7)

Family members perch on folding chairs. They lean forward as if the skin on their shoulders can hear; they bow their heads as if hair follicles might pick up what no other part of their body can. Pores are open, fingers spread. They listen fiercely, hoping that a better, less crushing truth exists beneath the facts being delivered.

There is a cluster of elaborate flower arrangements in the back corner of the room, which no one looks at. Red and pink peonies in giant vases. A cascade of white lilies. They are left over from a wedding held in the room the night before. This smell will keep several family members out of flower shops for the rest of their lives.

The press stands apart at the briefing. They avoid eye contact with the relatives during interviews. They develop their own tics: One man scratches his arms as if he’s been attacked by poison ivy; an on-air reporter fixes and re-fixes her hair. They disseminate the updates in live television interviews and through emailed AP reports. They focus on the “known” passengers. A plastics baron, famous for building an empire and automating thousands of employees out of work. A Wall Street wunderkind, worth an estimated 104 million dollars. A United States army officer, three college professors, a civil-rights activist, and a former writer for Law & Order. They pour facts into hungry mouths; this news story has captivated the world. Every corner of the Internet has weighed in.

A reporter holds up a copy of The New York Times to a camera, to show the huge block headline, the kind normally reserved for presidential elections and moonwalks. It reads: 191 DIE IN PLANE CRASH; 1 SURVIVOR.

The relatives have only one question when the press briefing comes to a close; they all lean toward it like a window in a dark room: “How is the boy?”

The intact pieces of the plane will be transported to the NTSB’s facility in Virginia. They will put the puzzle back together there. Now they are looking for the black box. The woman who leads the team, a sixty-year-old legend in the field known simply as Donovan, is certain that they will find it.

For someone with her experience, the scene is uncomplicated. The debris is contained within a half-mile vicinity, and there are no bodies of water or swampy ground, just hard dirt and grass. Nothing can be permanently missing or lost; it is all within reach. There is charred metal, seats cracked down the middle, splinters of glass. There are pieces of bodies but no intact cadavers. It’s easy to look past the human flesh and focus on the metal. Focus on the fact that this jigsaw puzzle makes sense. Donovan’s team is made up of men and women who spend their professional lives waiting for tragedies to occur. They drive themselves hard, mouths drawn under masks, taking inventory and bagging evidence.

A few days later, the allotted rooms at the Marriott have emptied: The families have left. The daily updates to the press have stopped. The NTSB team has found the black box and returned to Virginia. It has been announced that they will release basic findings within three weeks and that there will be a public hearing on the evidence in Washington, D.C., in approximately six months.

The news coverage has broadened; several stories focus on the boy’s aunt and uncle, who have flown in from New Jersey to adopt him. Lacey Curtis, thirty-nine, is Jane Adler’s younger sister, and the boy’s only remaining blood relative. There’s a photo of a woman with light hair, freckles, and plump cheeks, smiling tentatively. The only other information known about her is that she’s a housewife. Her husband, John Curtis, forty-one, is a computer scientist who does IT consulting for local businesses. They have no children.

Information about anything and anyone related to the crash continues to be inhaled, so television and Internet pundits continue to speculate. Were the pilots drunk? Did the plane malfunction? Is it 100 percent certain that this wasn’t an act of terrorism? Did one of the passengers go crazy and rush the cockpit? Was it the rainstorm? Google analytics show that, one week after the accident, 53 percent of U.S. online searches are related to the crash. “Why is it,” an old news anchor growls, “that out of all the terrible news in this terrible world, we care so much about this one downed plane and this one little boy?”

He’s been in the hospital for a week. A woman on crutches enters the room; she’s the head of public relations for the Denver hospital and has been appointed to update the family on everything that’s not directly medical.

“Susan,” John Curtis says in greeting. He’s a tall, bearded man, with the pallor and potbelly befitting a person who spends most of his life in front of a computer screen.

“Has he spoken today?”

Lacey—pale, with a coffee stain on her blouse—shakes her head. “Not since we told him.”

“Have you decided if you’d like us to refer to him as Eddie or Edward?” Susan asks.

John turns to his wife, and they share a look. The look—haggard and thready—suggests that they have not slept for more than an hour at a stretch since receiving the phone call. The plane had crashed in the middle of a week when Lacey and John were not speaking to each other, because she wanted to move on with their quest to have a baby and he did not. And now the fight and the silence feel irrelevant. They have been bucked off the horse that was their life. Their nephew is lying in front of them, broken, and he is their responsibility.

“This is for strangers, right?” Lacey says. “They don’t know him, or us. The press should use his given name. Edward.”

“Not Eddie,” John says.