Dear Edward(81)

Edward’s science teacher recently told them about the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the largest machine ever built. It’s investigating different theories of particle physics, the teacher had said. The scientists think they’re on the brink of understanding what happens in the air between two people. Why some people repel us, and others attract us, and everything in between. The air between us is not empty space.

Edward’s entire body is aware of Shay’s body only a few feet from his own. He doesn’t try to find a comfortable position; he intends to stay awake until his uncle arrives in the garage.

He stares into the darkness and finds himself replaying the visit to the deli. His grief for his brother is bigger at the end of this day, a fact he wouldn’t have thought possible. But Edward used to miss Jordan only for himself. It had been his terrible loss. Now he also mourns what his brother has lost. Jordan will never sit this close to a girl again, with his entire body tingling.

The sky is purple-ribboned when John opens the garage door. He stops in the doorway and regards the scene. The tired-eyed teenage boy, and the sleeping teenage girl.

“Good morning,” John says, in a cautious voice.

“Hi.” Edward stands up from the stool. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to tell you that I looked in your folders. I found them by accident. And then we opened the duffel bags too and read the letters.”

John’s face registers surprise, and something else too. Maybe fear? “You opened the locks on the bags?” Then, “I was going to give them to you when you were older. I know they’re yours. It’s just that I read a few, when they first started coming, and I thought it was outrageous that people were writing letters like that to a young child.”

“That’s what we assumed.”

John sighs, the sound of a small boulder rolling down a hill. “Those aren’t even all of them.”

It takes a second for this to sink in. “There are more letters?”

“Not many. But there are a few recent ones in the back of the hall closet. They still come in now, at a slower rate. I collect them every Friday from the post office.”

Shay shifts on the chair. When she has resettled into sleep, Edward says, “Why did you use a P.O. box?”

“We set it up after we got that binder of personal effects in the mail. We thought it would be safer not to have mail coming straight to the house. We didn’t want you to stumble into anything we hadn’t had a chance to check out first.”

Edward looks at his uncle. He has the thought that he’s just a person who happens to be older than him. He doesn’t know better, or more, than Edward does. John and Lacey are playing the roles they’ve been assigned: husband, wife, aunt, uncle. When Shay had pushed him to tell John and Lacey about the letters, he’d resisted because he wanted to first figure out what he wanted to do, before asking the grown-ups. Built into that was the assumption that John and Lacey would have a solid answer, a solution to the problem. But he sees now and understands that’s not the case.

He says, “Are you and Lacey going to be okay?”

John gives a pained smile. “She’s been frustrated with me. Understandably.” He shrugs. “When you have a long history with someone … Nothing is as linear as you think it’s going to be. Lacey and I have always mistimed getting upset when something challenging happens. I go cold at first, and she falls apart. Once she’s pulled herself together, I’m usually okay, but this time … It’s a kind of marital glitch.”

“It’s complicated,” Edward offers, because he wants to help.

John gestures with his hand again, this time seeming to refer to everything: the photographs, the letters, middle age, marriage. “If you live long enough, everything is complicated.”

Edward thinks of the history that already winds, nonlinear and intricate, between himself and Shay. And the history that continues to pulsate between Mahira and his brother, even though Jordan is dead. He listens to the light rustle of Shay’s breath and says, “It would have been better, I think, if you’d showed me everything from the beginning. I think it’s important … to see everyone who died. They matter as much as you or me, and I want to remember them.”

Edward watches his uncle consider this. “That’s interesting,” John says. “Maybe I should have shown you everything, but I didn’t feel like I could.” His uncle looks old, draped in the pastel light of dawn. “You need to understand that my biggest fear, our biggest fear …” He hesitates.

“What?” Edward says.

John turns his head slightly, so he’s looking at the sunrise, not his nephew. He says, “That you might, well, decide not to live. Dr. Mike said it was a real concern, and you starved yourself when you first got here, and then you collapsed outside. You were deeply depressed.”

Edward blinks, trying to understand. “You were worried I would kill myself?”

“We based all our decisions on preventing that. I didn’t want you around anything that might upset you further. Lacey thinks I was too hardcore about it and that by protecting you from the crash, I ended up obsessed with it.” He rubs his hands over his face. “Women are smarter than we are, you know.”

Dr. Mike had said something to Edward once, during a session, about taking suicide off the table as an option. Edward hadn’t responded, confused by the comment. But now, with this idea in front of him, Edward can see that fear in the careful attention of Principal Arundhi, in Lacey’s sleeping pill prescription, in the new lines on John’s face. He shakes his head. “I never would have done that.”