The Whisper Man(89)

“Well, that is a complicated question.” Francis walked over to the bed. The boy seemed almost eerily calm. “And one I don’t think you need to worry about for the moment. All you need to know is that you’re safe now.”

“Okay.”

“And that I’m going to look after you.”

“Thank you.”

“Who were you talking to?”

The boy looked confused. “Nobody.”

“Yes, you were. Who was it?”

“Nobody.”

Francis felt a sudden urge to strike the boy in the face as hard as he could.

“We don’t lie in this house, Jake.”

“I’m not lying.” Jake looked off to one side, and for a moment Francis had the odd sense that he was hearing a voice that wasn’t really there. “Maybe I was talking to myself. I’m sorry if I was. Sometimes that happens when I’m thinking about stuff. I get distracted.”

Francis was silent, considering the answer. It made a degree of sense. He sometimes got lost in a dreamworld too. Which meant that Jake was like him, and that was good on one level, because it gave him something to fix.

“We’ll work on that together,” he said. “Here—I brought you some breakfast.”

Jake took the plate and carton and said thank you without being prompted, which was another good thing. Presumably he’d learned some manners from somewhere. But he also looked down at what he was now holding and didn’t begin eating. The mold was still visible, Francis noticed. Clearly it wasn’t good enough for him.

It had been good enough for Francis as a boy.

“Are you not hungry, Jake?”

“Not right now.”

“You have to eat if you’re going to grow up big and strong.” Francis smiled patiently. “What would you like to do afterward?”

Jake was silent for a moment.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to do some drawing.”

“We can do that! I’ll help you with it.”

Jake smiled.

“Thank you.”

But he said Francis’s other name afterward, and Francis went very still. The boy recognized him, of course, but a good home was no place for informality. A child needed discipline. There had to be a clearly delineated hierarchy.

“Sir,” Francis said. “That’s what you’ll call me here. Do you understand?”

Jake nodded.

“Because in this house we show respect for our elders. Do you understand?”

Jake nodded again.

“And we appreciate the things they do for us.” Francis gestured at the plate. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble. Eat your breakfast, please.”

For a moment the eerie calm on Jake’s face faded away and the boy looked like he was going to start crying. He stared off to one side again.

Francis’s fist clenched at his side.

Just disobey me once, he thought.

Just once.

But then Jake looked back at him, the calm restored now, and picked up one of the crumpets. In the light up here, the mold was obvious around the edge.

“Yes,” he said. “Sir.”





Fifty-eight


It felt like a transgression as I opened the Packet and looked inside at the contents.

It was an assortment of paper, fabric, and trinkets, much of which overlapped with my own past and memories. The first thing I saw was a colored wristband, pulled taut at the plastic clasp where Rebecca had stretched it over her hand rather than cut it off. It was from a music festival we’d been to in the early days of our relationship, long before Jake had even been thought of, never mind born. Rebecca and I had camped with friends who had slowly drifted away over the years, and spent the weekend drinking and dancing, not caring about the rain or the cold. We had been young and carefree, and as I looked at it now, the wristband seemed like a talisman from a better time.

Excellent choice, Jake.

I recognized a small brown packet, and my vision blurred slightly as I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm. A tooth, so impossibly small that it felt like air on my skin. It was the first one Jake had lost, not long after Rebecca died. That night I’d slipped money under his pillow, along with a note from the tooth fairy explaining that she wanted him to keep the tooth because it was special. I hadn’t seen it again until now.

I replaced it carefully in its envelope, and then unfolded a piece of paper that turned out to be the picture I’d drawn for him: a crude attempt at the two of us standing side by side, with that message underneath.

Even when we argue we still love each other.

The tears came at that. There had been so many arguments over the years. Both of us so similar, and yet failing to understand each other. Both of us reaching out to the other and always somehow missing. But God, it was true. I loved him through every single second of it. I loved him so much. I hoped that, wherever he was right now, he knew that.

I worked my way through the other items. They felt sacred to the touch, but also sometimes oblique in their mystery. There were several more bits of paper, and while some made sense—one of the few party invitations he’d ever received—much of it was incomprehensible to me. There were faded tickets and receipts, scribbled notes Rebecca had made, all so apparently meaningless that I couldn’t fathom why Jake had dignified them as being special. Maybe it was even the smallness and apparent insignificance of them that he liked. These were adult things that he lacked the experience to decode. But his mother had cared enough to keep them, and so perhaps, if he studied them for long enough, he might understand her better.