Dear Edward(72)

“Have you ever smelled a newborn?” she says to Edward.

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll have to come to the hospital with me one day to smell one. It’s indescribably wonderful.”

I have too many letters to read, he thinks, and leans his weight imperceptibly toward his uncle. If Lacey is strong now and cloaked in the mantle of his mother’s bravery, where does that leave her husband and nephew?

“It’s true,” John says with intensity, several beats too late, “about the newborn smell.”

Edward and Lacey look at him, and an expression of alarm crosses John’s face. Edward, who is sensitive to yearning and mixed-up time zones, is able to chart the three of them in this strange moment. Lacey is staring at her husband as if he’d accidentally hit her. As if he’d said something she’d hoped with all her heart that he would say a few years earlier—when holding their baby in her arms was her deepest desire—but that this version of herself no longer needs, and so she experiences the statement as a betrayal. John, lost and panicked, gazes at Lacey and Edward, thinking, Dear God, have I messed everything up? And Edward, living inside the correspondence in the garage, which means living inside questions and a deafening desire for answers, feels every atom of their shared vulnerability and wonders if any of them will be okay.

When Edward leaves the house after dinner, he finds Besa waiting for him in the driveway.

“Oh. Hi?” he says.

“I would like to know what you and my daughter are up to.”

It’s cold, but neither of them is wearing a winter coat. “We’ve had a lot of homework lately,” he says, and shivers.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, mi amor.” Besa has always called him mi amor, but Edward has sensed a slight dimming in her warmth toward him in the last year. He now towers over her, and annoyance flickers across her face when she cranes her neck to look at him. Shay said to him once that her mother loved all children but distrusted men. And Edward is uncomfortably aware that he now looks like a young man.

He tries to make his features appear trustworthy. “You should ask Shay, Besa.”

She regards him from beneath her eyebrows. “You know I already have. Would I be coming to you first?”

Edward sighs. Lying to Besa is unthinkable. She demands truth with every line of her face. He tries to come up with something that at least feels true. “We’re working on a project. We’re trying to help people.”

She glares at him, an expression that makes her look so much like her daughter that Edward almost smiles.

“In the middle of the night? You think I don’t hear you two scurrying around?”

“Oh,” Edward says. “Well, the project—”

“Are you and Shay having sex?”

The look on his face must be answer enough, because Besa’s face softens with relief. She leans forward and presses her hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry, pobrecito. I didn’t mean to give you a heart attack. I have my fears, but of course I was wrong.”

Edward is unable to speak, and his face feels like it’s burning up. Besa laughs and takes his arm. She leads him toward her house. “I’m glad you’re working on a project. It’s for school, I assume? Shay needs to keep her grades up in order to get a scholarship. A project for extra credit would be wonderful. We don’t need to mention any of this to Shay, do we?”

“No,” Edward croaks, as she deposits him inside her house.

He has to stand at the bottom of the stairs for a few minutes, trying to manage his heart rate and temperature, before he’s able to enter Shay’s room. He’s relieved to see that she’s at her desk, with her back to him.

“Just finishing one,” she says, without turning.

He sits down on her bed to wait. When she turns, she hands him a large envelope. She says, “Are you okay? You look sunburned.”

“I’m fine. How many responses are in here?”

“Just one today.”

We can’t ignore the letters from or about little kids, she’d said the morning after they opened the first duffel bag. They’d agreed that she would compose and type responses, which Edward would then sign. Shay had started with the first letter they’d read, from the dad asking Edward to write specific messages to his three children. She had written and rewritten those three letters over the course of several days. I can’t make a mistake, she’d said. This is important. I need to say the perfect thing.

Edward pulls the new letter out of the envelope and scans the page. She’s written to a nun in South Carolina, who said the beauty of Edward’s salvation kept her from leaving the church.

“I know it’s not a kid, but the nun seems sweet,” Shay says. “And she’s extremely old. Is that okay with you?”

“You’re in charge of who gets written back.”

“The nun claimed that she knew you were truly saved by God because of how your hair looked in the photos of you from the hospital.”

“My hair?”

“Apparently Jesus had dark, shiny hair that looked wet, like he had just been anointed. And your hair looked like that too.”

“My hair looked wet? That’s gross.”

“She believes it proved that God had anointed you and thereby saved you from death.”